On a more serious note

[andrewducker]

I've seen a couple of discussions recently of violence against women and attitudes towards it.  Someone (and I can't find the original comment) asked if things were so bad that women ought to be grateful when they _aren't_ raped.

And here's a report from South Africa, in which it seems that 25% of men admit to having raped someone.

That's 1 in 4 people _admitting_ to rape.

And if the rapist is over 25 then there's a 25% chance they have HIV.

I'm feeling distinctly shocked.

Comments

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised by that figure of 25%. The only thing that surprised me was that it related to South Africa, but that just exposes my ignorance of that particular country. I am certain that figure would be much higher in many other countries where women are treated as inferior beings, property or worse.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Channel 4 News did a bit on rape in SA a couple of months ago. It's horrifying.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

OK, so why? is there any plausibly scientific way (i.e not based on wooly speculation or rhetoric) of finding out why the countries that are particularly bad for this are particularly bad? or indeed, if things are getting worse or better over time?

[coffee-lifeform.livejournal.com]

Didn't someone recently (I thought it was you, andrewducker?), do a poll on their lj asking if people had been sexually assaulted? If so, what were the results?

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I find these quotes particularly interesting:

Professor Rachel Jewkes of the MRC, who carried out the research, said: "We have a very, very high prevalence of rape in South Africa. I think it is down to ideas about masculinity based on gender hierarchy and the sexual entitlement of men. It's rooted in an African ideal of manhood."

and

"We hear men saying, 'If Jacob Zuma can have many wives, I can have many girlfriends.' The hyper-masculine rhetoric of the Zuma campaign is going to set back our work in challenging the old model of masculinity."

I'm wondering if an African ideal of manhood equates to a black African ideal and, if so, how far the figures on rape varied by ethnicity and if there are any comparable statistics from the apartheid era: was the prevalence of black on black rape just as high only it wasn't such an issue under apartheid (i.e. let 'them' do what they want to one another, as long as they don't do it to 'us') or is a post-apartheid phenonenon that's especially difficult to engage with because of the race aspect.

[girl-onthego.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the report yet but given the number of women I know who have been raped or sexually assaulted, if it was fewer than 25% there would be an awful lot of men out there doing an awful lot of raping and sexual assaulting.

I'm not someone who puts herself at risk intentionally, a lot of the time, but I can rattle off a half-dozen times when I've been in a vulnerable (read: drunk) situation around men who I probably would have had a hard time fighting off. One of the most frightening times was when I walked home with a guy who started trying to get me to invite him in, then followed me halfway around the block when I said I had to go home and he had to go the other way, because I was getting a scary vibe. I have very little faith that if I wasn't nearly six feet tall he mightn't have pushed his luck farther.

I always feel protective of women who are smaller than me.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Do you have or does anyone else on here have the actual report and/or survey?

I think that it should perhaps be veted for mutant statistics.

The press release it's based on is here:- http://www.mrc.ac.za/gender/men_exec_smry.pdf.

Which fails to define how rape was defined, IE. is it the legal definition or the researchers own definition. Knowing that is key to understanding what this 27.6% of men in S.A. are admitting to. I'd also like to know how they vetted for comprehension.