Rape Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

Rape is a pervasive and serious social problem, brought to greater attention with the second-wave women’s movement of the 1960-70s. The connection between rape and gender inequality is one of control. Rape, and the fear it produces, is a mechanism of social control that men in a patriarchal society use to maintain gender stratification. This type of social control occurs when women restrict their movements and behaviors due to the threat of rape. For example, women may be restricted from working late into the evening in fear of not getting home safely after dark. If a woman does not take responsibility for protecting herself by restricting her actions, and an assault does occur, she is made to feel responsible for the assault because she took such a risk. In a male-dominated society, rape both reflects the low valuation of women and contributes to their subordination in the sexual stratification system. Research shows that the lower the status of women relative to men, the higher the rape rate.

At present, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) legally defines rape as gaining carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. This definition only takes into account heterosexual rape of an adult woman. However, some states now define rape in sex-neutral terms to include sexual assault on a male victim, usually by another male. Some states have laws that distinguish among various degrees of sexual assault, each carrying a different penalty according to the seriousness of the offense. Although we know that men and children are also victims of rape, the most common form of this crime is rapes perpetrated by men with women victims.

Most rapes occur between persons who know one another. Women are most frequently raped by their husbands, ex-husbands, current or past boyfriends, relatives, and acquaintances. Stranger rapes do occur, but they only account for approximately 20 percent of all rapes. Rapists and victims tend to be of the same race and age group. Additionally, most rapists are “normal” in personality, appearance, intelligence, behavior, and sexual drive.

Consent

Since the vast majority of victims know their attacker, the main legal issue is not identity of the rapist but rather that of consent. Did the victim consent, or agree, to have sex with her attacker? Unfortunately, the courts often adjudicate rape cases from the standpoint of the accused, not the victim. Feminists object that the legal question in rape is not about the man using force to have sex with the woman (girl) against her will, but rather whether the man had reason to believe (or convincingly say he believed) the woman (girl) consented to have sex. Given this standard, defense attorneys routinely allege that victims led rapists to believe they consented. Whether a woman actually consented is less critical than the “acceptability” of a defendant’s claim that he believed she did. Given this dynamic, many contend that such legal collaboration lets rapists off the hook and fosters a “second assault” of rape victims.

Current Statistics

In 2006, although local U.S. police departments reported 92,455 cases of forcible rape and attempted rape in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), federal victimization surveys found that many more incidents occurred. The 2006 NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) uncovered 115,010 rapes and sexual assaults of women, 24 percent more than the number reported by the FBI in data gathered from local police departments. The newest estimate comes from the National Women’s Survey, which estimates the total number in all years of completed forcible rapes in 1990 to be 683,000 (1 out of every 145 U.S. women). The methodology for this survey was different from the UCR and NCVS data collection methods. The National Women’s Survey interviewed 4,008 women, who were chosen as a cross-section of the American adult female public, over the phone. Regardless of the exact figures, the point is that rape is a pervasive social problem that is under-reported in the United States.

The variability in these statistics is due to differences in methodology, sample size, and estimating procedures. The UCR data only account for those rapes reported to police, but rape is a highly under-reported crime. The NCVS data include a survey of victims that includes those rapes not reported to the police, but critics argue that these statistics also are too low. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that 49 percent of all violent crimes go unreported, often because the attack was by a spouse, partner, boyfriend, or another family member. Such victims are unwilling to report crimes to police because they see the offense as a private or a personal matter. Other victims may avoid the police because they feel stigmatized by the sexual attack or anticipate police insensitivity.

Campus Rape

The National College Women Sexual Victimization (NCWSV) survey carried out in 2000 gathered data by telephone from a randomly selected, national sample of 4, 446 women attending a two- or four-year college or university during the fall of 1996. The researchers concluded that 4.9 percent of college women are the victims of rape or a rape attempt during any given calendar year, and 20 to 25 percent of college women are victimized during the course of their college careers. Asked if they considered the incident rape, 46.5 percent of victims said they did, 48.8 percent said they did not, and 4.7 percent were uncertain. The failure of nearly half of the victims to define their victimization as rape does not, however, mean that it was not. Factors such as embarrassment, ignorance of the legal definition of rape, unwillingness to consider the offender a rapist, and the belief that they contributed to their own victimization can keep victims from acknowledging assaults that are legally rapes as such. The NCWSV study was consistent with prior surveys in finding that most victims were acquainted with the men who had committed the rapes. Other studies of campus rape have found that 90 percent involve the use of alcohol by the perpetrator, victim, or both.

