Myth and Reality: Rape in Non- incarcerated Sexually Aggressive Males - Coursework Example

Myth and Reality” Rape in Non- incarcerated Sexually Aggressive males Order No: 180190 No: of pages: 10 Premium - 6530 Introduction: Rape is asocial stigma in our otherwise civilized world. It is a word that not many people like to hear or worse experience it, but yet, from time immemorial rape has found its way into our society and is here to stay as long as we have criminal minded and dominating characters around us. Life is not safe if we have a stalker or a rapist around. Children and women are the vulnerable victims that are forced to endure a rapist’s demands. In more dangerous cases especially when a fight is put up by the victim, the consequences are even more shocking at times leading to an innocent person losing their lives. For the past several years, people have begun to challenge as well as question the way in which one perceives rape. Though many countries have widened their statutes regarding rape, yet the word seems like an illusion till someone near and dear or someone whom we know, experiences it. Rapists come in different shapes and sizes and are sometimes packaged so well that one does not even suspect him to be one, till it is too late. Rape could be defined as a non consensual intercourse between two people, irrespective of gender of either the victim or offender, regardless of any prior relationship between the two parties. Punishment towards a rapist is a long drawn out process and sometimes takes so long that much evidence gets lost along the way, setting a rapist scot free to strike yet another innocent victim again at some other later date. The acceptability and unacceptability of the sexual behavior of men, will always be a researching and highly contested terrain. In 2002, there were 247,730 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault, approximately half of whom knew their assailant as either a friend or an acquaintance. (National Crime Victimization Survey, 2002) Getting raped is one thing, but making it public is quite another thing, because most victims are afraid to bring it out in the open for fear of the social stigma attached to it. Though a lot of multi- disciplinary research, together with theoretical perspectives has been carried out to understand and evaluate the perception of rape and the responsibility attributed to their victims. However, results on the research explaining why reporting is so infrequent in victims of acquaintance rape suggests that it is primarily because of trauma and damage caused to the victim during the incident. Many psychologists are of the opinion that rape cases do not get reported because “they may fear isolation, embarrassment, shame and ridicule by one’s peers and even family members”. (Meier, 1999; Feldman - Summers and Palmer, 1980) Coercive men and rape: Extensive research has been done in the field of anti- social risk factors among self – identified coercive men. “Coercive males, compared to their non- coercive peers, have been found to have a stronger aggressive drive”, (Greendlinger & Byrne, 1987). Sexually coercive men have been found to use different tactics to attract mates and to be more “macho” (Gold, Fultz, Burke, Prisco & Willet, 1992; Lalumiere, et al., submitted a) to fantasize more about coercive sex or sex in general (Gold & Clegg, 1990; Greendlinger & Byrne, 1987) Verbal and non-verbal consent for sexual behavior: Studies done on the issues of consent among heterosexual dating couples state that, “consent and non- consent for intercourse have been found to occur verbally and non-verbally. The way in which people give their consent is very important because miscommunications of ones intentions can lead to unwanted sex or rape”. (Byers, 1980, Muehlenhard, 1988) Hall, (1998) examined both heterosexual men and women, in their actual dating scenario’s and determined how consent is given for several types of sexual behavior. Hall defined positive sex as a situation in which both people say “yes” and mean “yes” to engage in sexual behavior”. (Hall, 1998) Hall found that the majority of them gave non- verbal consent for other sexual behavior such as kissing, touching etc. and not for intercourse. In the research undertaken of both male and female participants, around 80% of them reported to have given consent to penile/vaginal intercourse by either verbal or non-verbal means. These participants reported giving verbal permission half the time and non-verbal permission half of the time. This data proved that half of the time males and females are indicating sex by some non-verbal behavior such as smiling, coming closer etc. Non-verbal behavior is more difficult to interpret and therefore may lead to unwanted sex. Hickman (1996) examined how men and women in heterosexual situations give consent both verbally as well as non-verbally. She found small differences which they used to indicate consent or non-consent. She defined direct verbal behavior –e.g. “I want to have sex with you” or indirect verbal behavior for example, “Do you want to have sex?” (Hickman, 1996) She also examined direct non-verbal behavior as being unambiguous –e.g. (the person just starts having sex) and describes indirect non-verbal behavior as being ambiguous (e.g. touches and kisses. (Hickman, 1996) False rape allegations: False rape allegations