Oh boy, these stats you cite really hurt your case.
Toni said:
According to the DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics, most males who attempt sexual assault or rape against female victims are white guys (70%)
70% is for "sexual assault" of all types, while actual rape is closer to 55% whites, which means whites are under-represented among rapists, whereas blacks are more likely to commit both rape and sexual assault.
and most are over the age of 30.
Exactly. Rapists average 31 years old, while victims average 23 years old, just like the youth seeking men driven by sexual attraction in consensual sexual relationships.
Alcohol and/or drug use was involved in only about 40 percent of the cases.
Only????? Are 40% of the population intoxicated at any given time?? 40% is high and indicates that rape, just like consensual sex, is made more likely by or in the context of alcohol consumption which has been shown to have a positive causal impact on sexual desire, attempts at sexual behaviors (though often unsuccessful due to physio effects), and sexual risk taking.
Most attackers are known to the victim to some degree
Sure. Science shows that familiarity increases attraction and that they kind of people your are sexually attracted to are also the kind more likely to be in your social circles.
but most are not intimate partners.
And most women that men have a sexual desire for are not their intimate partners (note that this is true even when one has high attraction to their partner).
Perhaps what makes these victims so attractive to would be rapists is the very fact that they are young and not as powerful. .
Like I predicted, you certainly tried to invent a post hoc rationalization to squeeze the notion of “power” in there, which is easy given how unfalsifiably vague the meaning of “power” and its “use” is in the theory your defending. However, it is a completely superfluous and baseless assumption that add nothing to the explanatory power of a theory . "Young" is the only thing needed to explain the sexual attraction. There is a mountain of evidence that “young” impacts sexual desire and that research has infinitely more scientific validity than anything supporting a power theory of rape. Also, your insertion of the power concept here doesn’t even make sense in terms of the larger power theory. Controlling a person that has no power doesn’t give the controller power or the sense of power. IF I sit on a dead lion, am I “dominating” it? No. I am dominating it when it is alive and well and powerful and seeking liberty and yet I control it and cage it and punish or reward it at my will and against its expressed will. As pseudoscience tends to do, your power theory just arbitrary contorts vague terms to fit whatever facts are there. IF more socially powerful women were more likely to get raped, we can be certain that all proponents of the power theory would hold that fact up as proof of their theory, but since the opposite is largely true, they hold that up as proof of the theory. In fact, I have no doubt that other proponents of your theory would have given just the opposite rationalization that you did, and said “Younger women have more sexual power in society, so men want to rob them of it.” That is the beauty of unscientifically untestably vague notions, they make no clear predictions so they can never be wrong. Lest someone actually buy into my made up mocking rationalization about youth = power, it is an absurd circularity. A young woman’s sexual power cannot be the cause of the sexual desire, if that power is only derived from the greater sexual desire that men have for younger wome
Young victims--teenagers, in fact, are most common. .
Not quite. Young but sexually developed and mostly sexually active adult women age 18-21 are the most likely targets followed by women 22-24 and older “teenagers” 16-17.
Black girls are more likely to be raped than white girls. .
Yes, because black men are more likely to be rapists than white men (as with every other violent crime), and sexual attraction tends to be stronger within than between racial groups (85% of rapes occur within racial group). The same is true for economic class where almost all raped occur within class. As with every other stat your put forth, these are what is predicted by influence of sexual desire on rape targets, because they are consistent with the well established facts related to normal sexual attraction and its influences. Yet the power theory is mute at best on these fact, and if anything, a viable theory put power and dominance as the sole driving force would predict just the opposite of the fact, namely that those seeking dominance over others would seek out members of other social and economic classes and status.
Yet most models and actresses--those you deem as 'most sexually attractive' .
(those that research has shown are trigger the most sexual arousal in most males within the US population to which all these stats refer)
[most models] are not black .
No, of course not, and neither are most rape victims. Most victims are white, it is just that white women are proportionately less likely to be raped than black women because rapist tend to rape women within their race (which is also who they are more attracted to), and black men are proportionately more likely to rape than white men.
[Models] and are not teenagers.
REALY???!!!!! You’re going to pretend that you and nearly every advocate of the power theory of rape don’t also think (and find it objectionable) that models are selected and groomed to be or look like teenage girls? What nonsense. I don’t believe for a second that you buy your own argument here. If you don’t think that about models, then you should because it is a rare opportunity for you to be on the side of objective fact. Again, most rape victims are late teens and young adults and that is very much the age of most models (especially those used in the most sexual marketing campaigns), and those older than 24 are usually selected for looking younger and they all go to great lengths to appear within that age range. And this all happens not because they make millions off of doubtingt’s preferences, but because sex sells and sells most to the most men when its sex with young women, including late teens.
So, what is it that you think makes those victims most attractive to their attackers: that they resemble the images in media? .
You have the causality backwards. Most of the women using sex to sell in the media are selected because they are what most men find sexually arousing. IOW, there is no directly causal link between the type of women in media and the type that are raped. They are both (partially) the byproduct of the type of women that men are sexually aroused by.
Or that they are close by and can't get away
Yes, proximity matters, and for reasons having nothing to do with power. Poximity simply makes it easier and like every single other human action, the easier it is, the more likely a person is to do it. To the extent that it matters for any other reason, that is more likely to be sexual attraction than power since experimental research shows a causal impact of familiarity on attraction and your more familiar with who is in your proximity.
and are less strong--not even full grown, in fact. .
Can you show me some data that 18-24 year old women are slower and weaker than women over 50 that they are 4 times more likely to be raped than?? Also, are 16 year olds slower and weaker than the 14 year old that they are twice as likely to raped than? If there is a correlation between physical power of women and rape, it is a positive one due to sexual desirability being related to the same ages that tend to also be stronger and faster. But that’s an indirect relation so it would be modest at best. Like I said, your power theory is so unscientifically untestable that I am sure you can just flip your rationalization and somehow make a desire for power lead rapists to target more physically powerful women.
It seems to me that most rapists target victims they see as easy to overcome, vulnerable, easy targets less likely to be able to fight back?
No, the evidence clearly shows that this is false. Females that are either younger or older than the most common victims would be slower (easier to catch if they run) and physically weaker. The targeted age span contradicts your prediction of targeting weaker women but fits very well with a sexual arousal influence and at least a partial influence of normal factors on sexual arousal. IF your power theory were true, than the OP scenario wouldn’t even be news because raping of the elderly would be commonplace and more common than the rape of 20 year olds. Besides, wanting an easy target is not evidence or power desire, it is far more consistent with just about every other type of desire, including sexual. You want to have sex with them for whatever reason and you don’t want them to get away, gouge your eyes out, or rip your dick off. Rape so often involves young drunk women because the young part makes them sexually desirable and the drunk part makes the “easy” (both in the sense of more willing and easier to overpower if not).
