Someone recently asked me in an accusatory/chiding tone why we didn’t have an article explaining to parents how to raise their boys with love and respect for women so they wouldn’t be rapists. I pointed her to this article on the “consent conversation” – which, she claimed, still put the burden on the girls (huh? It’s all about teaching boys to make extra freakin’ sure they have consent rather than pressing ahead in the face of “I didn’t hear no!”). At this point I gave up on that particular conversation. But later I realized we really don’t have a post explicitly telling parents the magic secret of how not to raise rapists (of either gender). Are you ready? This is it:
Don’t abuse your kids.
Um, yep, that’s it. See, like love and respect, rape is a learned behavior. People don’t become rapists because someone failed to teach them something; they become rapists because they’ve been taught abuse. [ETA: somehow a lot of commenters extrapolated from this statement that I'm suggesting all abused kids become rapists. That is absurd. The best stats we have, which aren't great but do ring true to my personal experience, suggest about 1 in 8 abused kids becomes abusive, but each abuser typically has more than a few victims, which is why abusers keep replenishing themselves despite how hard it actually is to make a human being into an abuser.]
As it’s impossible to collate data on what motivates people to rape, and you can’t trust what rapists tell you, here’s the best possible evidence available. A number of qualified sources believe most rapists have survived abuse (PDF link – relevant quote: “As with most sexual abusers, most rapists were also sexually abused as children.”) in their early years.* Former FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood says this in Dark Dreams: A Legendary FBI Profiler Examines Homicide and the Criminal Mind:
My research on serial rape supports the view that a large number of sexual criminals have been childhood victims of physical, sexual or psychological abuse.
Keep in mind that “psychological abuse” entails neglect and headgames, a type of abuse that many people still aren’t schooled in recognizing. So when I say “don’t abuse your kids” I’m also saying “don’t strategically withhold affection to make your child unnaturally dependent on your approval, which you dangle like a carrot, so that he or she gets the idea all people of your gender are evil and should be punished.” [ETA: This is not a reference to mothers specifically, as some commenters assumed. See here.]
Of course he’s talking about the sort of rapists (often rapist-murderers) the FBI chases. Date rapists, for example, are probably very under-reported. Can we assume these rapists think the same way as the Ted Bundy type? I believe so, and here’s why. I’ve asked the following series of questions of a number of people over the years:
- Have you ever experienced the urge to hit someone? Most people answer yes. It’s a natural animal urge.
- Have you ever experienced the urge to kill someone? Most people answer yes. Again, that’s our animal nature.
- Have you ever experienced the urge to have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you as they protest and try to get away from you and come to loathe you for what you’re doing to them? No one’s ever answered this one yes. In fact, their faces typically wrinkle as they try to imagine wanting to do such a thing. Wanting to have sex with someone who doesn’t want you back – that’s familiar to most of us. But the idea of having sex with them anyway, over their protests, making them hate you and killing any hope of reciprocal feelings – that wouldn’t be satisfying. It just doesn’t track. In fact, it would be icky and weird, and then you’d be scared of the consequences afterward, right? (This has nothing to do with rape fantasies, which can sound all sorts of sick and still not indicate psychological problems.)
The reason why I describe rape so much more fully than I describe murder is: a human being can, in a passion, pick up a blunt object and murder someone in mere seconds, before he has time to return to his senses and think about what he’s doing. Hence, the concept of premeditated and unpremeditated murder. But while rape may begin with an unpremeditated impulse, it takes thinking to figure out how you’re going to subdue someone long enough to complete the act. It takes time to establish and maintain control. Overwhelming impulses don’t allow for that sort of cogitation, begin to fade within seconds, and involve face-to-face interaction with the victim in a way murder need not.
Again, rape is a learned behavior. It’s about enjoying or being profoundly indifferent to someone else’s suffering. It’s about remarkable levels of entitlement and the failure to recognize another human being as another human being. It’s about a gaping hole inside the rapist that nothing will ever fill. It’s way beyond a lack of love and respect. It’s beyond ignorance.
That’s why I wrote the above-linked article on consent. Because the only “rapists” who can be stopped by being taught something are inexperienced young boys are getting conflicting messages about, say, whether it’s rape or not if everybody’s equally intoxicated. There is such a thing as genuine confusion about consent, and nice people are subject to it, too. The rapist personality goes looking for “confusing situations” and finds them over and over again and conveniently never learns a non-predatory response to them.
