Study: A Third of College Males Admit They’d Rape a Woman If They Could Get Away With It

A recent study reveals a harrowing figure related to sexual assault on college campuses. The men in the survey, conducted by researchers at the University of North Dakota, seemed to have trouble understanding that forced sex is in fact rape. An alarming portion of the 73 participants said they’d commit the crime if there were no consequences to their acts and no one knew what they did.

At a time in which many colleges are still incompetently dealing with rape on campus, the results of this survey (which researchers hope to carry out on a larger scale) are of crucial concern.

ThinkProgress:

Nearly one in three college men admit they might rape a woman if they knew no one would find out and they wouldn’t face any consequences, according to a new study…But, when the researchers actually used the word “rape” in their question, those numbers dropped much lower — suggesting that many college men don’t associate the act of forcing a woman to have sex with them with the crime of committing rape.

According to the survey, which analyzed responses from 73 men in college, 31.7 percent of participants said they would act on “intentions to force a woman to sexual intercourse” if they were confident they could get away with it. When asked whether they would act on “intentions to rape a woman” with the same assurances they wouldn’t face consequences, just 13.6 percent of participants agreed….“The No. 1 point is there are people that will say they would force a woman to have sex but would deny they would rape a woman,” Sarah R. Edwards, an assistant professor of counseling psychology at the University of North Dakota and the lead researcher for the study, told Newsweek.

Edwards’ team also tried to gauge the college men’s approach to the opposite gender. They found that the men who were comfortable admitting their “intentions to rape” displayed a wide range of outwardly hostile attitudes toward women. The men who rejected the “rape” language, but said they would still use force against a woman, didn’t display that level of outward hostility. But they were still linked with what the researchers defined as “callous sexual attitudes”: a set of cultural stereotypes about women as objects and men as aggressors that feeds into hyper-masculinity.

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—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata