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From: cja@lzwi.UUCP (C.E.JACKSON)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: \"Why not send the men home?\"
Message-ID: <160@lzwi.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 12:07:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: lzwi.160
Posted: Tue Jun  4 12:07:26 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 21:34:04 EDT
References: <1848@decwrl.UUCP> <423@sftri.UUCP> <1467@reed.UUCP>, <431@sftri.UUCP> <398@rtech.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems, Lincroft
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Summary: Statistical re-evaluation

> Just because a large number of crimes go unreported doesn't mean that
> the crimes are committed by a relatively large (relative to what???)
> number of men.  It seems quite likely to me that the men who commit
> the reported crimes also commit the unreported ones.

This is not likely to be true in domestic violence cases--which
occurs in between one out of six to one out of ten cases.
Domestic violence is very widespread in this country & affects
all socioeconomic groups.

> As for the statistic that 33% of male college freshmen would commit rape
> if they thought they could get away with it, I have never heard it before.
> How was the figure arrived at? 
> It just seems incredible to me that anyone would actually say 
> this about himself.
The statistic was cited in PSYCHOLOGY TODAY about two years
ago. I don't know how the question was phrased, but the
statistic came out of a study on male attitudes towards money,
sex and dating. The statistic was somewhat higher, actually,
when the respondents were asked about their attitudes towards
women when the men payed for the dates--closer to 50% of the
men felt that paying for the date entitled them to some kind
of sex, whether the woman wanted it or not. The questioners
then asked if, in this instance, the men would rape the women
if they (the men) thought they could get away with it & most
of those men said "yes." (The original article did not contain the
exact figures & even if it had, I DID read it a few years ago.
I just remembered being struck by the idea that one third of
the men interviewed would rape women if they could escape the
legal consequences. Also, I don't know if the questioners used
the word "rape" or a less pejorative phrase like "make the
woman have sex with you.") The article did point out that the
investigators themselves were surprised by the findings, if
that's any consolation to you.

Also, the article talked about the extremely high incidence of
date rape--apparently over half of the rapes in this country
are date rapes and those are the kind least likely to be
reported. I don't know--it could be the same doing it again &
again, but I suspect that the high incidence of date rape
suggests that rapists are much more widely distributed
throughout the population than you are willing to acknowledge.

> *Some* men rape and are self-righteous about it.  I contend that most men
> do not rape, and don't think of rape as a good thing.

There are often gaps between what people think & what they do.
Much of the evidence about violent men shows that they felt
they had some right or justification for what they did--men
who beat their wives often feel that it is their right to
"reprimand" or "correct" their wives--they don't see what
they're doing as "abuse," or at least some part of their mind
does not see what they're doing as abuse. 
As the article on date rape suggests, men also think they have
certain rights in dating situations & some number of the men
who rape their dates may not see what they are doing as rape
per se, but as exercising their "rights." In other cases, such
as raping strangers, the rapists may be more likely to think
about venting their hostilities than how they are actually
doing it.
Also, I suspect that most men don't think about rape, period.
One value to saying (however flippantly) that MEN should be
forced to stay home is that it does make at least some of them
think about rape & how the fear of it curtails women's freedom.

C. E. Jackson
...ihnp4!lznv!cja (for reasons too silly to explain,the address above 
[lzwi] is incorrect--don't use it)