By all means, teach your kids to love and respect others – particularly their social “inferiors.” But if you think this information will help the parents of future rapists to correct their parenting mistakes, you’ve got another think coming. The sort of people who raise rapists are not listening and can’t be told.
*Update, June 13, 2010: in the interests of brevity, I left some points out of this article originally which apparently weren’t as obvious as I thought. First, while most abusers have themselves been abused in some form, it does not follow that most abused kids will become abusive, and at no point did I say or imply this. In fact, the opposite is true. There are few good stats available, largely because so much abuse goes unreported (and non-physical abuse isn’t even legally actionable) but one study found that only 1 in 8 sexually abused boys go on to abuse children themselves. Extrapolating from this, I suspect the majority of abused children do not become abusers.
Second, just because an abuser has most likely been a victim does not mean you must feel sorry for them, or forgive them, or in any way think they are not a monster. Rapists make choices like everyone else. If they can choose who they will strike, when and there to do it without getting caught, etc., then they can choose to get help, or turn themselves in, or commit suicide. The fact they chose instead to make a career of rape is entirely their responsibility, no matter what was done to them. They should be scorned and shunned from society – who knows, it might even give them an incentive to start seeking help.
Third, abuse can be extremely subtle, so never assume you know for sure someone was not abused. Logically, you can’t prove a negative. Practically, headgames and emotional neglect are rarely apparent to outsiders. This might seem to provide specious support for Hazelwood’s conclusion that most sex offenders have been abused in some way, but consider that Hazelwood and his colleagues are more alert to the signs of abuse than most law enforcement personnel, most feminists, most people, other than those in the psychology field.
Fourth, teaching your son that he’s your Golden Boy and can do no wrong and anyone who says otherwise is just a nasty pile of envy to the extent that he does not develop empathy or conscience is a form of abuse. It produces adults with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the disorder Hazelwood believes the vast majority of sex offenders have. These people often function very well in society, succeeding in business or government or the arts, sometimes possessing what seems to be a perfect family but is actually more like a set of hostages manipulated through terrorism and threats into supporting the NPDs image of himself as Mr. Nice Guy. But they are severely damaged people.
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I’m not sure they’re intended to be, but I don’t think your questions are fair analogues. Because even as I might answer yes to the first two – and really, I’d have to think about the killing part –, I would not answer yes if the question was as detailed as the third one.
e.g.: “Have you ever felt the urge to kill someone who is trying to escape from you with all their might, screaming their head off and bleeding profusely?” Or something to that effect. I’m not a (nonconsensually) violent guy, but I guess there would be people who’d have had detailed fantasies about beating someone up, at least.
Other than that, though, I concur wholeheartedly. It’d be my dream for everybody to grow up cherishing the Declaration of Human Rights, humanist ideals, and so on, but sadly, that is a utopian idea that will never be true. As you said, the sort of people who raise rapists can’t be told.
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
Patrick, I get your point. Constructing those questions is tricky because we’re all so familiar with hitting and killing that we don’t need description there. But when you ask young men if they’ve ever wanted to rape anybody, they’ll often say “yes” and describe a situation where they wanted someone so badly they felt they were going insane, because they think that’s what rape is – lust driving you to this desperate act. But as soon as I sketch the victim’s horror, revulsion, loathing and misery, they’re turned off. No, they wouldn’t force sex if it meant all that happening. Because even if they don’t really care about her as a human, they don’t want to be that monster.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
There’s so much advice out there for parents of girls… much of it unhelpful. It’s good to see this common sense advice for all parents.
I recently heard an NPR interview with a researcher who interviewed date rapists. Contrasted with our picture of date rapists as normal dudebros who just had a few too many and aren’t to blame… most of them sounded exactly like stranger rapists: completely cognizant of their crime and even proud. This fits in perfectly with what you’re saying, Jennifer.
Pamela(Quote) (Reply)
The point about date-rape being tied to entitlement really strikes me, because from what I’ve seen, plenty of guys (and girls) think of getting their “mark” drunk or otherwise inebriated is an effective and more-or-less ethical way of “loosening up” said person’s willingness to consent. From that perspective, I don’t think that rapist would be considering the rape’s consequences, or even specifically power over that person so much as power over women/men in general and, naturally, the victim’s fault.
