Apologies in advance if this question comes off as weird or creepy in any way. I don’t mean it to, and it’s definitely a topic that I personally am somewhat sensitive about.
Scylla also talks about being protective of his daughter because she is so beautiful–though this probably should be taken with a grain of salt, as it’s hardly objective. This all seems very counterintuitive because in general, I thought molesters tended to look for kids who were more vulnerable, due to low self-esteem or parents who don’t care about them, etc. And I know the general party line is that rape is a crime of power not of lust.
I’m not sure there is any objective answer to this question. Thanks in advance, all.
I think molesters are opportunists. Opportunities come in many colors. Some very attentive parents send their children into the hands of molesters simply by sending them to church or scouts or day camp or Little League. Other kids may become targets because they’re starved for adult attention. Still others because they’re pretty. I don’t think there’s any set guideline. Life is full of good and bad. I think the challenge is to help your kid develop a gut instinct for what is right and wrong and give them the freedom to come to you should they run into a jam.
In 1982 or so I had a Human Sexuality class. At that time the rule was that rape was primarily a crime of violence, that in many cases the victim isn’t even penetrated…it’s about power, beating up the victim, etc. Rapists were thought to be those who had little success with the opposite sex and had feelings of humiliation etc. surrounding the issue of sex. The rape was a way of playing out a psychodrama, taking power over powerlessness.
So it was opportunistic, the rapist depending on a gazelle straying from the herd. The same would apply to pedophila, I think. I don’t have a cite but I read a book which IIRC was named “Sex, the Devil, and the Daycare” which said that much of pedophila is within the family or at least within the circle of the family (known friends etc. who are around and have regular access).
Of course that doesn’t explain date rapes. I would guess there has always been date rape of a sort…in say, 1960, a woman went out with a guy, allowed him into her place, he subdued her and forced sex on her. IIRC the teacher said this was pretty rare. If a guy were truly horny, there were always prostitutes.
Now we have date rape drugs so there’s no doubt sex can be a motivation and presumably attractiveness would put a person at more risk.
From what I’ve read, though, date rape/acquaintance rape is much, much more common than rape by a stranger. (Not that I’m saying that has anything to do with the question of attraction, but it’s just what I had always heard.)
Interesting. It should be interesting to have a psych doper come along and let us know what the latest is. Again, pre-date rape drugs, it seemed to be a different world.
Holy shit, look at this:
Contents [hide]
1 Types of rape - by sex
2 Acquaintance (“date”) rape
2.1 Forcible date rape
2.2 Drug facilitated date rape
3 Blitz rape
4 Spousal rape
5 College campus rape
6 Group rape
7 Rape of children by parents, elder relatives, and other responsible elders
8 Statutory rape
9 Prison rape
10 Third-party rape
11 Rape as means of warfare
12 Rape within the military
This thread got a bit lost during the “blackout,” as it were, so I just wanted to give it a little bump. Seemed we were off to an interesting discussion.
There are a range of guys who would use drugs for this purpose who would otherwise lack what it takes, especially in regards to confidence. I have no statistics to back this up just instinct and knowledge of human nature.
I would hazard a guess that these drugs make (obviously) the victim more compliant, more “willing” than without the drugs/alcohol. Maybe the perpetrator of these kinds of rapes doesn’t consider this as raping, compared to the relatively more brutal kind, where the person being raped is fully aware of what’s going on and presumably doing everything they can to stop it.
Or, maybe it’s just easier and not as much trouble or as risky (clawed eyes, etc).
But most rapes in general have been by people the victim knows, even before the advent of date rape drugs…or so I thought. I have a bunch of books on rape at home, so I’ll take a look see at what Susan Brownmiller and Susan Esterich have to say in a few hours.
There’s the added “bonus” that a drugged victim may not remember the events all that clearly, further adding to the chance that they won’t be caught. And I would imagine that a premeditative rapist might not want to bet on his physical strength alone, just in case.
Edit: And i’m ashamed to admit the prospect of female-on-male rape didn’t cross my mind until after I made this post.
I don’t see that the two are necessarily contradictory, or even not linked. I personally would guess it could be both or either for different rapists. Anyway, a man may have greater prestige with friends or just in his own eyes from dating an attractive woman - I think it wouldn’t be too far a mental leap to say a rapist might prefer more attractive victims because it enhances the sense of power.
My answer was eaten by the database bug fairy, so to rewrite:
The “formula” for rape is most likely going to be based on three things–opportunity, obsession, and stress–though the ratio or even existence of any one of the three is going to depend a bit on the particular perpetrator, but as a generality…
You’re more likely to obsess over someone you know. “That girl who turned me down, what a slut!” You’re also more likely to have the opportunity to get or find yourself in a situation amenable to attacking someone who you know. But ultimately most people actually go ahead with something of the sort when they are stressed out by something–being dumped by the person in question is one possible stressor, though getting laid off also seems to be a pretty common catalyst.
