What Experts Know About Men Who Rape

Geocities_SEO_Expert · 2021-09-01T06:12:05+00:00

It really drives home that you have to avoid any man with a chip on his shoulder about "jocks", "preps", rich guys, etc..

I know that eliminates more than 95% of men immediately, but that's men. Your messed up life will just be collateral damage in his lifelong attempt to get revenge on the sort of men he thinks you have slept with.

It's pathetic to think of how many men over 20 are still mad about their first grade bully. And how many men over 35 are still mad at their parents because they were made to work, wash themselves, look presentable, and do chores.

Love_Artemis · 2021-09-01T03:37:32+00:00

In 1976, a Ph.D. candidate at Claremont Graduate University placed a rather unusual personal ad in newspapers throughout Los Angeles: "Are You A Rapist?"

He sat by his phone, skeptical that it would ring. “I didn’t think that anyone would want to respond,” said Samuel D. Smithyman, now 72 and a clinical psychologist in South Carolina.

But the phone did ring. Nearly 200 times.

At the other end of the line were a computer programmer who had raped his “sort of girlfriend,” a painter who had raped his acquaintance’s wife, and a school custodian who described 10 to 15 rapes as a means of getting even with “rich bastards” in Beverly Hills.

By the end of the summer, Dr. Smithyman had completed 50 interviews, which became the foundation for his dissertation: “The Undetected Rapist.” What was particularly surprising to him was how normal these men sounded and how diverse their backgrounds were. He concluded that few generalizations could be made.

Over the past few weeks, women across the world have recounted tales of harassment and sexual assault by posting anecdotes to social media with the hashtag #MeToo. Even just focusing on the second category, the biographies of the accused are so varied that they seem to support Dr. Smithyman’s observation.

But more recent research suggests that there are some commonalities. In the decades since his paper, scientists have been gradually filling out a picture of men who commit sexual assaults.

The most pronounced similarities have little to do with the traditional demographic categories, like race, class and marital status. Rather, other kinds of patterns have emerged: these men begin early, studies find. They may associate with others who also commit sexual violence. They usually deny that they have raped women even as they admit to nonconsensual sex.

Clarifying these and other patterns, many researchers say, is the most realistic path toward curtailing behaviors that cause so much pain.

“If you don’t really understand perpetrators, you’re never going to understand sexual violence,” said Sherry Hamby, editor of the journal Psychology of Violence. That may seem obvious, but she said she receives “10 papers on victims” for every one on perpetrators.

This may be partly connected to a tendency to consider sexual assault a women’s issue even though men usually commit the crime. But finding the right subjects also has complicated the research.

Early studies relied heavily on convicted rapists. This skewed the data, said Neil Malamuth, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been studying sexual aggression for decades.

Men in prison are often “generalists,” he said: “They would steal your television, your watch, your car. And sometimes they steal sex.”

But men who commit sexual assault, and are not imprisoned because they got away with it, are often “specialists.” There is a strong chance that this is their primary criminal transgression.

More recent studies tend to rely on anonymous surveys of college students and other communities, which come with legal language assuring subjects their answers cannot be used against them. The studies avoid using terms such as “rape” and “sexual assault.”

Instead, they ask subjects highly specific questions about their actions and tactics. The focus of most sexual aggression research is acknowledged nonconsensual sexual behavior. In questionnaires and in follow-up interviews, subjects are surprisingly open about ignoring consent.

Men who rape tend to start young, in high school or the first couple of years of college, likely crossing a line with someone they know, the research suggests.

Some of these men commit one or two sexual assaults and then stop. Others — no one can yet say what portion — maintain this behavior or even pick up the pace.

Antonia Abbey, a social psychologist at Wayne State University, has found that young men who expressed remorse were less likely to offend the following year, while those who blamed their victim were more likely to do it again.

One repeat offender put it this way: “I felt I was repaying her for sexually arousing me.”

There is a heated debate among experts about whether there is a point at which sexual assault becomes an entrenched behavior and what percentage of assaults are committed by serial predators.

Most researchers agree that the line between the occasional and frequent offender is not so clear. The recent work of Kevin Swartout, a professor of psychology and public health at Georgia State University, suggests that low-frequency offenders are more common on college campuses than previously thought.

“It’s a matter of degree, more like dosage,” said Mary P. Koss, a professor of public health at the University of Arizona, who is credited with coining the term “date rape.”

Dosage of what? Certain factors — researchers call them “risk factors” while acknowledging that these men are nonetheless responsible for their actions — have an outsize presence among those who commit sexual assaults.

Heavy drinking, perceived pressure to have sex, a belief in “rape myths” — such as the idea that no means yes — are all risk factors among men who have committed sexual assault. A peer group that uses hostile language to describe women is another one.

Yet there also seem to be personal attributes that have a mediating effect on these factors. Men who are highly aroused by rape porn — another risk factor — are less likely to attempt sexual assault if they score highly on measures of empathy, Dr. Malamuth has found.