The problem lies in the fact that there are a lot of freakin’ people who feel super-entitled and privileged to be able to “get lucky” whenever they influence that to be so, and I’m not so sure that’s tied into previous abuse. For sure, parents, or somebody, is passing along a warped sense of entitlement or superiority to these rapists and would-be rapists, as well as a distinct lack of empathy and consideration for one’s fellow man/woman, but technically that’s not so much psychological abuse as a grand psychological gesture of disservice to humanity in general. Not to mention irresponsible parenting/mentoring/what have you.
nijireiki(Quote) (Reply)
Pamela, thanks for passing that info along. It does tie in.
Nijireiki, psychiatry defines raising a kid with *that* warped a sense of entitlement AS a form of psychological/emotional abuse – it’s actually not as easy to do as one might think, nor is it done accidentally. The APA defines personality disorders as “an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it”. Personality disorders (the height of neurosis, and incurable) are believed to be the result of abuse. If you’ve managed to raise a child whose sense of entitlement enables him to commit what he knows is a crime (regardless of the culture’s wink-nudge messages), then you’ve raised a child who has a personality disorder. Hazelwood believes most sexual criminals have narcissistic personality disorder, to be specific, and this:
Is a summary definition of that condition. And the type of abuse it typically comes from is the strategically withheld affection headgame I mentioned.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer, thanks for clarifying. I just wasn’t sure if that kind of psychosis was actually labeled as such, and training people into it was actually considered abuse, and I didn’t want to make assumptions that that was the case.
nijireiki(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer, I was worried about what you were going to say until you said “Don’t abuse your kids.” Whew! And so straightforward, too.
It’s not just abuse (and neglect) as defined by law. It’s also just touching your kids without permission, and not giving them the right to say no. If they feel powerless and humiliated, they may well make up their minds to be the one doing the touching down the road. Alice Miller talks about that in her books.
Richard Rhodes describes Lonnie Athens’ research on dangerous violent criminals in his book “Why They Kill”. Serious trigger warning on the interviews Athens did with the criminals. Abuse and frightened powerlessness when young was part of the findings there, too.
And attachment may also come into it. Empathy normally appears by the second birthday, but in some people it just doesn’t seem to happen. And they don’t all become criminals.
Isn’t it amazing how all these experts seem to converge? I love it.
Anemone(Quote) (Reply)
Implicitly in your section on child raising, the audience is female. However, if learned behaviour is a key component (and I think you’re right that it is), maybe male parental behaviour is just as important?
Dom Camus(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer: I don’t want to harp on the questions, especially since I don’t think it’s that important, but an example came to my mind and so I’ll share it
I’ve done my share of role-playing games, and I distinctly remember a campaign of ours where we wanted to be “bad guys”. Now, rpgs always contain a good number of violence and killing, but this time, the GM decided to do it justice and describe it in at least somewhat realistic term: people begging us not to hurt them anymore, and so on. After two sessions, we were so creeped out we had to play something else.
So perhaps all the violence and killing that we consider in our heads is kind of cartoony and bereft of consequences, too. That’s why ads like this one below (warning, very graphic) are still effective:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0ukd7xTQ9g
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
nijireiki, you actually touch on a point which has bothered me for years: narcissistic behavior is idealized and admired in the US – at least the version of it where the person will trample anyone to get a little more status, wealth, etc. It’s getting increasingly difficult to see a parent who raises kids to be narcissistic as entirely irresponsible, because that IS how one gets ahead in American life, and parents are supposed to raise their kids to succeed. We need to correct this on a widespread cultural level before we become a fully narcissistic culture.
Implicitly in your section on child raising, the audience is female.
I’m mystified by your response. How does the advice “don’t abuse kids” NOT refer to everyone who is a parent?
However, if learned behaviour is a key component (and I think you’re right that it is), maybe male parental behaviour is just as important?
Of course. Fathers abuse children daily. How could their parental behavior be any less important than women’s?
Anemone, I agree the law falls way short of defining all forms of abuse. And abusive personalities can often read the law and figure out what they can most likely get away with.
TheOtherPatrick, let me put it this way, because you’re talking about roleplaying (lots of people enjoy roleplay rape with consensual partners), and I’m talking about reality urges, not fantasies.
