The Reason for Rape: Man's Motivation (2)

Hello, World.

       Since roughly 90 percent of rape is committed by men, where women are the victims, I felt it most appropriate to discuss a man's motivation in order to discover the reason for rape. One might say, well, maybe the man just wants to have sex. However, I really don't think it's that simple. Not only is rape illegal, it is strongly against morals that most people believe in. It also has the power to extremely damage a women as well as prevent her from  ever having proper sexual intercourse in the future. With so many reasons against the action of rape, a man's motivation must be discussion worthy. In the Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf discusses some possible motivations for men, but also what has shaped men's thoughts and encouraged men to commit sexual violence.
       Wolf states that men are men. They usually exhibit more sexually aroused behaviour and are constantly pursuing sexual actions. Although rape seems to be a very extreme way of satisfying sexual desire, Wolf tells us that Catharine MacKinnon, a research scientist, says that men's desire is similar to a "hydraulic model" and that rape "lets off steam" (137-138). However, this explanation for rape seems to be too simple.
       In the first post of this sequence, I discussed influences for rape. Similar to the media's influence on women depictions, men are affected by images in the modern day industry. Since women are increasingly portrayed as submissive and controlled, men obviously develop a sense that it is okay to commit sexual violence to a woman.
       In addition, Wolf describes a research about men's views about rape:

"In 1986, UCLA researcher Neil Malamuth reported that 30 percent of college men said they would commit rape if they could be sure of getting away with it...When the survey changed the word "rape" into the phrase "force a women into having sex", 58 percent said that they would" (165).

 This shows that men often don't even care about the moral implications, but that they are scared of getting caught. A scary fact, in case you didn't notice, is that these are intelligent, educated boys, who attend UCLA. They are not random psychos, they are ordinary people, like you and me.
       At this moment, I will continue my ideas into another blog post. I will continue discussing men wanting to get away with rape as well as the excuses they use to be able to develop a "if I can get away with it once, I can get away with it again" mentality to encourage them to rape more women.

Goodbye, World.