@QasimRashid The rape culture in the US and Canada is a serious problem and the responsibility of all men. I am not, I hope I'm making this clear throughout, defending men in the slightest.
...and also this study does not show what you're saying it does, and I think it does real damage to the fight against rape culture to make false claims like this.
I'm saying this as an experimental psychologist: both the conclusions that the authors make based on the data are shaky, but even taking them at face value your "95.1% of men" statistic is flat out wrong. So let's start there.
You dwell on this quote, which is, to be sure, a shocking one from the study:
Overall, 95.1% reported having recently used at least one of the strategies to get a woman to have sex who they knew did not want sex and had not consented.
You take that to mean that of all men, 95.1% are willing to use one of the study's "strategies" to get a woman to have sex who they knew did not want sex and had not consented. But, and I hate that I have to use this phrase, but quite literally that's not 95.1% of all men.
That is 95.1% of 18-34 year old men who had at least one sexual encounter with a woman in the last 2 years--"Only women you have recently met—no sex or dating history with them beforehand."
I think it's reasonable to conclude that we see similar rates of "strategy use" among older men, even if their use of the strategies was further in the past.
However, I do think it's important to note that we've already selected for men who are prowling for sex with women they basically don't know. So what we can say is not, "95.1% of all men use these strategies" but, "Of men trying to have sex with women they just met, 95.1% use these strategies."
The great tragedy of presenting this as if the study covers all men, I think, is that most rapes are not this kind of situation. Most rapes are someone the woman knows--someone she does have a dating or sexual history with--so this study doesn't even cover most rapes.
By wrongly saying the study covers all men, people will use that factual inaccuracy to dismiss everything you're saying.
I think something the experimenters really need to do is a followup study targeted to men who've had sex with women within a relationship. That still won't be all men! But the two studies will cover much closer to all men, and will show any differences between "prowling" men and men who are sexually aggressive within a relationship (if any). It might still be 95.1%! But as of now, we don't know.
However, I think also they need to rework several of their questions.
[I'm now going to describe several sexual scenarios.]
Bob and Alice met in a bar, went back to Bob's place, and are now making out on the couch. Bob wants to have sex. Alice says, "I need to go, I have work in the morning." Bob says, "Stay the night. We'll set an alarm, and I'll drive you home in the morning." Alice agrees, and they have sex. They set an alarm, and in the morning Bob drives Alice home.
Three months later, Bob is recruited to a study about "exploring positive and negative interactions between men and women in sexual situations". He's asked if he had sex with a woman in the last 2 years (check!) who made excuses about not wanting to have sex (check!) and he "Told her whatever she wanted to hear" to have sex (check!)
Bob is part of the 95.1%.
The most common way that these men knew a woman "did not want to have sex or acted like she did not want to have sex" was that she "made excuses". The most common strategies these men employed were aimed at acquiring consent: telling her what she wanted to hear, using their status or money, continuing foreplay, having other people convince her, etc..
I am not saying that many of these cases weren't coercive, or deceptive. However, "You're beautiful and we could have a really special night," (telling her what she wanted to hear) is getting lumped in with, "I got her away from everyone to somewhere private and under my control".
The experimenters specifically designed the survey in not just a neutral way, but I think in some cases a positive way. Their goal was to elicit responses of negative behavior that men wouldn't otherwise admit to, which is definitely needed. However, I think they went too far in some cases and are likely classifying consenting sexual encounters as "sexual aggression".
"I told her what she wanted to hear" is not necessarily coercive or deceptive; see Bob and Alice, above.
"We were making out, and she said we weren't going to have sex that night, so I nodded and continued touching and kissing her which she had consented to, and she showed no indication she wanted to stop. Then she must have changed her mind because she took off my pants and gave me a blowjob." This is not "sexually aggressive" behavior.
One of the listed strategies of sexual aggression is "Focused on a stranger to have sex with" which, ugh, I personally have a really hard time understanding the whole one-night-stand thing, but it's not inherently sexually aggressive. There can be mutual enthusiastically consenting one night stands!
The goal of this study, IMO, appears to be, "How can we get as many men as possible to admit to behaviors that we can categorize as sexually aggressive?"
