Why do men rape?

Depending on the circumstances she may physically be able to do so, but if she is very frightened or believes that the man will hurt her more if she tries to escape then she is unlikely to do so.

It doesn’t even take a few drinks to make some men unable to accept that when a woman says “no” she really, really means “no”.

In at least some date rape cases, the rapist does not consciously intend to rape, nor does he believe that he is committing rape. I’ve known women who told me that their date only realized that their refusals were sincere when they were accompanied by a knee to the groin, a punch in the stomach, or in one case that I know of a thrown stereo speaker.

As I see it, the solution to this problem is two-fold:

  1. Teach people (especially women, but really everyone) that it is okay to refuse sex, that their refusals should be clear, and that if someone is unwilling to respect their refusals then they have the right to do what they can to escape – even if that means tossing electronic equipment.

  2. Teach people (especially men, but really everyone) that other people have the right to refuse them sex, that a simple “no” or “I don’t feel like it” should be enough, and that they should certainly never press things to the point where someone else must toss electronic equipment at them to fend them off.

Another thread discussing a case in the news.

On the frequency of unreported rapes:

of my close friends, of which there are few:
3 were raped. One was date rape, the other was raped by her biological father (she was an adult at the time) One was raped by his step-father, repeatedly, as a child.

of my acquaintances, this is only of the ones I know:
at least 4 were raped. 1 was raped by her father as a child. 1 was raped by her cousin as a child. 1 was raped in the street walking home from a store. 1 was date rape.

Of my family - this again is the ones I know:
3 were raped. One was molested by men outside the family - the other 2, his siblings were molested by him.

Count them. 10. None of them were ever reported to the authorities. And I know there are more that I haven’t been told of. 2 of those 10 were men.

I would say that rape is underreported.

“As long as we’re asking questions: Why do so many rapes go unreported? I know that if I was taken advantage of, I would head to the police station a-friggin-sap.”

I’m going to get flamed for this, and probably my other thoughts on the subject, but here it is anyway. I am a male, and in my younger days had many female friends. Several had been raped, in a variety of circumstances. What I found in at least 3 cases, the woman didn’t report it out of guilt and confusion. Why? because she got aroused and/or orgasmed, even though she was scared to death, in pain, humiliated, etc… Could it have been rape if she came? Many find it easier to deal with it themselves rather than deal with the justice system.

As for those statistics, I’m reminded of the feminist group that put out stats saying that over 1/3 of college women are sexually assaulted. Of course, when actually asked if they HAVE been assaulted, less than 1 in 10 said yes, and even then the threshhold was far less than rape or near rape. Many of these studies are agenda driven rather than by a search for real answers or statistics. Beware.

Now, to the main question, Why men rape…

In a date rape situation, it may be miscommunication or confusion of signals. When you are young and trying to understand females, it is difficult to get the signals straight. Some women say “no, no, no, please dont”, all while putting her hand down your pants and humping your knee, then pulling you on top of her while pleading for mercy. It happens. Then next time you are with a girl, she says no and actually means it, but you think it means it’s the “ravish me, i’m just a poor helpless girl at your mercy” game. Thats not an excuse by any means, but just something to think about.

To the person who posted that he couldnt get it up in that situation: I would have agreed with you, exept twice in my life women have asked me to help them act out their rape fantasies. It was hard, trying to figure out just how to do it, how to give them that scare and powerlessness they wanted without really hurting them, and most importantly how to make sure she didn’t view it as a REAL rape, and me end up in prison. The first girl that asked me (man, was college great or what!?) we talked about it, got specific, and i told her that if that was what she wanted, then it would be like in the Pink Panther movies, where Cato attacks when its least expected (or wanted). I promised that I wouldn’t do anything that would “really” hurt but if this is what she wanted, then she had to agree that I wouldn’t take no as no. She agreed. When I suprised her with it and was rough, forceful, crude, and did whatever I wanted to her without consideration of her wants and needs, I found that it was an ENORMOUS rush. I can see how someone would want to do it again (she liked it too, btw…). The point is, when you discover what power lies within you in being able to ravish a woman for solely your own wants and needs without a concern for her, she being a receptacle for your pleasure, it is exciting. I know that when the other girl asked me to help her live out the fantasy, I enthusiastically said yes. For me, I know the difference between play and reality. But some guy that discovers power from the girl that likes to pretend to say no while he pins her arms down, and assumes that all girls want it from him, might not. Just another opinion.

