A lower incidence of reported rape does not mean there is less rape. There are a variety of factors to be considered in response to reporting to law enforcement. And reporting to LE doesn’t mean it will be entered in as a sex crime, it may be just considered a general “assault” for a variety of reasons relating to crime reporting and the benefit that LE agencies get from having lower crime rates, or lower “violent” crime rates (and assault and battery is not considered a statutorily violent offense in many states, whereas CSC is).

Just thought I’d point out that fundamental flaw. The more subjective ones I’ll leave out. I thought it to be a very interesting post, though!

3. Fundamentally it doesn’t matter why anyone rapes. It’s about whether or not the woman consents, period, end of story.

last entry was hacked up.

either way, that statement is like saying “I don’t care how cancer occurs, just fix it”. You need to know why something is happening before you can cure it. You seem to imply that only women are raped. I suspect those men and boys who have been raped, would also be interested in making sure that it never happens to another person.

I also would like to say that I don’t think sexual frustration causes rape. I find it hard to believe that someone who wouldn’t ordinarily rape can get so frustrated sexually that they’ll skip consent “just this once.” Either they are a person who respects consent every time, or they are someone who doesn’t respect consent. I doubt there’s a case of, “Golly, if only they had masturbated before the date/hiding in the bushes with a knife/sneaking into the neighbor’s house, that rape wouldn’t have happened.” Call me a skeptic ;-)

Thanks for the provocative post, Bacchus :-)

>>SNIP

This statement:

It’s easy to imagine how porn might serve as a substitute for rape.

Is just the flip-side of what “they” have been saying for ages:

It’s easy to imagine how porn can provide the inspiration or catalyst to rapist, who might otherwise be under self-control.

You say potato and they say potatoe.

I can “imagine” both statements to be true, to some degree. But, I’m not buying that it’s a significant effect either way. And, I would think the minimal positive and negative effects (with respect to rape) would just counter one another.

If the spread of internet access is somehow linked to a decrease in sexual assaults, then I think it must be due to some third factor at play.

I won’t argue with you about porn having complex effects on patterns of sexual arousal. It obviously does. Some of these are bad, in my opinion — I’ve experienced a version of the imagination stifling you mention — but some of them are very very good. Porn can have all sorts of beneficial effects on libido, relief of repression, stimulus of sharing fantasies with partners — it’s a long list. But not an unmixed blessing, no indeed.

I am not getting on board with your objectification / “might cause more rapes” argument. That’s the same tired old argument we’ve been hearing since the dawn of MacKinnonite feminism, but it’s mighty short of supporting evidence. It might be true, but there seems not to be much evidence that it actually is true. And, indeed, your argument is ironic, coming in the context of the article prompting this post that suggests — suggests, not proves — the contrary. So I don’t worry unduly about insupportable mights.

“1. Correlation does not equal causation.”

And your point? Research is the art of finding correlations, and then proposing and debating chains of causation. Correlations are the first step, and they are interesting even when not dispositive. I, at least, haven’t said this work proves anything.

The quoted article to a limited extent, and apparently the underlying research paper to a greater extent, discusses various possible chains of causation. Reciting truisms from logic 101 doesn’t go far toward refuting the conclusions of the researchers.

“2. I couldn’t disagree more that rape is a crime of sexual frustration. For one thing, this puts the blame on women for not putting out more, as if the constant threat of rape that we face isn’t enough stress in our lives.”

Facts don’t put blame anywhere. And nobody on ErosBlog has blamed sexual frustration on women. Fascinating that you would leap, on behalf of women, to propose the idea that women are responsible for sexual frustration. You didn’t read that here.

My own view is that the root cause of sexual frustration is bad communication of various sorts. Failure to educate kids about sex, about common courtesy, about respect for other people; failure to discuss sex openly in front of children and young adults as the miracle of pleasure and love that it can be; failure to teach young people the basic interpersonal skills that make them loveable, fuckable, capable of friendly seduction or receptive to same. Basically, failure to civilize them.

Women saying “no” isn’t anywhere in that equation. It’s a common result — emotionally inept barbarians aren’t very attractive — but it’s not a root cause.

Anyway, if there is a factual correlation between male sexual frustration and rape, denying that fact for reasons of sexual politics would be both disingenous and wrong.

And finally, the majority of men, most of whom have experienced sexual frustration in their lives, wouldn’t think of raping a woman; an unwilling partner would never be a turn-on.

Agreed. But why do you think this says anything useful about the role sexual frustration plays in the motives of the evil bastards who rape?

Nobody said sexual frustration was some sort of evil kryptonite that turns all men into rapists. Obviously it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean sexual frustration is irrelevant.

“3. Fundamentally it doesn’t matter why anyone rapes.”
You have got to be kidding me. That statement is equivalent to saying you’re not interested in having rape stop.

To make a deplorable thing stop, we must first understand why it happens. That’s basic science. All people of good will ought to be interested in why rapists rape. I’m stunned to hear an ErosBlog reader suggest otherwise.

because now everybody is truly catered for?