doubtingt said:
But political and legal activists insist upon polluting the scientific discourse about the former questions with their political an legal agendas (however noble and needed those agendas and goals might be).
Presumably, your post is a good example of this? Taking a discussion about rape and trying to push through political criticism of the actions of those who disagees with you?
I'm not criticizing the politics of those who disagree. I actually said I agreed with their political goal of trying to increase prosecutions and reduce victim blaming. I disagree with them lying about the science to achieve those political objectives. The clear and massive evidence showing that sex is a huge aspect of rape and that use of power often only a means towards sexual ends, makes intellectual dishonesty and political bias the only plausible explanation why an educated academic would ever make that rape is about power and not sex.
Examples of what I am talking about are those who claim that "rape is not about sex" despite clear science that contradicts this (IOW your post and your gross misrepresentation of the research you cite) and where posters try to stifle intellectual discourse by accusation of "victim blaming" on people who merely want to discuss objective causal factors.
Too often, these activists take on the role of academics in the softest areas of the softest sciences and use their credentials to promote politically polluted ideas that have no basis in any valid cognitive and behavioral science. Notions like "rape is all about power and not sex" are among these,
There's plenty of science on the subject. e.g.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490902954323?src=recsys#.U4-A-igVc5g
You may have criticisms of it, but pretending it doesn't exist just seems strange.
I never implied that there is no science on the subject. I said that the claim that rape is not about sex but power is pseudo-science and not supported by actual science. The science that exists shows that sex, sexuality, sexual arousal and gratification are huge aspects of rape, and your cited paper only confirms this. I am not arguing for zero role of power, especially in many forms of rape. I am arguing that rape is very much impacted by sexuality and that some forms of rape are particularly about sex and less about power. The paper concludes with recommendations that…
from the linked research article said:
Of the cognitive factors discussed, belief in rape myths and insufficient knowledge about the consequences of rape appear to be the most obvious subjects to include in an intervention aimed at rape prevention [via altering the psychological factors of rapists that contribute to their actions].
They recommend making potential rapists more aware of their acts impact the victims and countering the rapists beliefs that women desire and want to be raped. These recommendations make no sense in light of a “its about power” assumption. Telling a power-seeking rapist that women don’t like it and that it impacts them negatively would only motivate them more to rape. It would give them a greater sense of power. Such recommendations only make sense because rape is so often about sex and not power, and the person is only using that power as a means to an end. Thus, these recommendations might dissuade a rapist from using such methods to achieve sex if they were more aware of the harm they do.
The fact that you would point to a paper that so clearly shows evidence for the causal influence of sex related issues on rape as scientific support for the notion that "rape is all about power and not sex" just shows the extent you'll go to in distorting science toward your political ends.
as is the idea that rape is unaffected by a women's attire or the sexual signals conveyed by her words, actions, and body language. Unfortunately, there are few actually qualified experts in behavioral and cognitive science willing to get into this area and take on the pseudo-science for fear of getting mired in the kind of exchanges, accusations, and ad-hominem personal attacks we see whenever the issue comes up here.
???? I've met plenty.
None whom have claimed "rape is all about power and not sex" because no qualified expert would make such a claim so clearly refuted by the science. There are competent scientists willing to keep their conclusions consistent with the data, they just get outnumbered and are less vocal than those making claims like the one in question. That is why the myth of "rape is all about power and not sex" is so widely repeated in the popular discourse.
I don't blame activists for wanting to get women to stop blaming themselves and thus to come forward. It is possible and maybe likely that these goals have been aided by promoting the idea that rape isn't about sex and has nothing to do with female sexuality and sexual social. But untruths can motive a change in action as well as truths, and these are untruths. The tricky part is how do we get women to blame the rapist and come forward while still acknowledging the sexual aspects of rape and thus the causal impact that sexual social signals by women play? [ A critical part of that is not actively trying to confuse and conflate causal influence with blame, and yet that is what rape activists are doing when they try to deny causes in order to reduce victim blaming and when they accuse people who want to rationally discuss causes of victim blaming.
Causal influence is blame. There isn't any other construct you can put on the idea that that person A's behaviour causes person B's behaviour, other than person A is to blame.
No, that is a blatant logical fallacy. Blame does not follow from causality. Blame is a moral and legal concept, and not at all a scientific one. While things that are to blame for a criminal or immoral action are often causally related to that action, most causes factors of those actions are not to blame. For example, if a man puts a gold watch on, gets onto a crowded bus, then he has done multiple things that by all rational and scientific analysis play a causal role in greatly increasing the odds of that watch getting stolen. No rational person would disagree, yet none would conclude that he is to blame for the watch getting stolen. None of the blame for the criminal and immoral act shifts to him and away from the thieves. Also, the additional information needed to infer blame is not scientific information, but assumed subjective values.