I don't think the experimenters were trying to have that goal, to be clear, but I've been in these rooms where experiments get designed. The push is, "How do we elicit the strongest possible effect? How do we get the biggest numbers?" These are publication goals that threaten to taint every social science experiment ever planned, because you just know that you can get a little bigger value if you phrase the question like this, and add this other question that's mostly related if you squint. But, if you do this too much you end up with the replication crisis.
Every single one of these rooms needs someone who's saying, "Does this question actually indicate the effect we're looking for? Are participants going to understand this question the way we're going to interpret it?" Many studies don't have that person, and they suffer for it. It really seems to me like this study didn't have that person.
We don't know how many of these encounters--and how many of these men--were actually sexually aggressive. And that's a damn shame. I wish we had more defensible numbers. I think if they dropped some of the questions that can be readily interpreted to apply to non-aggressive scenarios, the numbers would be more defensible--but they would not be 95.1%.
The data that's unambiguous is still horrifying. This one alone I personally find chilling:
Got her away from everyone to somewhere private and under your control (37.5%)
Not only chilling, but I think this question in particular shows what you have to do to make sure the questions don't get false positives.
Compare if they'd just said, "Got her away from everyone to somewhere private". That's not necessarily coercive, right? I think the natural response from most guys would be, "Yeah, I'm not an exhibitionist, of course I took her somewhere private." But as soon as they add, "...under your control," that's overtly sinister. Now we're at, "...because of the implication," and everyone knows it.
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I am outside the scope of this study. Not because I'm perfect, but because I'm unusual. Apparently the term is "demisexual", but that just means I'm only sexually attracted to someone I'm in love with, so you'd never find me trying to sleep with someone I just met. I thought it was weird to have a separate term for that, isn't that normal? Expected? Love, and then sex?
And then when I was in college, one summer I had an internship at a different college. I was subletting a bed in a townhouse. Not even a room, a bed in a room. My roommate, I think at the urging of his girlfriend because she was thoughtful and he wasn't, decided that we would be friends and they'd take me out and stuff because I didn't know anyone.
I should note, these people drank probably $50-$100 of alcohol every night, and smoked pot every night. Every. Night. I didn't drink or smoke. I was, even before the event I'm about to share, not a culture fit. These people were completely unlike anyone I'd ever spent time with.
I'm going to give them names to keep track; I do not remember their real names. We're going to call my roommate Tom and his girlfriend Anna.
A few weeks into the internship, the guy I'm subletting a bed from--Jake--comes back to town for the weekend. He doesn't need the bed back, he's spending the weekend at his girlfriend's--Mary. They all decide that they're going to get drunk and high and watch a movie, and I'm going to fifth wheel with them because I can't be left all alone, that wouldn't be nice.
So we all go to Mary's, the drinking has just started but the smoking hasn't yet, the guys are mostly chatting and catching up with each other, and then,
Jake: "Hey, fellas, how many girls have you basically raped? Not, like, actually raped, of course, none of us would ever actually rape a girl, but, you know, how many have you basically raped? Like, she was tired or drunk or whatever. I'll go, four. Mmmm... yeah, four."
Tom: "I don't know... four and a half?"
Jake: "Come on, man, how can you have a half a rape?"
Tom: "Well, Jen..."
Jake: "Oh yeah Jen! Okay, four and a half. And you?" gesturing at me.
I was a socially awkward virgin, and my "fight, flight, or freeze" kicked in at "freeze". I had been holding my breathe since he first confessed to four rapes, and said, "Zero," which confused him.
Jake: "Come on, man, everybody's got some, right?"
Me: "No."
And that's about when Mary got up to go cry in the bathroom. Yeah, if you didn't remember, this whole conversation happened in front of both of their girlfriends.
I don't think I said another word for the rest of the night.
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There is a rottenness to men, culturally, that I think is impossible to credibly deny. They were totally fine confessing to nine crimes (I am not entertaining "half a rape"), in front of their girlfriends, and were confused when I didn't have my own crimes to confess. This was normal for them, and their interactions with other men.
When I criticize that study, and the interpretations of it, I am doing so as a scientist that wants accurate scientific accounting. The better the science, the better we can fight rape culture. I am not defending men.
