Perspectives on Acquaintance Rape

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III. Social Perspectives on Acquaintance Rape

Feminists have traditionally devoted much attention to issues such as pornography, sexual harassment, sexual coercion, and acquaintance rape. The sociological dynamics which influence the politics of sexual equality tend to be complicated. There is no single position taken by feminists on any of the aforementioned issues; there are differing and often conflicting opinions. Views on pornography, for example, are divided between two opposing camps. Libertarian feminists, on one hand, distinguish between erotica (with themes of healthy consensual sexuality) and pornography (material that combines the "graphic sexually explicit" with depictions which are "actively subordinating, treating unequally, as less than human, on the basis of sex." (MacKinnon, in Stan, 1995). Socalled "protectionist" feminists tend not to make such a distinction and view virtually all sexually-oriented material as exploitative and pornographic.

Views on acquaintance rape also appear quite capable of creating opposing camps. Despite the violent nature of acquaintance rape, the belief that many victims are actually willing, consenting participants is held by both men and women alike. "Blaming the victim" seems to be an all too prevalent reaction to acquaintance rape. Prominent authors have espoused this idea in editorial pages, Sunday Magazine sections, and popular journal articles. Some of these authors are women (a few identify themselves as feminists) who appear to justify their ideas by drawing conclusions based on their own personal experiences and anecdotal evidence, not wide-scale, systematic research. They may announce that they too have probably been raped while on a date to illustrate their own inevitable entanglement in the manipulation and exploitation which are part of interpersonal relations. It has also been implied that a natural state of aggression between men and women is normal, and that any woman who would go back to a man's apartment after a date is "an idiot." While there may be a certain degree of cautionary wisdom in the latter part of this statement, such views have been criticized for being overly simplistic and for simply submitting to the problem.

There has been a recent flurry of these literary exchanges on acquaintance rape between women's rights advocates, who have been working to raise public awareness, and a relatively small group of revisionists who perceive that the feminist response to the problem has been alarmist. In 1993, The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus by Katie Roiphe was published. Roiphe alleged that acquaintance rape was largely a myth created by feminists and challenged the results of the Koss study. Those who had responded and mobilized to meet the problem of acquaintance rape were called "rape-crisis feminists." This book, including excerpted in many major women's magazines, argued that the magnitude of the acquaintance rape problem was actually very small. Myriad critics were quick to respond to Roiphe and the anecdotal evidence she gave to her claims.

IV. Research Findings

The research of Koss and her colleagues has served as the foundation of many of the investigations on the prevalence, circumstances, and aftermath of acquaintance rape within the past dozen or so years. The results of this research have served to create an identity and awareness of the problem. Equally as important has been the usefulness of this information in creating prevention models. Koss acknowledges that there are some limitations to the research. The most significant drawback is that her subjects were drawn exclusively from college campuses; thus, they were not representative of the population at large. The average age of the subjects was 21.4 years. By no means does this negate the usefulness of the findings, especially since the late teens and early twenties are the peak ages for the prevalence of acquaintance rape. The demographic profile of the 3,187 female and 2,972 male students in the study was similar to the makeup of the overall enrollment in higher education within the United States. Here are some of the most important statistics:

Prevalence

• One in four women surveyed was victim of rape or attempted rape.
• An additional one in four women surveyed was touched sexually against her will or was victim of sexual coercion.
• 84 percent of those raped knew their attacker.
• 57 percent of those rapes happened while on dates.
• One in twelve male students surveyed had committed acts that met the legal definitions of rape or attempted rape.
• 84 percent of those men who committed rape said that what they did was definitely not rape.
• Sixteen percent of the male students who committed rape and ten percent of those who attempted a rape took part in episodes involving more than one attacker.

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Responses of the Victim

• Only 27 percent of those women whose sexual assault met the legal definition of rape thought of themselves as rape victims.
• 42 percent of the rape victims did not tell anyone about their assaults.
• Only five percent of the rape victims reported the crime to the police.
• Only five percent of the rape victims sought help at rape-crisis centers.
• Whether they had acknowledged their experience as a rape or not, thirty percent of the women identified as rape victims contemplated suicide after the incident.
• 82 percent of the victims said that the experience had permanently changed them.

V. Myths About Acquaintance Rape

There are a set of beliefs and misunderstandings about acquaintance rape that are held by a large portion of the population. These faulty beliefs serve to shape the way acquaintance rape is dealt with on both personal and societal levels. This set of assumptions often presents serious obstacles for victims as they attempt to cope with their experience and recovery.

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Last reviewed: 10/05

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