The distinction the questions make is that rape is never a “crime of passion.” Murder (and hitting) can be over in a second and performed from a distance, which is why a person with conscience and empathy can still find herself shooting someone in a heated moment, then thinking, “OMG, what have I done?” Rape, however, takes time. Subduing and controlling the victim takes effort. You always have time to reflect, “OMG, what am I doing?” while you’re still doing it.
So I think it actually IS an appropriate comparison to leave the murder question short, but include more detail on the rape one. Because the whole point is that rape is a very intimate crime for the assailant. The type of mind that can derive pleasure from such intimate torture is a whole different psychology than the mind that’s can only comfortably fathom hurting someone in a way that’s quick and clean.
Which is why I say: either you’re capable of rape or you’re not. Most of us would find it totally sickening. That’s why scorned men tend to get revenge on women who reject them by dating their friends, spreading embarrassing lies about them, etc., rather than by raping them. The man who rapes a woman because she wouldn’t have sex with him is coming from a VERY different place.
Re: the ad you linked. I may have to blog on that. I like the idea behind it, but am displeased that it’s not one but four blond teenage girls (triple code for stupid bitchez) doing the texting and Mr. Honky that shows up and takes charge of the situation. I see middle-aged men texting or dialing or something that’s driving-contraindicated as often as I see any other demographic doing it. Just last year or so, a middle-aged male Amtrak driver was too busy texting a couple of teenage boys to notice something, and a huge train wreck ensued.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
“am displeased that it’s not one but four blond teenage girls (triple code for stupid bitchez) doing the texting”
I see your point on the blond thing, but the reason it’s teenage girls is because the ad was made for schools. (The full version is 30 minutes)
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
Yes, but here’s how this would play in an American school.
Girls watch it and get the message: texting and driving is a bad mix.
Boys watch it, snicker “Dumb bitch” and think briefly about how girls are too fucking stupid to text and drive. BUT NOT BOYS, NO SIR, and off they go, texting while they drive.
Maybe it’s different in Britain, but American boys are carefully trained from birth to think if they see a girl/woman on film living her life, it doesn’t pertain to boys/men. That’s why the film industry won’t make movies where women do or speak of anything NOT directly pertaining to a man or men.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
That’s certainly not how it seems to have played in Welsh schools. It’s also become a hit with American web browsers (and other countries) and there’s talk of bringing it to American schools, and I doubt that’s all from women browsing.
It’s a pretty brutal video – the only way to get worse is if they filmed an actual car crash – I don’t see many people snickering, unless they’ve been forewarned and are going in intending to snicker: the natural reaction to seeing severe brutality is to wince and the video deliberately doesn’t give the audience a breather.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
I’ve heard the obsession with macho-ness is considerably more predominant in American culture than in European and British. I obviously know more about American culture than any other, but I do watch a fair amount of British TV and I’m frequently surprised at the humanness of important and respected male characters. We don’t get much of that on this side of the big drink.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
America does seem to be more pro-macho than Britain, but I’d be genuinely surprised if it’s to the extent that teenage boys are going to privately* snicker at and shrug off seeing a gory car crash and injured people screaming.
* “Privately” because when they’re with their mates, both in Wales and in the US, there’d be a good chance they’ll downplay how much it bothered them.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
That’s right, and I was referring to their public reaction with the snickering. BUT I’m referring to their private reaction when I say I suspect they’d file this under “that’s dumb blondes for you” and not comprehend that it could happen to them, too.
In any case, by not even including a dark-haired girl, the spot potentially reinforces the “dumb blonde” stereotype. And plays into the Blonds and Blood issue we talked about last week. But, as is always the case when I critique media here, I’m not saying the spot is evil or these things ruin it. It definitely has impact as is.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
…from what I’ve seen, plenty of guys (and girls) think of getting their “mark” drunk or otherwise inebriated is an effective and more-or-less ethical way of “loosening up” said person’s willingness to consent.
From what I’ve seen, this is considered a cultural norm. Hell it seems almost standard for first dates or the first date in which you hope will end in sex. And most people don’t think of it in terms of “loosening up” consent so much as relaxing enough to make things less awkward. But…there are huge issues obviously here. Like, okay maybe after one glass of wine, the person is still in control of their own ability to consent knowingly, but when does that control go? I don’t mean to reinforce the so called “gray rape” here (which I hate hate hate) so much as state how much this is a cultural norm, probably because we, as a culture, are still so weirded out by sex that we feel like “loosening up” is needed prior to the act.
amymccabe(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer: great point on the questions, didn’t consider that. Thanks!