One last thing. Nature doesn’t care about your feelings. Nature doesnt care if you are shamed, degraded, disgusted, or whatever at having been victimized. All nature cares about is that a woman produces strong, healthy babies and raises them to a viable age. There is no “wrong” in nature. If you are a strong, agressive male with the means to force yourself upon a female, and the result is that she has your baby rather than some guy that plies her with flowers and songs, but couldnt kill a moose to save his life, then the world may be better off for it. The female anatomy was not designed to protect itself from unwanted sex. You can clamp your legs together as tight as you want, but whether on your back with your knees pushed up or bent over, your vagina is still easily accessible. Go have a look in the mirror (and take pics and email them to…nevermind, got sidetracked…). Forceful sex is known to be an ovulation trigger, I have read. If so, then there may be an evolutionary advantage to forcing yourself on a woman.

In the game of nature and evolution, the man that mates with the most females wins. His genes get passed along. Nice guys finish last.

Perhaps the best question is “why do men NOT rape?” Socialization is the answer. We don’t because we are shunned, incarcerated, or because our religon tells us we are sinning if we do. Any man with testosterone surging through his veins would be lying if he said he had never looked at a nubile young woman and thought, “man, i’d just love to bend her over and have my way with her, whether she wanted it or not”. As another girl I was good friends with in college said when we were talking about male/female relations; “men are just walking penises, and women are walking receptacles for them”.

Wow. That is really, really disturbing.

Very.

I’ll third that.

I can’t understand why some men want to make arguments along the lines of “of course men want to rape” or “men can’t help raping”. If I believed this to be true, I’d have to support treating men like mad dogs and having them put down before their inability to control their violent behavior hurts innocent women.

Er, I think the argument is not so much ‘men can’t help but be rapists’ as that there are sound biological reasons for men with favorable genes to have the potential for rape. That’s the really disturbing part.

I agree with Texican. The biological basis for rape is so simple even a six-year-old could understand it. A good place to read up on it is Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmers’ ‘A Natural History of Rape’. Here’s a review-

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s93527.htm

I haven’t. Oh, I’ve fantasized about having her then and there, without warning or prelude, but, in those fantasies, she wanted it. I think that’s what’s behind most “rape” fantasies. Primal spontaneity (none of this romance bullshit), and an almost telepathic knowledge of the partner’s desires (she says no but he knows she means yes, and he’s actual right). That, and a bit of BDSM appeal. While these things may be related to actual rape, I think in many cases rapists have other motivations, more alien to the average guy. At least, I hope so. Call me naive, but I don’t think the natural, unsocialized state of man is a murderous, raping brute.

Your hypothesis that many rapes are results of incorrectly presumed consent is interesting, but I wonder if women are so weak, and/or men so dense that it happens all that often.

"I think in many cases rapists have other motivations, more alien to the average guy. At least, I hope so. Call me naive, but I don’t think the natural, unsocialized state of man is a murderous, raping brute. "

I agree. I could never imagine myself actually forcing myself on a woman and hurting her like that. I’ve always had great relationships with women, both as friends and lovers. That is why I’ve been able to learn of their other experiences, plus be trusted enough to help them live out some pretty weird fantasies.

However on another message board where the topic were some particularly horrible crimes, like that woman that killed a man by leaving him in her garage for days to die after she accidentally hit him with the car, someone said “it seems there are a lot of people being born with a hole in their soul”. For myself, I cannot understand how anyone could willingly do some of the things that people do to one another, including rape.

And, to those that said “this is disturbing”…what did you find disturbing, and did you think that I was advocating such things, or just commenting on them.

Oh, and I apologize for being defensive about date rape and such things and hijacking the original post. My intention was to point out that not all of what is seen as rape is necessarily rape, or that it would have been considered rape, even by the victim, 20 years ago or more.
The original question is “why men rape” and i guess it should be explored just on the basis of those “real” rapes, not the others. the thing that got me started on the date rape and other stuff was the stats used that made it seem like a majority of women will be raped, and therefore the majority of us men are likely rapists. It is just that I know how those stats are generated, and for what purpose. I know the DOJ has their name on some of them, but I am pretty confident that some extrapolating went on with the “guidance” of some of these women’s groups.

I don’t think that any “normal” person can understand the “why” of a predator, regardless of what their prey is. I find many of the ways that people are capable of treating one another to be horrific and unbelieveable.

Well, what I found disturbing is that it’s a selective trait for men to be rapists. And, a scenario that was referenced but never explictly mentioned is when a woman felt pressured to have sex, and fearful of what would happen if she refused, so had sex against her will without giving an indication of this. Please, tell me that I’m making this up.
You know, this is a really depressing thread.