Theories of Rape Causation

Several theories concerning the causation of rape are important because they beget strategies for rape prevention. Psychopathological explanations of rape focus on individuals, while sociocultural explanations emphasize the importance of the social structure.

Psychopathological explanations make the assumption that male aggressive sexual behavior is unusual or strange. These approaches remove sexual violence from the “everyday” norm, portraying sexually violent men as outsiders and thus eliminating any connection or threat to “normal” men. Such models view rape as no more than a collection of individual problems, thereby ignoring the cultural and structural contexts in which rape occurs. Consequently, these theories of individual disorder cannot account for the vast number of rapes committed in the United States. Nor can theories predicated on individual pathology account for the norms and values of the larger culture concerning rape. It is precisely these individualistic theories that produce rape myths.

Sociocultural theories rest on a presumption of normality rather than pathology and generate questions from the experiences that women, not men, have of rape. The primary assumption of the sociocultural perspective is that rape is a socially learned behavior. The fundamental premise is that all behavior is learned through direct association with others as well as indirectly through cultural contact (behavioral techniques, rape myths).

In this view, U.S. culture produces rapists through the socialization of its societal members when it encourages men to subscribe to values of control/ dominance, callousness/competitiveness, and anger/ aggression and when it discourages expression by men of vulnerability, sharing, and cooperation. At the same time, it socializes women to be submissive/indecisive, empathetic/giving, and subtle/non-aggressive and not to be authoritative, strong willed, and assertive. We then throw such differentially socialized individuals into dating situations and expect everything to go smoothly. When it doesn’t, we blame the individuals. From a sociocultural perspective, such blame is ludicrous.

Those who adhere to the sociocultural model explain date or acquaintance rape as the logical extension of a cultural perspective that defines men as possessors of women, thus making women legitimate objects of sexual aggression. The American dating system, in particular, places females in the position of sexual objects that men purchase. Women are groomed to compete for men who will shower them with attention and favors, men who are socialized to expect sexual reward (or at least try for that reward) for their attention to women. This perspective presents the woman as a legitimate object of victimization: if a man is unable to seduce a woman and yet has provided her with certain attention and gifts, then he has a right to expect sexual payment. Only the situation of rape by a total stranger escapes the influence of this reasoning.

Research reveals many gender attitudinal differences about date rape. For example, males are significantly more likely than females to hold attitudes condoning aggressive sexual behavior. The sociocultural model suggests that these gender differences are the result of gendered socialization and education. Sex role socialization regarding dating behavior leads to a rape-supportive culture in which the use of coercion and physical force to obtain sex is seen as normative rather than deviant behavior. Traditional sex roles, sex role expectations, and attitudes toward women all play a part in molding one’s attitudes regarding rape.

The common thread through all of the findings is that these attitudes and behaviors are learned. Rape is not the result of some uncontrollable impulse, but rather, a socially constructed behavior that men learn. Therefore, this is behavior that can be unlearned.

Solving the Social Problem of Rape

Among the many solutions offered to prevent rape, or serious injury if rape is imminent, women learn never to walk unaccompanied at night, to stay out of certain neighborhoods, to take self-defense courses, and to carry mace or use keys as weapons, to name a few suggestions. They hear conflicting messages about how much physical force a “would-be” victim should use. Local police departments tell women to submit if rape is imminent to avoid further injury or death. At the same time, many courts demand evidence of resistance before defining the offense as rape.

One common theme to these solutions is that women in some way need to alter their own behavior in order to avoid rape. Another commonality is their assumption of stranger rape, which completely ignores the vast amount of acquaintance rape. In any case, all of these solutions define rape as a woman’s problem and neglect to confront the behavior of the assailants, namely men.

One solution that focuses on both women and men is education about rape, and research suggests that a feminist education program can counter the effects of gender-based socialization and definitions of rape that are shaped in the context of sexual inequality. Ideally these educational programs would start in high school and continue at the college level.

A more far-reaching solution to the social problem of sexual assault is to continue to work toward gender equality. Only true gender equality will dismantle the mechanism of rape as a form of social control.

Bibliography:

Brownmiller, Susan. 1993. Against Our Will. New York: Ballantine.
Herman, Dianne F. 1984. “The Rape Culture.” Women: A Feminist Perspective. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Martin, Patricia Yancey. 2005. Rape Work: Victims, Gender, and Emotions in Organization and Community Context. New York: Routledge.
Scully, Diana. 1990. Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted Rapists. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

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