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
Implicitly in your section on child raising, the audience is female.
I’m mystified by your response. How does the advice “don’t abuse kids” NOT refer to everyone who is a parent?
However, if learned behaviour is a key component (and I think you’re right that it is), maybe male parental behaviour is just as important?
Of course. Fathers abuse children daily. How could their parental behavior be any less important than women’s?
I had problems with this, too, because your actual wording was ““don’t strategically withhold affection to make your child unnaturally dependent on your approval, which you dangle like a carrot, so that he or she gets the idea all people of your gender are evil and should be punished.” (My italics). Yes, male on male rape does exist, but this is specifically singling out women as being responsible “not to raise rapists”. I don’t buy that.
I haven’t read the linked page yet, I plan to because I’m very interested as a feminist parent to do anything and everything I can to counter the rape culture (which I think is as much to blame as parents – and much recent research, I believe, says that a teenage kid’s peers are very, very important in their development, as well as the surrounding culture.)
Helen(Quote) (Reply)
male on male rape does exist, but this is specifically singling out women as being responsible “not to raise rapists”.
No, it’s not, unless one infers a context limited solely to rapes committed by adult men against adult women. I ended the first paragraph of the article with specifically with:
how not to raise rapists (of either gender)
Then in the paragraph you’re talking about, I said:
so that he or she gets the idea all people of your gender are evil
This is not to be reduced to the mother’s gender. I said rapists of either gender because children are raped at least as often as adult women. They are raped by adults of both genders.
A lot of serial rapists and child molesters seem to target a particular gender because they were abused by their parent or caregiver of that gender. So a father emotionally abusing a daughter could produce a female rapist of little boys just like a mother emotionally abusing a son could produce a male rapist of women and/or girls. Interestingly, a father emotionally abusing a son could produce a rapist of boys OR adult women, because this society encourages men to take out their self-loathing on women. A daughter emotionally abused by her mother could also end up a rapist of girls.
As for rape culture and peers: I don’t think culture or peers can make a person into a rapist if the person is coming from supportive parents who have modeled compassion and empathy for him or her. I do agree they contribute substantially to misogyny, but the vast majority of even hard-core misogynists are not rapists. In a way, what I’m saying in this post is good news for parents – if parents are making any effort to raise a child to have compassion and empathy, I’d say there’s almost zero chance of the child becoming an abuser of any sort (the “almost” leaves room for the possibility someone can have physiological brain issues that cause empathy and conscience not to develop despite good nurturing). There are all sorts of other things a well-raised child might do wrong, even horribly wrong, but it takes a specially twisted personality to engage in rape. Except in issues of confused consent and ignorance in date rape, which is what the linked post addresses.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
“Have you ever experienced the urge to have sex with someone who doesnâ��t want to have sex with you as they protest and try to get away from you and come to loathe you what youâ��re doing to them? No oneâ��s ever answered this one yes.”
Have you ever tried replacing the last part with “eventually start enjoying it”? I’m curious if that would change the answers, given that trope’s ubiquity…
Titanis(Quote) (Reply)
Titanis, no I’ve never taken it in a direction like that, since my goal was to give them an idea what rape is really like for the person committing it (which is: not cool at all, unless you get off on power and victims’ suffering). I’m thinking your version would get a different answer for two reasons: lots of decent people have harmless rape fantasies in which everyone ends up enjoying the encounter, and actual rapists often convince themselves their victims enjoyed the encounter. The trick would be distinguishing between the two personalities among those who answer “yes.”
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
This analogy is so fucking skewed.
Do you know how many rapists were raised perfectly fine without abuse or anger and still turned out to be rapists???? Do you know how many people who WERE abused as a child, who turned out to be decent human beings?
Being a rapists is a mental disorder, it has nothing to do with the way you’re raised. It’s like people with schizophrenia didn’t learn it, their brain’s chemical balance was all fucked up. This is some bullshit.
Rape is learned.. what the fuck? You done ate the good pills lady.
meme(Quote) (Reply)
I approved the above comment as an example of the sort of ignorance with which we’re dealing. Meme’s comment starkly contradicts the facts (several of which I cited and linked), and yet meme is convinced meme knows the truth.
It is true that something like 7/8 abused kids don’t grow up to be abusers, according to estimates. But that’s neither here nor there, and we’ve discussed it before around here anyway.