The “biological basis of rape” as a selective trait is a real hypothesis, robertliguori, but it’s by no means settled: it’s just one more subject that has to be looked into. Thornhill and Palmer have been on the receiving end of some VERY critical attention for it (and really, things “so straightforward a six year old can understand it” usually aren’t).
Extraordinarily controversial, yes, because of fear that some people will infer that somehow genetic predispositions are excuses or mitigating circumstances. We need to remind ourselves all the time: explanation is not justification, we should not presume it’s meant to be, and you can have an excellent explanation w/o it justifying anything.

Thing is, that though this “raping gene” may seem a valid selective trait for the individual, the genus Homo are naturally social animals that form packs or tribes, not wandering solitaries. Another set of selective dynamics based on the survival of the tribe/pack kicks in: things like watching out for one another, protecting the children of the tribe, respecting the internal pecking order of who can mate with whom when. A tribe where it’s every-primate-against-every-other will end up being chowed down by the hyenas, either directly (can’t mount a coordinated defense) or as carrion (having bashed one another with rocks over mutual offenses). Thus there is also a selection for a form of empathy and social living: “you know, it is NOT GOOD to hurt one of my kind”. A rapist is somehow devoid of this element of empathy (or has not developed it beyond a rudimentary form, not recognizing the other person as “his own kind”), or has perverted it into pleasure from bending others to his will. (Sadly, thru most of human history it has been a sort of selective trait for the tribe to bend “others” to their will.)

As to the scenario of “when a woman felt pressured to have sex, and fearful of what would happen if she refused, so had sex against her will without giving an indication of this”, sadly it does happen – some victims are SO terrified of either the threats (actual or implicit) of the assailant or of the social oprobium or are so mad at themselves for having got in this situation, or any two or all three, that they will pretend what’s happening is something else. OTOH I can believe also that there can be cases in which you’ll have someone convinced that she was not raped, and others arguing that by their definition she really was and they know better.
jrd
too tired to post more today

"Another set of selective dynamics based on the survival of the tribe/pack kicks in: things like watching out for one another, protecting the children of the tribe, respecting the internal pecking order of who can mate with whom when. A tribe where it’s every-primate-against-every-other will end up being chowed down by the hyenas, either directly (can’t mount a coordinated defense) or as carrion (having bashed one another with rocks over mutual offenses). Thus there is also a selection for a form of empathy and social living: “you know, it is NOT GOOD to hurt one of my kind”. "

Humans seem to have two sets of rules for conduct; one for how to act towards those within your tribe, and one for everyone else. While you wouldnt rape, attack for no reason, or commit other offenses at will against those in your clan, offenses against those outside of your clan wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. Rape has long been a spoil of war. Kill the men, impregnate the women and thus turn their race into yours through forced breeding.

There are communities where a woman will essentially be raped twice if she reports it. Small towns and colleges, mostly. No one wants to believe that that (those) nice boy(s) would do such a horrible thing; that silly girl must just be a little mixed up.

When I was a sophomore in college, my roommate was raped. I convinced her to report it. By dinnertime, it was all over the campus (small campus) that Rilchiam had made a big stink about what had happened to “Janey”, just because Janey got drunk and didn’t know what she was doing. One of the (three) guys confronted me in the hallway outside the cafeteria, screaming, “You don’t fucking accuse me!” and some other stuff I don’t remember. When I walked away, shaking, another guy (not one of the rapists) tried to pull me aside and advise me that Janey and I should retract our statements because “you could ruin these guys’ lives”. WTF? What about Janey’s life?

You should always report a rape, for the sake of future victims. As someone else speculated, many rapists are repeat offenders. And in this case, the school administration really needed a wake-up call. Nice boys from well-to-do families, right? Guess again.

By whom? I don’t even see evidence that the second and third are being contraindicated. IMHO, sex ed classes should include a segment on communicating with a partner. Girls should be told how to say ‘no’ indisputably, and boys should be informed that ‘no’ means no, not ‘keep trying’. I know this won’t be the answer to everything, but it would be a damn sight better than what we have now.

When I was in ninth grade, I had the same exchange with two different guys. They wanted sex; I didn’t want to give it to them.

Me: Well, it’s my body!

Him: Well, I don’t care if it’s your body!

I’d been told that I, and no one else, had a right to decide what I wanted to do with my own body. Somehow I don’t think anyone bothered to tell these guys that they lacked any such right over a woman. Fat lot of good my instruction did when I was dealing with spoiled brats who’d never been told ‘no’ by anyone else. In fact, I think another good idea would be to simply stop raising boys to be little emperors.