Respected social scientists avoid such claims, largely because they're nearly impossible to justify.
Your comment here just illustrates my point. You define "respected social scientists" as those driven by a political, social, or legal agenda rather than by science. They deny the science of causality in order to avoid legal and moral implications of legal and moral blame. That is the epitome of politically biased anti-science and something no social scientist worthy of respect would do. Either they are so ignorant that they fail to see the blatant logically fallacy in inferring blame from cause and they fail to grasp that blame isn’t even a scientific concept and requires non-scientific assumed subjective values, or they realize this but are willing to lie about scientific causality out of fear that others will make this illogical leap from cause to blame. In either case, they not scientists nor worth of respect.
These claims of "power and not sex" are especially absurd in relation to "date rape" and rape involving highly intoxicated/unconscious women. These rapes are almost entirely about sex and sexual gratification and little about power.
I disagree. Date rape is often a situation in which someone who
has spent all evening trying to get someone else to put out, and then realises that they're not going to get any after all. It's not the horniness that triggers the rape,
, they were horny all evening,, it's the realisation that they have no control over the outcome.
The emphasized parts are the key. They illustrate that his goal is sexual gratification. They are sexually aroused. Without these, no rape happens, making them vital necessary causes of any related actions. In addition, with her consent, no rape happens but sex does happen because sex is his goal and not power. His use of power is only a reaction to her nonconsent, allowing him to still achieve his goal, which again is sex. Thus, any use of “power” is a by-product of and thus highly variable with the situation, and only used as a means to the actual end of sexual gratification (because, again, it’s primarily about sex). IOW, some use of “power” is deployed to compensate for her lack of consent. That isn’t an explanation of why the rape occurs, it is nothing more than the basic legal definition of rape. If he doesn’t exert any power in lieu of her consent, then it’s just sex and not rape. IF that is what counts as a power-based theory of rape, then you can tell your “respectable social scientists” to pack up and go home, because they have told us nothing and answered nothing that isn’t a simple definitional truth of the illegal act of rape.
Of course, we both know that the kind of “power” you are trying to insert into this scenario isn’t at all what is meant by the idea that its about power and not sex. IT doesn’t remotely support that extremist notion, but rather (like the article you cite above) shows that its mostly about sex and use of power is situationally contingent on whether its needed to achieve that goal. The actual theory of “its about power and not sex” is incapable of explaining the facts of the above scenario. The man shouldn’t be horny and sexually aroused and hoping for consent and only using power as a reaction to achieve a sexual goal. If it was actually about power that means that use of power is his driving goal. He wouldn’t be “horny all evening” or “spending all evening trying to get her to put out”, but rather he’d be thinking about exerting power over her, and he wouldn’t even want her to “put out” because then he isn’t using any power against her. He would want her to refuse and only be interested in sex with her when she did. Any sexual arousal would be an incidental by-product of exerting power over her and the non-consented sex act would just be the method by which he does that. He wouldn’t want her merely intoxicated enough to lower her inhibitions and be willing to have sex, because willing sex isn’t power. He’d want only unwilling sex with her, meaning at minimum near lack of consciousness and no indication of consent, and more likely fully conscious and resisting. That is what any meaningful notion of “its about power and not about sex” would entail. Do such scenarios exist? Does this characterize some rapes? Probably, but not the majority of rapes and very few date rapes.
It [his use of power] may be disappointment at the outcome and a desire to change it, it may be about injured pride, it may be about a thwarted sense of entitlement, it may be about desperation, it may be rage at having an anticipated reward being withdrawn.
Sure, make countless baseless assumptions about his motives, but they are unnecessary and unparsimonious because you already noted his sexual desire and arousal that are more than sufficient. He doesn’t need added motivation to have sex with her, including no need to have a desire to have power over her. If I have a desire to have a working car, I don’t need a desire to have power over my car in order to fix it. I exert power over it merely as a means to my desired end of having a fixed car, and if I could have had a fixed car without exerting that power then I would have. Most date rape is about wanting sex and doing what the situations is perceived to require to get it. Everything is a byproduct of this, therefore the sexual desire is causally central to whatever he does. Additional motives are more important for the decision to not have sex to satisfy those sexual desires. He needs to place enough value on her autonomy and well being or at least on his own liberty, then his sexual desire will not be sufficient motive for him to have sex with her without her consent. The use or not of power to bypass need for person’s will and thus have sex with them, is a defining description of rape, but doesn’t explain it. And whether one is willing to use power in this way is causally impacted by their sexual desires, whereas some kind of desire for power itself can sometime be a factor but it is neither necessary nor sufficient in determining whether power is used in this way.
