In that thread, you first linked to a summary of what you called a study, and what the authors call a survey: “Prevalence, Case Characteristics, and Long-Term Psychological Correlates of Child Rape Among Women: A National Survey.”
Finding the actual survey, and quoting from page 189:
This is a fairly broad definition of the term “rape,” certainly one that exceeds the legal definition of the term. A forcible french kiss, for example, fits that definition: non-consensual penetration of a mouth by a tongue.
For this reason, I believe it’s fair to say that the numbers reported might be higher than a more restricted definition of rape would reveal.
Your second link was to the USDOJ’s summary of “Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey.”
Quoting from that document:
For this reason, I believe your second link underreports actual incidents of rape.
And taking both into account, I believe your conclusion – that the high numbers from your first link prove that child rape is not rarer than adult rape – is suspect.
Unless you can show that child rape is more likely of the forced french kiss variety than teenage/adult rape is, then I don’t know why you think this objection means anything in this conversation.
Yeah it is underreported; now I need you to marinate a little bit on the part in bold. Child and teenaged rape are left out of the estimate. But the populaton surveyed are adult women who at one point in theirlives was a child and teenager. So if 17% of the surveyed female adult population reported experiencing rape in their lifetime, we can be assured that at some of those rapes occurred when they were minors.
It’s not suspect, but go ahead and wow us with data that show being a juvenile is protective against rape. I’m confident you won’t be able to find anything, but since you doubt the legitimacy of my conclusion, I invite you to bring some cites to the fore.
It’s obvious. You quote the first “study” numbers for the high incidence of child rape. But since the “rape” behavior in that survey includes at least behavior that isn’t rape, those numbers are too high. I don’t have to which is more likely – just that the overall definition is so broad that the numbers are less meaningful.
Of the 4,008 (weighted) respondents, 339 (8.5%) reported experiencing at least one completed “rape” prior to age 18. But the survey does not differentiate between any non-consensual penetration of the victim’s vagina, anus, or mouth by an object or by a perpetrator’s penis, finger, or tongue that involved the use of force, the threat of force, or coercion, and it leaves the definition of force, threat, and coercion to each respondent’s subjective judgement. So that doesn’t allow us to infer that 8.5% would also be rape victims by a more restrictive standard, and it certainly doesn’t permit you to compare that percentage to another percentage in another publication that used a different definition of “rape.”
Does it?
I mean, you’re all about the correct use of inference here:
“According to RAINN, 44% of victims are under the age of 18.”
“This still doesn’t alllow us to infer that rapists preferentially target teenagers and 20-somethings.”
That’s absolutely right. How come you don’t hew to that same standard in this discussion?
I’ve never been comfortable with the word “power” being described as one of the motivators of sexual violence. I think “control” is a much more accurate description.
Substitute that word, and you can make the statement “rape is motivated by a desire for control” and have it be applicable to pretty much all the forms of sexual violence out there. Control over another person by denying them the right to say no, control over that person’s body, control over where and when the rapist gets sexual gratification. It encompasses everything from the entitled frat boy date rapist to child molesters to predatory sexual sadists.
So technically, using this definition, forced French kissing fits under the definition of rape, since there is no requirement that the object being shoved in your mouth be a genital. But you and I damn well know the vast majority of humanity wouldn’t label an unwanted kiss as rape. Only pedantic twits with some bizarre need to downplay the prevalence of child rape would try to argue that the mere possibility of this happening in a survey renders the conclusions of an entire study suspect.
Because I’m not a pedantic twit with some bizarre need to downplay the prevalence of child rape.
It’s more difficult for one thing. Men are larger & stronger than women and more prone to act in a group. For another, most of the people who would be interested in raping men are women, who are smaller, less likely to work together than men, generally interested in PIV sex which is harder to coerce, and as a rule aren’t prone to initiating sex in the first place.
Depends on how the survey is run, doesn’t it? If the survey is “were you raped as a child?” you are right. If the survey is “did any of the following things happen to you as a child?” followed by a very long extensive list of things that would not reasonably be considered rape then Bricker is right.
People who say rape is all about power don’t know men. Whereas rape is at once a crude and refined cruelty against a woman, the same way torture is to a man, there are men who force themselves upon a woman purely out of lust and a desire to couple. I’m surprised I even need to write that.
I always want to piss myself laughing whenever I read about all the men who are utterly terrified about either being raped by women or falsely accused of being raped by women.
Seriously, what’s the deal?
Did some people get beat up and pantsed in front of their schoolmates by some girls or something?
BTW, I apologize for posting this on Valentine’s Day. I didn’t even think about how that might be taken as problematic. I thought it was a good topic to be given the dope treatment though since this idea “rape is not about sex” is something that’s almost universally accepted as fact, despite being quite controversial from a scientific point of view.
I tried to read through this mess, but I saw so many errors of thinking that I started to get angry to the point that I did not think this could be a real post.
From what I have seen from the inmates in my custody:
Most rapists who violate children are reported and charged with a sex crime. That seems easy enough to understand. If someone is having sex with your four year old daughter, you are going to call the cops if you are a responsible parent. Because children, in most jurisdictions, under the age of 12 are unable to give consent, it is rape. It can’t be a desire to impregnate the victim in this case because ~all~ most are pre-pubescent.
Men are raped at the same frequency as women. Shocking, huh? After conducting counseling sessions with male rapists, most will admit to having a male victim. The idea of the only way a man gets raped is from a sexually frustrated female who is much bigger than him does not hold true from the reports of the offenders. In fact, most have had a male victim prior to any female sexual assaults. It is that the male victims are less likely to report the rape.
Rape can be a sex crime. Sometimes the rapist does not have the social skills that most of us do in order to understand that “NO” means “NO.” Sometimes rape can be an expression of violence, as when a woman is battered by her husband because she didn’t want sex that night. Sometimes rapes is a power tool, when a cop forces himself on a woman who got a DUI. There are many reasons for rape and sexual assault. You really can’ t blame it on how the victim dressed, or her age, or her attractiveness level.
I agree with everything else you posted, but I think this is wrong because it presumes that the rapist has to be someone other than the parent. For very young kids, they will usually be preyed upon by their fathers, stepfathers, and other relatives. Which means they are less likely to be reported. This is why it is so easy to underestimate the prevalence of child rape.
There are at least 2 or 3 Dopers who I can think of who suffered from sexual abuse as kids, and their offenders were not reported.