The rest of meme’s point is dead wrong. There are brain issues which can predispose people to violence, but even sociopaths – born or raised – are not forced to be rapists by their nature – they make choices about when, where and in what manner they will harm people. There are brain injuries a person can sustain that will make them behave oddly, but they’ve never been associated with rape, per se.
There is no chemical imbalance that makes you a rapist – delusions can make you violent, but that violence does not take the form of rape unless you make that choice. There is no biochemical mental disorder that will make someone a rapist (and if there was, it would have to be far more common in men than women, and wouldn’t that be something scientists would be studying?). There may be some rape apologist blog saying what meme’s repeating, but anyone who’s read any serious factual literature on the topic of rape would know this is all absurd.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I’m not sure I agree that childhood abuse and neglect is the main thing that creates rapists. Abuse can seriously mess with a person’s sense of personal boundaries and self esteem but, from what I’ve gathered, the result of that seems more often to be adult victims who are more likely to be victimized further. If there are studies on it, I’d be very interested to see them.
My guess though is that rape is a product of plain old-fashioned sexism. Enculturated male supremacy and marginalization of girls. Boys are taught from the start that they’re the real important people and girls and all things girlie are embarrassing and less-than (see “runs like a girl,” “cry like a girl,” etc.). And then when boys reach their teenage years it suddenly becomes mandatory for them to “get” a girlfriend, where a girlfriend is an object that must be acquired as physical evidence that one’s not gay, which is to be like a girl, which is a shameful, terrible thing.
The way boys are typically raised, along with plenty of influences outside the home, prevents boys from empathizing with girls or seeing them as fully human like themselves. It sets girls up as objects that boys have to conquer and acquire to prove their “manliness” (which is like the greatest most important thing EVAR!).
So I can see, or have seen, boys who are raised by attentive and loving (to their sons; maybe not so much their daughters) parents growing up to be men who’ve internalized the idea that female people aren’t really people and that female bodies are objects of conquest.
That brain chemistry argument is total BS though.
snobographer(Quote) (Reply)
Speaking of sociopathy, I’ve read that sociopathy is usually a product of childhood neglect. It’s not a chemical imbalance but a learned personality disorder. One sociopath I had the misfortune of knowing had a formative experience as a small child where he packed up some food and camped out in the woods near his house for several days. When he returned, it was apparent that neither of his parents had any idea he’d been gone. Otherwise, though, on the surface, his parents were Ozzy and Harriet.
I think a situation like that would lead a kid to believe on some level that what other people don’t notice doesn’t really happen, which is like the MO of the sociopath: my reality is the only reality and as long as I don’t get caught, and everything looks right on the surface, my actions have no consequences.
Not to get OT, but American Psycho is a really good profile of sociopathy – also, the role of societal privilege in fomenting sociopathy.
I don’t think all – or even most – rapists are sociopaths though. Dudebros who rape are usually capable of empathizing with other dudes. True sociopaths can’t even do that.
snobographer(Quote) (Reply)
Response to your first comment:
I provided sources for my argument. There aren’t really enough studies on what causes rape; most focus on the motivation for rape (what the rapist is feeling) rather than on what makes a person a rapist to begin with. The few studies on cause find that most incarcerated rapists claim to have been abused, but why believe an incarcerated rapist about anything?
That’s why I went with the conclusions of an FBI profiler: Hazelwood is recognized as an expert on sexual criminals, and his discipline required him to construct profiles that accurately described the perpetrator well enough for authorities to recognize him when they found him. His success rate gives his conclusions substantial weight. Additionally, profiling has a few things in common with forensic psychology, which is a far better way to determine if a rapist who claims to have been abused (or not) really was (or really wasn’t). Abuse leaves “tells” which a trained psychoanalyst knows how to recognize.
Hazelwood mentions elsewhere in the above-linked book that people always put forth the theory that rape is lust-driven when he lectures. His response is: the oldest rape victim he’s seen was 92, and the youngest was 2 hours old. Does that sound like objects of lust?
I think it also applies to your theory. Do people objectify babies and think they’re unimportant? Lord, no: people who couldn’t give a shit if you raped 1000 women will hang you themselves if they learn you hurt a child. No, what rapists are seeing in babies is helplessness rather than objectification. Also, elderly women are frequent targets of younger rapists – again, not because they see them as objects of conquest, but because they see them as easy targets.
