The people who are voting 1% in the poll are saying that 99% or more of men would **not **rape under any circumstance. I’m saying that I do not believe this to be the case. “I’m unconvinced that 99% or more of men wouldn’t feel the same way” (about doing it if they thought they couldn’t be caught) means that I think some percentage greater than 1% would commit rape in the “ideal circumstances” posited. I don’t specify the percentage. Now actually read what I wrote, and don’t call me fucking insane or suggest that I have issues. Thank you.
EDIT: NM, misunderstood and clarified
I guessed around 11-25%. I do think group dynamics/situation plays a big part, especially in younger guys. I also tried to take into account countries where there is still a large power gap between men and women, like parts of Africa or the Middle East. Rapes are higher when women are not seen as equals, which implies to me that if circumstances/social cues change, men will rape more often.
I don’t take the question to mean, most American/Western men are just waiting for the ideal circumstances. But maybe if that same male was raised in another part of the world, he would rape someone. “Ideal circumstances” to me means he has no fear of social condemnation as well as legal penalties.
Prostitutes are also raped more often than the average woman population, (I think I read that…don’t have a cite, but it did help form my guess) which suggests that men think they can rape them without consequence…hence more of an ideal situation for them. I think some men who would rape a prostitute would never consider doing the same thing to a woman of higher social status.
I think part of the problem we’re having is defining what “ideal” situation is. Is it merely having access to a woman who won’t press charges/will be too drunk to bring consequences/even say no? Or is it living in a culture where you’re taught that women don’t really count, and that you have the right to sex with them when you want because you’re a superior human being?
Though there are a lot of guys in this culture who hear, “No,” but then press their luck and when the woman doesn’t protest, don’t think of it as rape, even though she may just be giving in because she doesn’t know what else to do. Is that rape? And is such a guy assuming that a woman’s feelings/thoughts don’t count, or does he genuinely think she wants sex?
Assuming that the antecedent of you is Skald, no. Had I meant “date rape,” I would have said so. Anyway, there’s not a huge difference in my mind.
By ideal situation, I mean circumstances in which the prospective rapist believes himself more likely than not to succeed in the assault without suffering signficant injury, and equally likely to escape prosecution or other repercussions afterwards.
It pretty much depends on what you put down as “rape”- do I believe that 50% of men would go out and commit a forceful act of violence against a woman? No, I don’t. Do I believe that 50% of males may take advantage (knowingly or unknowingly) of a female with impaired judgment (since Skald’s being EXTREMELY broad with his definition of Rape here). Basically, I’m using the “Intro to College- time to scare the crap out of the new freshman males” extreme definitions of rape- if a female has impaired judgment, it’s rape. IE: if she had more than 2 glasses of wine or a beer, and said Yes- she made a choice under impaired judgment, and thus it’s bad. Bad! BAD!
I found it ridiculous and really extreme, sitting there listening to those definitions of rape (especially since none of them addressed the issue of what if both parties had been drinking? Or other such judgments), but pretty much their goal was to scare the crap out of freshmen into the dangers of drinking and the dangers of sex by using one of the most extreme versions of Rape I’d ever heard of. And since Skald wants to be broad with his scenario- that’s pretty much where I went with it.
You notice a female, she’s had a couple drinks (You don’t know how many, but probably 2-3 at least), and she says she wants to have sex. How many males do you think would say yes to that situation? I’m gonna stick with my 50% answer to that one.
And that’s not including the actual people out there who desire the power/control or whatever from rape.
Just, under the broadest definitions of rape- how many would do it. I’m sticking with my answer, thank you very much. But if I’m wrong, I’d be all the more happy for it.
Yeah, this all meshes pretty well with sex tourism.
I used a fairly loose interpretation of the OP when making my choice, although I think I was going along with Skald’s intent in doing so. The phrasing of the OP suggests to me that the man is committing rape largely because he’s horny and that he violently overpowers his victim, and I suspect some other posters probably answered with that scenario in mind. But (and he can correct me if I’m wrong) I didn’t think Skald meant for us to interpret his OP so narrowly. I included in my mental estimate men who’d rape a woman out of desire to hurt or punish her, men who’d use threats or drugs to subdue their victims, and men who would rape a woman they found already incapacitated.
