Quote:
Originally Posted by JinnKai
My question is not whether rape is about sex INSTEAD of power, but rather if people felt the generalization in the title was accurate.
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No, it's not even an accurate portrayal of the literature on the subject.
cyrnel's responses demonstrate the symantic issues arising from not knowing or mischaracterizing the literature, for example. No one familiar with the literature would suggest that all rape is about power, nor that all of those things he listed would be classified or thought of as equal to one another.
I'm not going to play forum police, but if people want to have an informed discussion on the topic, they should at least read one of the seminal articles on the subject to get a footing on the claim behind the statement that rape is motivated by power.
EDIT: If the JSTOR isn't publicly available, that's my bad assumption that it was. If people can't make it past the first page then mods send me a PM of the how or whether I can post the full content (although it doesn't look likely, http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html).
You'll also be interested in Diana Scully and Joe Marolla's piece on Convicted Rapists Vocabulary of Motive: Excuses and Justifications (1984). At least in that paper, they argue more directly in the first page that rape is learned and social rather than interpersonal. This is pulled from a tradition in criminology and sociology about vocabulary of offenders. You'll probably want to read some of Mill's "Vocabulary of Motive" and Sykes and Matza's (my advisor's advisor ) "Techniques of Neutralization" to get a sense of what's going on...or if I get bored with my paper I'll write more on the subject.
In case you're interested, the paper I wrote wasn't in support of the position. But I had the "luxury" of being in a situation where I could assess convicted felons and their discourse from an insider's perspective. So I took some issue with Scully and Marolla's points but that was a very long time ago before I was trained...so my views my be different now if I reread the arguments. I haven't really thought about rape research for a long time, to be honest.