A study led by Sarah Edwards of the University of North Dakota and published in Violence and Gender found that a lot of men don’t actually think rape is rape.
Sarah and her team studied male college students’ attitudes toward rape; they wanted to better understand the male side of what rape actually is to them, so they had a group of college men fill out some surveys.
Quoting koss in 1998, she wrote: “Specifically, when survey items describe behaviors (i.e.,‘‘Have you ever coerced somebody to intercourse by holding them down?’’) instead of simply label them (i.e., ‘‘Have you ever raped somebody?’’), more men will admit to sexually coercive behaviors in the past and more women will self-report past victimization.”
Apparently men don’t see coercive intercourse as rape, so Sarah and her team wanted to find out why. Certain questions in the survey were technically asked, such as; which sorts of behaviors they would engage in “if nobody would ever know and there wouldn’t be any consequences.”
31.7 percent of the men revealed that in a situation without consequences they would force the woman to have sex. 13.6 percent however said they would rape a woman.
Sarah and her team think that “men who endorse using force to obtain intercourse on survey items but deny rape on the same may not experience hostile affect in response to women, but might have dispositions more in line with benevolent sexism.” That is, not all men who would rape women go about saying so.
The researchers also think that “men who are primarily motivated by negative, hostile affect toward women and who conceptualize their own intentions and behaviors as rape are unlikely to benefit from the large group primary prevention efforts done as part of college outreach efforts.” That is, if you are the kind of person who has anger and resentment towards women to the extent that rape doesn’t bother you, such a person would likely be unmoved by programmes designed against sexual assault.
However, those who are confused and misguided on the concept of rape that they believe the idea of forcing someone to have sex but not the idea of rape when given that exact word can actually be educated on the subject.
S.O.Z