I don’t think anywhere near 90% is realistic if we’re talking about men in the contemporary US or Western Europe. In a society where rape was tolerated or even encouraged (e.g. as part of ethnic cleansing or as some sort of hazing or coming of age ritual) then I could believe that a majority of men would rape, because regardless of gender people will do all kinds of horrible things to “fit in” or “obey authority”.
I am surprised by how many people chose “I think it’s less than 1%”. I doubt it’s that low in real life, much less under hypothetical “ideal” rape circumstances.
IIRC, 1% is about the number of men who are are outright psychopaths; with nothing resembling a moral code or conscience. And since those aren’t the only men who would rape, I’d expect the number to be quite a bit higher.
I’d heard that number was closer to 5%. (NPR program, so no cite.)
The OP is not asking us to come up with “ideal” circumstances.
If there is a war in a society which encourages rape, and a male soldier is having sex in a war zone with a stunningly attractive prostitute who meekly revokes consent during the act, then yes, the numbers will go up.
What we have here is “no legal consequences or (presumably) getting killed by a family member of the victim” and “confidence in being able to overpower the victim.”
I don’t think more than 1% of men would decide to commit rape based on those conditions. 1% of half the population is a lot of people.
Some extra conditions that would be necessary to increase the number:
- The woman will not remember what happened.
- The woman and man are making out consensually before the rape, and the man had expected her to consent.
Sadly, I can see the numbers going up with those conditions.
Even some actual rapists would probably not have committed rape unless things started off consensual, both parties had judgments impaired by drugs and alcohol, and they convinced themselves it wasn’t rape. Are those scenarios included for the purposes of this thread?
After a little thought, I recall where I read the 1% figure recently; this article from the New Yorker; one of the doctors mentioned in it had his website linked to on the SDMB.
Not a scientific cite, either.
Okay, I stand corrected.
Well, I tried to gather some anecdotal data, but as Czarcasm pointed out, there was an embarrassingly obvious flaw in my methodology. 
As for this poll, my answer is based on a very narrow definition of “rape.” I stand by my <1% answer. I can’t even imagine the bona fide assholes I know committing rape. All the same, I have a few drinks, she has a few drinks, we hook up; that’s not rape (I’m not talking falling down drunk); or in that same circumstance, she raped me.
Out of curiosity, what if she had the same amount of drinks in your scenario but you only had 1 for the night?
I picked 1-10%. Here in the US my guess would be around 5% would rape under “ideal” cirumstances.
Quite possibly but as you say, it’s ridiculous to call that rape. If the roles were reversed, with the guy propositioning the girl after downing a bit of Dutch courage, anyone calling the girl a rapist would get laughed out of the university.
nods
Yes, they convince themselves it’s not “really” rape. Granted a lot of the " not really rape" dudes are as far from those “stranger rape” dudes as you can get. But it’s still rape! And even without the not really rape dudes, there are still fucked up rapists out there. My jr high school gym teacher who raped girls, my friend who was stranger raped in a dentist’s chair’
That type of rape exists b/c men think that in a patriarchal culture that women are their property to do with as they will.
Some of the rape cases may have to do with very clueless dudes, such as those with very profound Asperger’s Syndrome. For example I knew a dude with profound Asperger’s Syndrome. He was VERY strange. (talked about the skin on his arms being “stretchy”, followed girls around, thought if you talked to him once or twice he was your friend.) In addition to all that, he once walked in on his RA when she was changing. He had NO CLUE what he’d done was wrong. I can totally see someone like him raping someone, and then not realizing what he’d done was wrong.
It wasn’t because I don’t think under 16s are capable of rape. It was simply because the OP was asking about men. I originally tried to find the adult male population of England but all I could find was the total male population.
I must admit that I forgot about rape cases where one party is too drunk to legally consent. I imagine an unhealthy percentage of men wouldn’t consider that rape. At least 11-25%.