So I can see, or have seen, boys who are raised by attentive and loving (to their sons; maybe not so much their daughters) parents growing up to be men who’ve internalized the idea that female people aren’t really people and that female bodies are objects of conquest.
And if a family treats daughters differently than sons, that IS emotional abuse that sets boys up to become rapists or violent toward women. Also, being “attentive” and “loving” is how molesters typically treat the child they’re raping.
You believe you have seen well-parented men turn out to be rapists, but emotional abuse is frequently very well-hidden, even from extended family. Neglect is even harder to detect. Also, while they may not have been harmed by family, they might have been abused by someone else – teacher, coach, friend of the family, local priest, etc.
Additionally, your theory focuses strictly on men raping women. You don’t account for, say, women raping children. It happens more than you might think.
Now. Everything you describe contributes to a rape culture in which rapists feel society has tacitly given them permission to hurt certain people. But does this atmosphere alone make anyone rape anyone else? If so, any of us could become rapists at any minute. Thankfully, there’s another component that plays into it, and that component is the learning of abuse.
ETA: “from what I’ve gathered, the result of that seems more often to be adult victims who are more likely to be victimized further.”
7 out of 8 abused kids do not grow up to be abusers. Unfortunately, one abuser typically hurts more than one person – sometimes dozens. The fact that most abused kids don’t grow up to hurt anyone does not prove that abuse is not the cause of further abuse. That’s the wrong framework for the question.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
To your second comment:
Sociopathy is *defined* as a learned personality disorder. One of two, actually: narcissistic personality disorder or anti-social personality disorder. Hazelwood believes most sexual criminals are narcissistic personality disorders, which means most are sociopaths*. It makes sense: one of the hallmark traits of a sociopath is the ability to mimic empathy well enough to fool anyone who’s not trained either by study or by, say, growing up with a sociopath. How do you know your dudebro rapist is really empathizing with his pals?
*There’s no question most of the ones Hazelwood dealt with are NPDs. He’s guesstimating when it comes to the sort of “ordinary” rapists the FBI wouldn’t deal with, but his logic is sound. It takes a very specific psychology to be comfortable with being a monster.
One more point on your earlier comment: I know a lot of people who think of homeless folks as objects to be despised, but I don’t think any of them would actually hurt a homeless person. There’s a big gap between thinking someone is worthless, and thinking, “Hurting them is something I want to do.”
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I haven’t read Hazelwood’s book, but from the Amazon reviews, I get the impression it’s more about Ted Bundy/Jeffrey Dahmer head-in-the-freezer types than it is about your typical date-rapist or frat party gang-rapist. Do you think the guy in Hazelwood’s book who mutilated that convenience store worker shares a similar mentality with, say, the 2007 DeAnza College baseball team? Personally, I’m not sure, but there’s probably some interesting parallels. Which makes the general public’s defense of the DeAnza players all the more disturbing (as if it wasn’t bad enough already).
Just to clarify, by “loving and attentive” parents, I mean valuing what their sons say and do, spending time with them, treating them like whole people – and at the same time maybe tossing in the occasional joke about dumb blonds or women drivers or sissy boys and not showing the same level of interest in their daughters’ concerns or activities (if they have daughters). It’s dysfunctional, but I don’t know that I’d characterize that as abuse. Not to the golden boy anyway.
Also, as a victim of childhood abuse, I tend to get a bit defensive about the meme that victims grow up to be abusers, so that might be getting in the way of my understanding. I’ll admit though that I do have issues with people and relationships as a result of my abuse, which are too elaborate to get into.
snobographer(Quote) (Reply)
Do you think the guy in Hazelwood’s book who mutilated that convenience store worker shares a similar mentality with, say, the 2007 DeAnza College baseball team?
As I said in the article, Ted Bundy and your typical date rapist do share the same mentality. Group sexual assault taps into mob psychology, which is a whole other huge topic.
I don’t know that I’d characterize that as abuse. Not to the golden boy anyway.
You need to read up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder. “Golden boy” is a textbook term for the attitude involved in the often very subtle abuse that creates male NPDs.
Also, as a victim of childhood abuse, I tend to get a bit defensive about the meme that victims grow up to be abusers, so that might be getting in the way of my understanding.
It’s a horseshit meme left over from bad 80s research spread by a lazy media. I too am a survivor of childhood abuse (by an NPD, by the way), and it made me an activist rather than an abuser.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
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