Narcissism seems to work in the other direction, magnifying odds that men will commit sexual assault and rape.

What about the idea that rape is about power over women? Some experts feel that research into hostile attitudes toward women supports this idea.

In general, however, researchers say motives are varied and difficult to quantify.

Dr. Malamuth has noticed that repeat offenders often tell similar stories of rejection in high school and of looking on as “jocks and the football players got all the attractive women.”

As these once-unpopular, often narcissistic men become more successful, he suspects that “getting back at these women, having power over them, seems to have become a source of arousal.”

Most subjects in these studies freely acknowledge nonconsensual sex — but that does not mean they consider it real rape. Researchers encounter this contradiction again and again.

Asked “if they had penetrated against their consent,” said Dr. Koss, the subject will say yes. Asked if he did “something like rape,” the answer is almost always no.

Studies of incarcerated rapists — even men who admit to keeping sex slaves in conflict zones — find a similar disconnect. It’s not that they deny sexual assault happens; it’s just that the crime is committed by the monster over there.

And this is not a sign that the respondents are psychopaths, said Dr. Hamby, the journal editor. It’s a sign that they are human. “No one thinks they are a bad guy,” she said.

Indeed, experts note one last trait shared by men who have raped: they do not believe they are the problem.

Lost_Kale90 · 2021-09-01T18:53:16+00:00

It's just disturbing. To be able to blatantly admit to nonconsenual sex (but not rape 🤡), whether it be in response to an ad or as part of a study.... that's privilege and institutional power. Men know they don't see women as equal and use them for sex, in whatever way they can get it.

I'm glad they study rapists that have been convicted vs rapists that aren't convicted because that's such an important distinction when majority of rape victims don't report and majority rapists that are reported, don't get convicted.

MadameDestruction · 2021-09-03T07:38:45+00:00

Yet there also seem to be personal attributes that have a mediating effect on these factors. Men who are highly aroused by rape porn — another risk factor — are less likely to attempt sexual assault if they score highly on measures of empathy, Dr. Malamuth has found.

lol this part threw me off. I don't know who's conducting those tests, but I'd think being highly aroused by rape porn would knock somebody's score on an empathy test down by quite a significant bit...

Vmchik · 2021-09-01T13:38:16+00:00

I’m not surprised by this summary and am scared for the next generation because porn probably makes this attitude ten times worse.

GCFDSthrowaway · 2021-09-01T03:30:03+00:00

NYT requires a subscription 😔

Muffcakelord · 2021-09-02T22:23:51+00:00

These are all no-brainers. We all know this. I promise you. We know that rapists will rape more if the blame is on the victim. We know rapists can be anyone. That is exactly WHY people echo "it's the victim's fault" and "not all men". People would not protect rapists if it didn't work - and we all know. Some people just believe that by pushing other victims under the bus, even though it creates more victims than if they didn't, they falsely believe that they may be protected. People believe that they should support and protect rapists by claiming "not all men", a way of forcing down the guard of other potential victims, because if they befriend the rapist they may not rape them. It's classic "stockholm syndrome" in which the prey thinks they will be safe from the predator if they assist them.

The very problem is that the predators want to hurt their prey and the prey doesn't believe it's possible to fight back. They in turn try to push the other prey to the front and cross their fingers hoping it's enough to keep themselves postponed indefinitely from what surely awaits the others. This is what we've always been doing - we all know how rapists work. We, as a society, and as prey, have not mustered the courage, power or strength to effectively fight back. In truth, we never have had that power considering said predators literally control the entire world. The only way to stop rape is to claim power so that the prey may actually do something besides throwing each other under the bus.

We're getting there, slowly but surely, and FDS is a big part of that even though it sounds silly. It's a good reason to why men are so furious about women finally working together and calling men out on their bullshit; claiming power like that means men will not be able to get away with systemic oppression such as rape anymore.

Note: i'm saying "we" because it's wrong for anyone to believe they're not part of the picture. Especially rape apologists will claim to be outside the equation, naturally, because rape does not consern them unless it actually happens to them. I'm assuming noone on FDS would ever protect a rapist, but some of us may have done so in the past, directly or indirectly and without doubt either guilt or shame in doing so considering it's obviously a result of consistent brainwashing and peer pressure from a society that promotes rape. WE, as a world, are all in this together and the culture around rape concerns us all and many aspects of our life, and even our very DNA. Even when being one of the lucky few who has yet to experience such assault first- or even second-hand, this is very much a crime that still taints your entire existence and the world around you. And of course we are all part of the picture in a positive sense every time we do anything to shift the power imbalances so that the victims can finally breathe and be set free.

leadmemories · 2021-09-01T03:15:33+00:00

could you write a tldr? i want to read it but there’s a paywall

Title	What Experts Know About Men Who Rape
Author	Love_Artemis
Upvotes	159
Comments	17
Date	September 1, 2021 2:59 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/pfl2ji/what_experts_know_about_men_who_rape/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/what-experts-know-about-men-who-rape.1066475 https://theredarchive.com/post/1066475

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