But in each case, it's about trying to exert power over the other person to get what you want. It's a lot about power.
Holy cow, you just got through listing a number of psychological motives (including sexual gratification) for which use of power is just a means to those ends, and your conclusion is that “its about power”???? No, using power only because you need to get what you want (sex), means that it is decidedly NOT “about power”, but about some other goal for which the use of power is an incidental and variable response to achieve a goal other than power itself, and usually that is sexual gratification, especially in date rape. Once again, you look at information that quite clearly shows the major causal role of sexual arousal and other non-power issues, and yet conclude that just because use of power is somehow entailed that “its about power”. That shows the kind of incredibly vague and unspecified notion that the “its about power” meme (it lacks the requisite feature of a real “theory”) represents. So vague and “flexible” that it can be twisted to fit any situation, and thus it’s unfalsifiable and untestable, and by definition, unscientific. Those are the hallmarks of pseudoscience. By any reasonable scientific and psychologically defensible bounded notion of “its about power” this scenario and many others that describe actual rapes do not fit that notion, even when use of power plays some variable role, as it must by the definition of rape.
You have a girl who wouldn't have sex with you. If you go and get sex with someone who does, it's about sex. If you come back when she's unconscious and then have sex with her, yes it's a power play. She turned you down, but she's having sex with you now. That's a power thing.
Absurd twisted logic. His goal is the same as it was when she was conscious and willing. It is baseless, spurious, and non-parsimonious to assume otherwise. That goal is sexual gratification, and his goal is what determines what its “about”. Only if he had no interest in sex when she was conscious and willing, would sex with her when unconscious indicate that “its about power”. Otherwise, the use of power is not at all his motivation or goal, but just something he is willing to do if required to achieve what its actually about, which is sexual gratification in which the use of power is not a cause but a byproduct of what the behavior is actually “about”. What type of power, how much is used, and when are highly variable and contingent on what’s needed to achieve the sexual goal. No one that understands causality what it means to explain human behavior would characterize that kind of contingent and reactionary means-end use of power as what the behavior “is about”.
In a scenario that was actually “about power”, sexual arousal would be the thing that only existed as a potential byproduct of the use of power. In other words, the causal role that power and sex played would be flipped from the more common scenario we’ve been discussing. Sexual arousal, if it existed at all, would only arise during the act of using or thinking of using that power, consent wouldn’t be hoped for but actively discouraged because consent would undermine having power over them. In other words, it would require a scenario like the following: A guy is at a party, there is a really beautiful alluring woman there showing some skin and oozing sexuality. She has the attention of most guys in the room. But our antagonist has no interest and is not sexually aroused. She approaches him and conveys an interest in sex, so now he is even less interested since her willingness means no power for him. Instead, he sees a woman that isn’t particularly attractive, but this is irrelevant to him because he’s a rapist, so its “all about power and not about sex”. He flirts with her and she shows not interest. Bingo, that is just the kind of girl he’s interested, because less willingness = more power. He isn’t sexually aroused yet, because that is a by-product of the power. But he starts the process of trying to put her in a state where he can have power over her, which happens to be unwilling sex, but the sex is just incidental. He doesn’t just give her a couple drinks, because while that might lower inhibitions and make her more willing to have sex, he isn’t interested in her if she’s willing. And actually, if she’s passed out then she’s not actively willing, but she isn’t really unwilling either, because she isn’t anything but a body at the point. So, that isn’t very much “power” either. IF it was all about power, then it wouldn’t make psychological sense for him to want her merely unconscious. Wanting her unconscious indicates that it is about sexual gratification and her being unconscious is means to that end.
A final note: Not only is the use of power only a description and not an explanation of rape, and not only is use of power less causally central to the actions than the sexual desires to motivate the use of power when needed, but use of power to achieve sex isn’t even sufficient for it to be rape. Only more overt and extreme uses of power make sex rape. Power is used surrounding sex all the time in “normal” and consensual sex. In fact, you and your “respected social scientists’” use of the concept of “power” is so fuzzy and inclusive that most human interaction entail the use of power. Flattery is a use of power to achieve sex. Manly displays or flashing one’s monetary resources is a use of power to achieve sex. Pretty much anything said or done during courtship to increase the odds of willing copulation is the use of power to achieve sex. Thus, not only do most rapes only occur because use of power is motivated by sexual desire, but even when power is used to achieve sexual gratification this isn’t sufficient for an act to be rape. IT is the very particular situation in which use of power overrides her lack of will (rather than merely influence that will) to achieve sexual gratification that characterizes most rapes. This just further illustrates the very minimal utility of such notions of “power” in understanding or explaining rape.
