I heard it in Philadelphia, home of the feminist underground, in 1979.
Two questions asked in the OP, and “how many rapes are there really” seems to have been credibly answered as 1 in 6 females at least once. (and some percentage of males, but because of how the question was framed and the debate progressed, they aren’t taken into consideration)
But what about the first question: what percentage of men are rapists?
Normally, I’d say we should get such a definition from the OP, but since he rarely returns to controversial threads he starts, go ahead and define it however you wish.
A 1986 survey by Neil Malamuth of UCLA found 30% of men surveyed admitted they would commit rape if there was no chance of being caught. When the survey changed the word “rape” to “force a woman to have sex” the result was over 50%.
I don’t have a copy of the survey around, so I can’t look at the methodology. I can tell you it is referenced in Robin Warshaw’s work, I Never Called it Rape: The Ms. Report on Recognizing , Fighting and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape (1988).
Just to make absolutely certain that we have the ignorance completely fought, Andrea Dworkin did not ever say “All sex is rape” or any words to that effect.
You can’t have a meaningful discussion about any of these percentages unless you can define exactly what rape is, because the definition has changed numerous times. Back in the day, rape was defined as a woman being physically assaulted, overpowered or threatened, and then being penetrated against her will. Other people have defined it down as low as, “He was a smooth talker, so I did it and shouldn’t have”, or even “he said he would call me in the morning and didn’t, so it’s rape.”
Those are extreme positions, but another very common one is that it’s rape any time a woman has sex with someone while inebriated.
To me, the latter behavior is wrong, but it’s not rape unless the woman was passed out. To me, defining drunken party sex as rape infantilizes women and reduces the horror of rape where there is violence and threats involved. Certainly the law would hold that for just about anything else, being drunk is no excuse for allowing certain behaviors. I can’t get off on a murder rap because I was hammered and therefore not in control of myself.
So until we can say exactly what rape is, the numbers don’t matter.
Thank you.
No shit. If a drunken woman has sex with a drunken man, are they raping each other?
Classical criminal rape is generally termed to be “forced, unwanted sexual intercourse.” Throwing sex while drunk, and regretted later, consensual sex while underage, consensual non-drunk sex regretted later, and aggressive, unwanted pawing (whether drunk or not) into the “unwanted sexual contact = rape” basket will easily get the numbers to 25%.
She said:
How she deems “penetrative intercourse” as violent by its very nature seems a bit extreme to me. First off it is just biology. Like it or not this is how mother nature built mammals to procreate so I am not sure just how bent out of shape we are supposed to get that sex can entail penetration. Second I can say for a fact it is not necessarily a violent act by any means between two consenting adults (yes it may get energetic but even that is not a foregone conclusion and none of it would I describe as violent nor, I am positive, would my partners describe it that way).
Painting sex as “violent” highly pejorative towards men. Dworkin pulls her punch a bit later in her quote but the punch is thrown nonetheless.
Agreed. In addition, I’m not certain that any of the studies done have been truly comprehensive enough in terms of the sheer numbers of participants needed to get a representative sample. I’m having a difficult time locating the actual information on the case studies, does anyone have a cite that could provide me with the actual number of women surveyed to achieve these results? I should think that the accurate numbers vary wildly between age, economic, cultural, and nationality groups.
Here’s a bit that shows how all over the board these statistics can be. Makes it difficult to have a meaningful discussion when the very definitions and prevalence of rape are so open to debate.
“Rape” as a crime description has pretty much been replaced by “sexual assault.” Rape had to include penatration, and many sexual crimes did not.
Has every female experienced unwanted sexual attention at some point. Yes. Has every made ever thought (or even said) “Boy I’d like to do her,” without regard to whether the female wants him. Yes. Do most men act on that thought when rejected? Absolutely not.
Well, she ain’t going to jail, that’s for sure.
The classical answer, informed by the fact that the complainant (if any) is not going to be the male, is that a drunken woman is incapable of giving informed consent, and that voluntary intoxication is no defense to criminal liability for a drunken man.
Unfair? You be the judge.
It has certainly informed my behavior over the years.
When did you stop worshipping Satan?
So what if I get one of you guys falling down drunk and have my good friend Bill give you a good ass-reaming? Rape or just regretted sex?
FWIW I always learned that it’s sexual assault only if the victim was passed out or so completely far gone that she was unable to consent (speak coherently, etc.) Anyway, a good way to prevent any of this is don’t screw falling-down drunk chicks you don’t have a good relationship with.
I’ve never been so drunk that I’d consent to that. If I did consent I’d blame myself. I’ve done some dumb things while drunk that I would not do sober but I’ve never blamed anyone else for those decisions.
If Bill jumped me while I was unconscious then yeah, he sexually assaulted/raped me.
The traditional key elements of rape in US law have been sexual penetration in the absent of consent, with a degree of force. Certain states more recently have rolled the requirement of force into the act of penetration - the force necessary for penetration is considered sufficient to sustain a charge of rape (or sexual assault) provided there was an absence of consent (for example, New Jersey).
Requiring force led to some cases where behavior which many people would believe should be classified as rape was not so classified. For example, in Pennsylvania, a 60 year old man told a girl of 14 who was living in his house that unless she had sex with him, he would have her returned to the juvenile detention center from whence she had left to be allowed to stay with him and his wife. Despite her cries through the whole process, and her pleading him to stop, this was not rape, because there was no force.
Similarly, a high school principal out west (Dakotas, Montana? Wyoming? I would need to look it up) was acquitted of rape for repeatedly holding the threat of preventing 17 year old girls under his authority from graduating unless they had sex with him. No force, no rape.
You can find such cases in most states.
Sorry - forgot to continue this. None of the studies I have seen include “consensual non-drunk sex regretted later” or “aggressive, unwanted pawing” as examples of rape. The latter may be considered to be an example of sexual assault (which it often is), but it isn’t rape. There are enough question marks over the methods used in these surveys without creating new ones out of whole cloth.
What is also interesting is how many woman have experienced what fits even a restrictive legal definition of rape, yet do not call what happened to them rape, either voluntarily, or because they do not know that what happened fits into that legal category.
You consenting is not what removes it from rape. You have to actively NOT consent for it to be rape. You have to say no. There is no requirement that you say yes to remove it from the realm of rape. So without an alcohol factor (or more importantly a capacity to consent factor), Bill can get you so drunk that you cannot form words, but are still not unconscious, have sex with you, and lo and behold - no rape!
Freshman year at my university everybody had to attend a rape prevention meeting. At the women’s one they were told how to avoid dangerous situations. At the men’s one we were told all the different ways you could fuck up your life. We were told that if the girl is an especially nervous sort and imagines a threat of force, that’s rape. If she got a little tipsy and regretted fucking the dorky guy, that’s rape. Those were definitions that the campus police used. We were basically told that if you weren’t told in absolutely clear terms while she was completely sober that you’d be convicted if the girl decided she was taken advantage of. I’m sure different studies use different definitions. The one in affect around here is pretty loose though.