ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac) (07/29/85)
[] Isaac wrote >I just realized something. There have been several women on the network >who have revealed that they were raped, and so there are probably quite >a few more who were raped but didn't want to talk about it in this kind >of a forum. It seems to me that this makes it pretty likely that there >are several men on the network who have raped women. I don't know what >the moral of this is. I was just reading net.women when this occured to >me, disturbing me enough to write this. As well it might. Since most rapists tend to repeat their crimes the number of women who have been raped probably greatly outnumbers the number of rapists, on the net or anywhere else. This lowers the odds somewhat. I'm not sure if a rapist would read net.women in any case. Also, there are many men who have forced a woman to have sex who do not regard themselves as rapists. (No flames please. *I* regard them as rapists.) However, when all is said and done I think it safe to say that in any large group of men, selected according to almost any criterion, there will be a small fraction of rapists or potential rapists. (There have been some frightening polls in which male college students were asked if they would commit rape provided only that they were guaranteed not to get caught. I believe the typical response is that between a quarter and a third of the men said yes. For some detailed references one could check out Susan Brownmiller's book.) The above should be kept in mind when urging insecure women to ask some anonymous male to act as an escort home from a party. It's not a good idea. -- "Don't argue with a fool. Ethan Vishniac Borrow his money." {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan Department of Astronomy University of Texas