are frequently claimed to be the consequence of gender based aberration, but this is not true because recent studies have show that it is an impulsive, desperate effort to cope with social as well as personal stress situations. False allegations have many pointers which are typically responsibility such as victims late reporting to the police, lack of corroborating evidence, lack of cooperation by the victim, and/or witnesses, reporting in the wrong jurisdiction, discrepancies in the victims story, wrong address given by the victim, victim’s drunkenness, victim’s drug usage, victim being thought a prostitute, victim’s uncertainty of events, victim’s belligerence. (Clarke & Louis, 1977; Hursch, 1977; Katz & Mazur, 1979; Kanin, 1985; LaFree, 1989). Such type of attitudes exhibited by the victim could make investigating very frustrating and proves very difficult to arrest or convict an offender. Since the very concept of rape had made its appearance, the concept of false allegations were in existence. However, the 20th century saw a new development that viewed false allegations as a singular instance of gender – related lying which is very much different from the false allegations of robbery and burglary usually done by men. In short false rape accusations became a unique condition of women, not unlike that of kleptomania. (Abelson, 1989). This new development portrayed the masochistic nature of women doctrine “a perspective that assumed women had a subconscious desire for rape, as evidenced by their rape fantasies. (Freud, 1933; Deutsch, 1944; Horney, 1933). These neurotic individuals would do their best to convert these fantasies into actual reality or belief. Theoretical models of sexual aggression: The research undertaken within the empirical and theoretical framework which includes male sexual aggression is caused by multiple factors. This includes – 1) creating the motivation for the act, 2) those reducing internal and external inhibiting factors and 3) those providing the opportunity for the act to occur. The predictor factors assessed primarily among acquaintances and taking place in a naturalistic setting were factors such as sexual arousal in response to aggression, dominance as a motive for sexual acts, hostility towards women, psychoticism and acceptance of violence against women. The research carried out had undertaken three theoretical models with regard to the main causes for sexual aggression. The Single Factor Model: This model suggests that sexual aggression stems from a single factor which is hostility. Rapists exhibit fierce hostility especially when denied sex. This hostility is brutally displayed if the woman shows resistance. The Additive Model: This model deals with multiple factors which unite in an additive manner. (Earls, 1983) This model is not like the single Factor model that depends solely on the hostility of the male. In this model there are a number of factors that combine together when the rapist is engaging in sexual aggression. The Interactive model: This model suggests that multiple factors such as motivation, opportunity and dis -inhibition interact between themselves to create sexual aggression. Even though these measures assess sexual aggression between acquaintances, they may also be similarities present in causes for aggression against non- acquaintances. What differentiates rapists from non – rapists is the penile tumescence rape index of a person, which is “a ratio of sexual arousal to rape portrayals compared with arousal to consenting sex portrayals (Abel, Barlow, Blanchard & Guild, 1977) If a man’s penile tumescence is similar to or greater than his tumescence to consenting depictions is considered to have some inclination to rape (see Quincy, in press, for a review. Dominance: The first kind of rapist is one who believes in dominating women. It has been expressed that the desire to dominate women is an important motive of sexual aggression, both at the cultural (Brownmiller, 1975 & Sanday, 1981) and individual (e.g. Scully & Marrola, 1985) levels. Based on clinical facts of interviews conducted with convicted rapists Groth, (1979) came to the conclusion that “in all cases of forcible rape, three components are present: power, anger and sexuality” (Groth, 1979) Depending on the kind of motivation, they have been distinguished as – the power rapist, the anger rapist and the sadistic rapist. Among all the different types of rapists studied by Groth, the most common among them is the power rapist – i.e. 55%. In this category of rapists, the offender’s desire is to sexually dominate and conquer his victim. Hostility towards women: The second most common type of rapist is the “anger rapist”. According to Groth – 40% of these rapists are characterized by their “hostility towards women” Groth, 1979). During the research undertaken, hostility towards women was studied to find out mainly about the motivating factors that lead to the incident. A discrimination was made during the research between men who would not be inhibited by women’s suffering and those men who would not including the amount of resistance that could be tolerated during sexual aggression. For those feeling relatively low hostility, the victims suffering and resistance is likely to be unpleasant and therefore, inhibit aggression, (Geen, 1970, Rule and Leger, 1976). On the other hand, “in