In all seriousness: What is wrong with people?

My apologies, but the GD thread on rape ordeals made me recall a statistic that has haunted me for years. Take a gander at the following website, the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, which reports that:

"In a survey of college men, 35 percent anonymously admitted they would commit rape if they knew they could get away with it."

http://www.taasa.org/sexual_assault/default.php


Think about this for a moment: the only thing keeping 35 percent of men from forcing themselves on another human being, violating someone amid screams and thrashing, is being caught.


I don't want to come across as self-righteous, but I need everyone to know I'm not a hypocrite, so let me say this:

I was raised in a religious environment, and I have always taken my faith very seriously. I feel alienated, for my ethos stands in direct conflict with the "culture of death" that exists in this country and many others. I simply don't understand aggression.

What is wrong with people? Why do we feel the need to dominate others--whether it resides in an economic system, a battlefield, or even in the arena of sports (the Altman film, M*A*S*H, captures this beautifully)?

Throughout my life, I've balked at the pleasure many derive from inflicting mental or physical pain on others; I've recoiled in disgust as the majority of boys in my various gym classes mocked the unathletic children, assaulting them with a barrage of remarks that would bring tears to the victim (while some inevitably pursue this out of their own self-hatred, others do it out of pure malice). While I tried to assuage these people, I knew that my reassurances couldn't do much to lift their spirits.

It isn't right that gentility is perceived as weakness.
It isn't right that rugged individualism is lauded over communal values.
It isn't right that the meek suffer under the cruelty of boorish and savage minds.

There's something about us that's so fucking animalistic--something that defies the beneficence that radiates from psalms, music, poetry, and art.

Vent here, if you please.

And on the timescale of nature's grand scheme of things, we're still only about a day removed from that evolutionary jump. Not only that, we're predators (our eyes are in the front of our heads and we have canines). Our alpha-male president is exhibit A, followed by the rest of the republican apemen.

I don't think the "descended from animals" argument covers it. Men are caoable of controlling themselves and not doing violence to another.

but we're really not far at all from monkeys.

If only more people gave that fact any thought whatsoever...

The charges have been dropped against Kobe Bryant, because his accuser refuses to testify. Something is seriously wrong in this country, I agree. We need many more of you and far fewer from the Republican right. Thanks for this post. It gives me hope on a very difficult day.:-)

males raised in secular households are more likely to commit rape than those raised in "religious environment"s, as you put it?

If so, got a source?

For all I know, those 35% would consider themselves religious people. I was merely trying to point out that I take the credo of nonviolence found in the five major world religions very seriously, as a way to explain my pacifism. Atheists can be nonviolent, secular humanists can be nonviolent, etc...

It's far too early for this thread to be hijacked.

of other humans. Just don't like them much, a lot of the time. I get tired of watching them jockey for position in large and small ways. Just gets tiring. And as a female, I've had my share of violent encounters with men who, if they hadn't been foiled one way or another, would have been happy to rape me. So, I know how disheartened you must feel. Look around you and realize that whenever your eyes light upon a woman, know that she has been accosted/attacked at least once in her life. And she has managed to go on with her life, trying not to hold it against all men.

this isn't really a surprise.

had to check your gender first... I don't think most women fantasize about being cruelly forced to have sex and possibly beaten. Rape is about using sex for power and dominance.

I suspect those types of fantasies are not similar to the actual experiences assaulted women have had.

We're not talking about most people. We're talking about the existence of a taboo fantasy in a select minority of people. This fantasy exists in both genders.

I'd argue that the proportion of men who have rape fantasies are near equal to the proportion of women who have rape fantasies.

I know that my last two girlfriends (who were very normal otherwise) both had the fantasy.


I don't see how the desire for power and dominance in men means that the desire for vulnerability and domination can't exist in women.

:shrug:

control and it is a fantasy, after all. But it seems like a sad thing to have. C'mon now, you knew you would get some flack. :)

Talk to some people who have had the experience of being raped and I suspect it would differ from the fantasy. That's all I'm saying.

it's about humiliating the victim(s). Anyone who commits a sexual assault is basically insecure. I believe what the poll revealed was that if the potential perpetrators had no social inhibitions they would feel free to act out their fantasies. You are right. This does represent behavior of a lower form of animal. I believe modern technology, specifically DNA testing, will have a strong role in bringing sexual predators to justice and may also lower the number of incidents.

We (as in humans) are not as far advanced as we like to think we are. A considerable amount of people on this planet are selfish, egotistical, self righteous, intellectually deprived animals.
Just pop around the Internet for a while and see how "advanced" we are. Even on DU you have to sift through the huge amount of sexually invoked threads and posts.
Shiny things and fucking are the drives of many many people. We have a long way to go... in my opinion.

.

...in which a group of rape victims confronted a group of perpetrators--of course in a very controlled environment. I didn't see the whole thing, but no doubt this was part of an ongoing program about healing for the victims, and of course they must have made sure none of the actual perpetrators of any of the women were among the perpetrators who took part.

Anyway, the most powerful part of the whole scene was when one woman cries out, "Why me?" One of the men answered with quiet intensity, "Because you were there."

I will say this, if the question was "Would you steal $20K from your employer if you knew you could get away with it?" a huge number of people would say yes. A certain number would answer "yes" to murder too. It is the fear of getting caught and the fear of the subsequent punishment that keeps a huge percentage of society in line. That's why anarchists have their head up their ass, IMHO.

Some people care only about their own feelings, and care nothing for others. Sadly, some parents and aspects of society encourage this.

Rape is not a thing that is happening as a normal thing in primates´ societies. But in our society there are (and were in the past 50 years) so many children growing up in a sorroundig that is a sort of social desert: they don´t grow up in a society at all. They grow up alone. Parents working, grandparents far a away, few or no siblings, and watching TV all day long. And who are the male heroes in TV? How should the boys learn to have a relationship to anybody? And how could they teach to their children to have a good relation to anybody else, if they can´t even manage their own lives?

And there is one other thing too:
I´m afraid that the wars of the last century had a huge effect on the behaviour of men, whole generations of men were influenced in many bad ways. And many of these were not able to bring up their sons in a good way.

"In a survey of college men, 35 percent anonymously admitted they would commit rape if they knew they could get away with it."

http://www.taasa.org/sexual_assault/default.php


Think about this for a moment: the only thing keeping 35 percent of men from forcing themselves on another human being, violating someone amid screams and thrashing, is being caught.

There is no way I'm going to believe any such ludicrous statistic unless it is backed up by more than just one measly reference, with no details on the sample of people they talked to, the specific phrasing of the questions they asked, etc.

I've seen this statistic passed around here before and it disturbs me that so many appear willing to accept this without challenge.

Well, I am challenging it. What is the actual evidence behind this statistic?

Peter


EDIT: I have found what I believe to be the original source of this statistic: a 1981 article called "Rape Proclivity Among Males" by N. Malamuth.

The statistic appears to have been distorted in translation, as here is the version from Malamuth's abstract:

"On the average, about 35% (of a sample of male college students) indicated some likelihood of raping."

I still don't know the details of the sample and what the definition of "some likelihood" is (I'll have to read that article thoroughly to find out), but this alone is very different from "35% ... would commit rape" as reported in the original post.

Even the "some likelihood" claim seems very suspect to me, but I have to reserve judgement on that pending my review of the evidence.

--Peter