On Rape Fantasies
So, I was IMing with a friend the other day. She was looking at a couple of articles about rape fantasies, one about how straight men experience them, and another about how straight women experience them. The one about how women experience them is the only one I've had time to look at in detail so far, and it looks like a pretty good article. By that, I mean that its reasoning and conclusions are roughly what I sort of already thought, for the most part, so don't trust me.
There is a pretty interesting juxtaposition to make between the studies, though. When studying how women's fantasies work:
The wording of the rape fantasy item did not appear to affect results. Studies that used a variation of "overpowered or forced" showed a range of 31% to 55%, while those using the more explicit wording of "rape" ranged from 34% to 57%.
vs the study on how men thought about things:
Possible links between fantasy and behavior have been investigated in studies that included some probe into sexual or aggressive behavior. Greendlinger and Byrne32 reported that 35.7 percent of their sample of undergraduate men endorsed having a fantasy of raping a woman. In this study, "fantasy" was not clearly defined, but was equivalent to "imagery." Additional sexually violent fantasies included bondage (66.1%), using force to subdue a woman (63.7%), using force for sex (55.9%), and wanting to hurt a partner during sex (44.6%). The phrasing of the questions was apparently important, considering "force to subdue," "force to have sex," and "rape" as roughly equivalent acts of sexual aggression, although they were endorsed at different frequencies. While the study did not control for social desirability, one may argue that "using force for sex," sounds less aggressive and prohibitive than "rape," which may explain the discrepancy in frequency.
I don't find the size of the numbers troubling, but the fact that at least a fifth of the men surveyed belong to the discrepancy is downright chilling. Women seem to know what rape is, while men often seem to inhabit a confirmation-biased wonderland. Or am I missing something?
There is a pretty interesting juxtaposition to make between the studies, though. When studying how women's fantasies work:
The wording of the rape fantasy item did not appear to affect results. Studies that used a variation of "overpowered or forced" showed a range of 31% to 55%, while those using the more explicit wording of "rape" ranged from 34% to 57%.
vs the study on how men thought about things:
Possible links between fantasy and behavior have been investigated in studies that included some probe into sexual or aggressive behavior. Greendlinger and Byrne32 reported that 35.7 percent of their sample of undergraduate men endorsed having a fantasy of raping a woman. In this study, "fantasy" was not clearly defined, but was equivalent to "imagery." Additional sexually violent fantasies included bondage (66.1%), using force to subdue a woman (63.7%), using force for sex (55.9%), and wanting to hurt a partner during sex (44.6%). The phrasing of the questions was apparently important, considering "force to subdue," "force to have sex," and "rape" as roughly equivalent acts of sexual aggression, although they were endorsed at different frequencies. While the study did not control for social desirability, one may argue that "using force for sex," sounds less aggressive and prohibitive than "rape," which may explain the discrepancy in frequency.
I don't find the size of the numbers troubling, but the fact that at least a fifth of the men surveyed belong to the discrepancy is downright chilling. Women seem to know what rape is, while men often seem to inhabit a confirmation-biased wonderland. Or am I missing something?