contrast to those suffering from relatively high hostility, the victim’s suffering may actually be reinforcing and thereby acknowledge further aggression in the face of resistance”. (Baron, 1974, 1977; Freshbach, Stiles and Bitter, 1967; Hartmann, 1969) Anti- Social Personality Characteristics/ Psychoticism: Though many factors contribute to coercive, sexual behavior, “the actual expression of aggression occurs only if the subject also has certain personality or characterological deficits”. (Rapaport and Burkhart, 1984) Convicted rapists do display “elevated scores on measures on psychopathic/anti-social characteristics”. (Armentrout & Hauer, 1978; Rada, 1977) Koss & Leonard, 1984, however in their study found very non-significant or weak relations in possible links that measured psychopathy and sexual aggression from men in the general public. Prevalence studies (Koss 1985; Koss, Gidycz and Wisniewski 1987) point not only to the high incidence of rape in the United States, but also highlight the problem of defining rape for the woman who has experienced sexual violence. College and Rape: Most college girls are not well equipped against the dangers of rape. Everything is taken to be fun and they can go to any extent to achieve it. Besides children, College girls are the most vulnerable lot. Many of them are not in a position to understand what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. Date rape on college campuses is a common feature which always basks in its controversy. Date rape on college campuses is perceived by some as epidemic (Koss 1985; Warshaw 1988; Sanday 1990) and by others as exaggerated (Roiphe 1993). The most hotly debated issue by both men and women on college campuses is what constitutes coercion and what constitutes consent. Even among Feminists there is a lot of controversy such as how women are portrayed – as victims or survivors and to what degree these women are responsible for their own rape prevention. Brownmiller (1975) and Griffin (1971, 1979), both of whom are feminist scholars on rape, have succeeded in changing our perception on rape. According to them rape was not a sexual crime but a crime of power. They came to this decision by eloquently pointing out that there is a lot of difference in power between the male and female and it is this power differential that is responsible or is the basis on which rape as terrorism operates. Therefore rape is about power as much as it is about sex- i.e. entitlement to sex. "College students indicate that if a woman permits a man to pay all dating expenses instead of splitting the costs with him, it is more likely that she wants to have sex and it is more justifiable for him to have sex with her against her will" (Pirog-Good and Stets 1989:172; see also Muehlenhard 1988; Muehlenhard, Friedman and Thomas 1985). Conclusion: Rape is therefore not a myth, but a reality wherein there is a victim and a victor. Sexually aggressive males use different ways and means to get their victim. In many cases, the victim is given alcohol or drugs, making it all the more easy for a perpetrator to make easy of his prey. This form of raping is very commonly found in adolescents especially, the college going crowd. Another common feature for sexual assault and rape is by verbal arguments and psychological pressure. Vulnerable women fall an easy prey to emotional blackmail and psychological pressure. They find no way out and are easily manipulated and hurt badly by sexually aggressive males. Besides psychological pressure, aggressive males use physical pressure. Women by nature are the weaker sex and therefore are not strong enough to fight back and become sorry victims when they are roughly handled. If there is some resistance from the woman, she suffers a worse fate. Aggressive and dominant males will not stand any kind of resistance they become even more aggressive and end up scaring their victims for life. When a woman faces such a situation and knows that she is in danger, she starts with verbal refusals, which makes the rapists wild and he puts more pressure. The woman continues crying but all she receives is pain and agony. All her screaming and pleading does nothing absolutely to the rapist. His mindset is that he has to get what he wants by any means, even if it is to hurt or kill another human being. Rapists are a condemnation to our civilized society and as such should be severely punished. References: Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality/ Volume 1 www.ejhs.org/tocv1.htm SEX ROLES, 33, 785 – 802 Freetly, Kane 1995 - Men and Women’s Perceptions of Non- consensual intercourse. JOURNAL OF SEX RESEARCH, 23, 1 – 11 Greendlinger Byrne 1987. Coercive sexual fantasies of college men... ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF HUMAMN SEXUALITY, VOLUME 1 Hall D 1998. Consent for sexual behavior.... THE JOURNAL OF SEX RESEARCH, 36, 258 - 272 HICKMAN, MUEHLENHARD, C (1999) by the semi mystical appearance.... ARCHIVES OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR, 14, 219-231 KANIN 1985, DATE Rapists JOURNAL OF PERSONLAITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. 69, 353 – 369 MALAMUTH 1986, PREDICTORS OF NAURALISTIC SEXUAL AGGRESSION Sexually Aggressive Men’s Responses to a Date Rape: Analogue: Alcohol http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1/53390351.html Read More