BTW, sailor, the guy who was anxious for me not to ruin his friends’ lives was ex-Navy. Are you him?

You must have been drunk when you posted that. Leave or call the police while she’s being overpowered?

So the concept of rape was invented in the '90s, and prior to that, if a man forced intercourse with a woman, or a male prisoner was sodomized, it was just the way things were? The laws protected the rapist instead of the victim when the laws were written by men (who hadn’t been to prison). That’s over.

Wow - I am reading all of these threads - completely devoid of expertise in this area except for being human - and it strikes me that the question is just too flippin’ big to try to answer in one fell swoop:

Why do men rape? Well, because, when looking at large numbers of men:

  • Evolutionary forces do not penalize (and according to some hypotheses, may reward) men who rape, thus allowing the genetic and social “programming” that leads to the behavior to propagate

  • the Motivational forces involved seem to all come back to “because the man thinks it will make them feel good at that moment in time” - whether that is because of feeling powerful or sexual or something else is varied, but ultimately, something in that man’s genetics and/or upbringing makes that man feel like it would be good to do this

  • Morality and respect for others is a variable thing that often gets compromised when it is the only thing between a person and their goals. Ruthlessness and competitiveness are rewarded in a very practical way in the process of survival (or capitalism, or popularity, or perhaps even procreation), so when presented with the opportunity to achieve a goal, even if that means harming someone, many people take that action - that that force is at work with rape, too

The only aspect that the victim appears to be able to control is whether they are presenting the rapist with an opportunity. And THAT is the slippery slope - obvious things, such as being in a bad part of town or being alone and drunk in dangerous situations - seem to involve a lack judgment on the victim’s part (obviously, though, that doesn’t justify being victimized). However, I think the reason that most rapes occur between people who know each other is simply because an ongoing relationship increases the number of interactions and the likelihood that something in a man’s wiring could snap, leading him to construe the situation as an opportunity to act in a way that, for whatever reason, he thinks will be good for him, regardless of whether it feels awful for the victim. Whether a woman dresses or acts flirtatiously or is aroused during the act, or harbors rape fantasies is immaterial to the mindset of the man - there may be an overlap with the mindset of the rapist, but that is more coincidence or happenstance…

So, are all men ticking time bombs? No - I suspect that it is like those scales I have seen regarding gender preference - on a 7 point scale are you a “1” completely hetero, or a “4” bi, or a “7” completely homosexual (or something like that - you get the idea). For some (hopefully most) men, there is basically no way they would engage in rape. Others are in a big gray area, and some, through genetics and socialization, are programmed to do it - serial rapists. It’s the gray area types that are the most unknown - what combination of predisposition and opportunity leads to the act? I think every situation is unique.

Since the potential for rape can not be fully known, the most a potential victim can do is avoid presenting any opportunity - just like with any crime.

Rape alone cannot do this. Despite what you think you may have read, forceful sex is not known to be an ovulation trigger. Relatively few rapes result in pregnancy. Pregnancy is a huge physical burden on a woman, and the body knows that it takes a strong woman to survive the process. A woman is most likely to get pregnant when she is happy and healthy, not when she is frightened and hurt.

Even when a woman has not been allowed to refuse sex, she can still refuse to have a child. Most women are unwilling to carry to term and raise the child of a man who violently assaulted them. This often results in abortion, induced miscarriage, suicide, or infanticide.

The real reason why rape has long been a spoil of war is not because it provides some reproductive advantage to the victors – it is certainly far, far less effective than marrying a nice girl and settling down to raise a family – but because rape is an effective punishment and the threat of rape is enough to keep most women (and their families) in line.

Lamia- “Despite what you think you may have read, forceful sex is not known to be an ovulation trigger.

No form of sex is an ovulation trigger. Does that mean that sex is not a valid reproductive strategy, in your world?

Lamia- “The real reason why rape has long been a spoil of war is not because it provides some reproductive advantage to the victors – it is certainly far, far less effective than marrying a nice girl and settling down to raise a family – but because rape is an effective punishment and the threat of rape is enough to keep most women (and their families) in line.

So why do they rape the women, and not the men? And why would they keep the women alive in the first place?? Why not just kill them along with the men, if they weren’t interested in using them for the sex???

You’re taking her comments entirely out of context. That quote is in response to ‘spreading one’s race via rape after war’ in that it is not an effective means of wiping out one’s enemy.

Below that - why not kill the women and the men? Likely because the men were more often trained as warriors and more of a threat. They likely didn’t kill children or elderly either.

You have to leave some of them alive if you want slaves. They also have to be people who are easily physically subdued. Women fit the bill.