But so how much of an influence physical appearance will have on getting one raped? My guess would be that it’s certainly in-there, but isn’t a principal concern. A guy is more likely to obsess over you if he finds you attractive, but men have a pretty wide range of interest and since lots of non-date-rapists are generally going to be in the lower income bracket, the sorts of women they know from work or at the local diner or wherever won’t probably be the most attractive. And ultimately, rapists, for wanting to show power and dominance are still pretty cowardly. They’re unlikely to go for it unless they feel that they can safely control their victim. So someone who seems submissive or who doesn’t seem to have any family or friends to come after you, or whatever, might make a particular person seem more safe to attack. The brain is a crafty thing, so opportunity and obsession can be tied together in either direction, really.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your post, but I think physical attractiveness is a relatively strong factor.
61% of rape victims are between the ages of 12 and 24, so it seems that rapists selectively attack those who are in the prime years of attractiveness. Which is not to say that pre-pubertal or older women are never at risk, just that the idea of raping a child or an older woman doesn’t generally occur as frequently to rapists. Attacking a pre-pubertal child seems to be more a case of pedophilia, which is a somewhat different set of circumstances than rape in general, which has different motives.
No doubt opportunity plays a strong role in a rapist deciding who to attack, so that a woman who looks like an easy mark may be attacked in preference to a woman who is more attractive but better protected. And people tend to date those who are roughly as physically attractive as they are, so date rape is going to be committed against those who are willing to date the rapist in question.
The traditional categories for rape that I have heard about are [ul][li]opportunity rape - he actually only wanted to steal the DVD player, but there was a woman home alone so he raped her[]power/reassurance rape - the guy’s got problems with women, and rapes to reassure himself of his masculinity, either in his own eyes or those of his peer group[]sexual sadism - he can’t get it up unless he causes pain[/ul]I doubt if physical attractiveness is going to cause a person to rape unless the underlying motivation is already there, but it may cause him to preferentially attack one kind of woman over another. Ted Bundy, for instance, attacked mostly women with long, brown hair. That was his kink, so to speak, but a woman with long brown hair who didn’t fall for his line was less likely to be attacked (unless she happened to be in the house when he was attacking others).[/li]
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, those are also the prime years of vulnerability.
My grandfather tried to sexually assault his grandchildren because we were his grandchildren (ages 10 to over 30).
My teacher tried it on his students because we were his students (7th grade).
The family I got assigned to in Ireland (summer after 9th grade) and who tried to pimp me out, chose me because it was me who’d been assigned to them.
It was about vulnerability, not about who looked how pretty. In the teacher’s case, the gender split was pretty much 50:50 (he made us stay after class “to get to meet us,” as he was our class mentor, and go into his office one by one - we all came out mightily pissed, we might have been 12yo but “easy” targets we weren’t) and we came in about any shape and size you can get at 12yo.
Yep, I didn’t mean to say that looks aren’t a factor, just that it’s one factor of several, all or most of which need to be cleared before the rapist will act. And there’s enough young and decent looking women in the world and so few rapists that it’s somewhat alarmist to say something along the lines of “OMG if you look good, you’re going to be raaaaaped.” Most likely there’s a stronger link between income and getting raped, as there is with age and getting raped, than there is with how you would score on a babe-o-meter.
I’d also venture to guess that rapists also almost always target women younger than themselves as that makes them someone more “controllable.” Since most rapists probably do so before their 30s, it would make sense that most targets would be less than that.
True, and vulnerability is probably more of a factor than anything else. The average looking hitch hiker is probably more at risk than the Victoria Secret’s model who only goes out in groups and is careful not to get drunk in public.
Another factor might be that rapists are more likely to spend some of their early adult years in prison, and thus recidivist rapists are going to tend to be older than their victims. And many women over 25 are married, thus not dating and thus not subject to the same risk of date rape from a man they don’t know very well. (Which speaks to Nava’s point about the years of vulnerability). Marital rape can occur, but that is not correlated to attractiveness either.
There are a lot of factors that are difficult to control for which can confuse the issue. If we posit that rape is an act of aggression, it may nevertheless be true that many rapists harbor resentment towards attractive women, e.g., “She is so hot and is just dangling herself in front of me to laugh at me, well I’m gonna show that fucking bitch” etc.
I just finished Self-Mad Man by Norah Vincent, who, living as a man, observed that