This is something that I’ve wondered since back in the days of middle school sex-ed class. Girls would get warned about rapists and how to protect themselves. Boys would simply keep quiet and fear asking any questions. This was 7th Grade, after all.
Anyway, I’m thinking that it would be extremely difficult for a man to actually successfully rape a woman. The only experience that I have on the matter is what I’ve seen on TV or in movies and I’m sure that most of these are not realistic. I have a very hard time changing my 1-year old’s diaper when he doesn’t want to be changed. It’s got to be so much harder to remove the garments of an adult woman and then position her (against her will, while she’s probably kicking, screaming, biting, etc.) in a way for penetration can occur successfully. I suppose that the rapist is probably assaulting the victim as well, but how could he do this while still having sex?
So my guess is that the ratio of successful rapes to attempted rapes has got to be very, very low. If I’m wrong, then what am I missing?
I don’t know the ratio you seek, but you seem to be neglecting the fact that people will be much less resistant than a one-year-old if they think that resisting will get them killed.
Sorry. I neglected to mention the word “date” in my post. i’m talking about date rape here. This why I mentioned the “assault” part but not anything about weapons.
Even in date rape situations, a woman could be fearing for her life. Just because he hasn’t flashed a knife or gun, doesn’t mean he won’t beat her senseless. In your 1 year-old example, you do not wanty to hurt your child. If you just to hell with it and forced his legs down and whipped off that diaper, you easily could. Obviousyl a full grown woman is still much harder, but (on the average) a man is going to be larger and stronger than a woman. And many people react differently to fear. Some people will be able to yuse the adrenaline to push the man off of her, but others may very well be paralized with fear. Again, just because no weapon or violence is shown, doesn’t mean there is none at all.
Also, many date rapes use drugs. Not just rufies, even alcohol can make someone “out of it” enough to make it easier to rape them. They are not thinking as fast, have worse corrdination, etc…
Rape doesn’t have to involve real overpowering physical force, just strong coercion and lack of consent. In the case of date rape, the woman may be somewhat intoxicated, or confused, or intimidated that the guy might hurt her, so that she doesn’t resist very strongly physically.
Also, when you’re changing you child’s diaper, you are making an effort to NOT hurt him, a rapist not only doesn’t care about hurting the victim, it may be part of the plan. Date rapists sometimes use drugs to subdue their victims. At times, the woman may not resist until too late, because the man is posing as a friend. One doesn’t expect friends to hurt them.
Sexual assault is never about sex its about power. You’re looking at it from a normal man’s sexual vision, not as a sex predator’s power trip.
And not all date rapes don’t involve weapons, of course. I was threatened by my date rapist that he had a knife and rope, and would use it. I was also drunk, outweighed considerably by him, and he was muscular. Plus I’m completely, utterly blind without my glasses, which he knew, and he had taken them and put them somewhere that I didn’t know. So even if I did manage to fight him off (not likely) I didn’t have much hope I’d be able to escape before he could catch me.
Hit submit too soon…
HOW MANY VICTIMS OF RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT WERE THERE IN 2003?
In 2003, there were 198,850 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. [2003 NCVS]
Of these approximately 199,000 victims, about 81,000 were victims of completed rape, 61,060 were victims of attempted rape, and 80,910 were victims of sexual assault. [2003 NCVS]
Up to 4,065 pregnancies may have resulted from these attacks. [RAINN calculation based on 2003 NCVS and medical reports. Click here for details of the calculation.]
Which is the ratio you wanted info on :smack:
Another factor is that human females are socialized, and might be hardwired, into being less physically aggressive than human males. Twice a would-be rapist targetted me. Twice I managed to thwart them and get away, because I was a tomboy and played roughhouse games with the boys when I was growing up (much to my mother’s dismay). When I was growing up (in the 60s), little girls were very strongly discouraged from playing very rough, physical games such as tackle football. Most girls didn’t learn how to get injured and keep playing, as the boys and tomboys did. Many women and girls freeze up when they are confronted with physical aggression, they just don’t know how to handle it.
When I took a womn’s self-defence course, it was not so much focused on beating the would-be rapist up, as it was on self-confidence. We were told to SHOUT. To say what we meant loud and clear. You never, ever scream help, people don’t know what to do. You try to point at someone and say “YOU! Call 911!” or “This man is trying to kidnap me!” Too many women have been taught to just scream and scream, and honestly, when I hear screams in my neighborhood I think it’s just the neighbor’s kids (who admittedly scream a lot for no apparent reason).
Whoah! Am I a date rapist if I’m intoxicated too? I’ve never knowing threatened anyone. Rape is an act of violence. It’s a horrible, wicked thing. Two people having regrets in the morning isn’t necessarily rape.
That’s not what I said. I am talking about when an element of force or strong coercion is involved. The degree of responsibility when both parties are intoxicated is perhaps best left to GD.
I’m not sure if you are making some distinction here between sexual assault and date rape. If you are including date rape in this, I would have to disagree. It’s not that simplistic.
Note that this site is primarily discussing serial rapists. Certainly for most serial and violent rapists, much of the motivation is about power. (But even there, some types specifically receive sexual gratification from the violence, so it is not exclusively about power.)
Date rape, which is what the OP is talking about, is (often) different in that the rapist’s main objective is sex, not dominance. Violence or coercion is simply incidental to that objective. Most date rapists probably don’t go out intending to commit rape at the outset. They would prefer to have a willing partner. However, if the woman refuses, they may resort to force either because of a sense of entitlement (“I paid for dinner so you owe me sex”) or because they don’t understand that “no means no.” (I want to be clear that I don’t think that this in any way excuses or condones this behavior. It’s still rape, and deserves condemnation. I also recognize that some men who commit date rapes may also do it for the power motivation.)
In this context, trying to figure out what the ratio of “successful” date rapes is pretty much impossible. How much coercion does the guy have to apply before giving up before he is regarded as actually having attempted an “unsuccessful” sexual assault?