What Makes It Rape? A Lay Theories Approach to Defining Rape Among College Students

ABSTRACT

Recent changes in the U.S. Justice Department’s definition of rape have renewed its public attention. The present study applied a lay theories approach to the assessment of what college students currently think about rape. Participants (n = 272) defined rape in their own words; responses were qualitatively analyzed and prominent themes identified. Major themes included the physicality of rape and the victim’s response; minor themes included the potential for victims to be physically harmed and rape’s gendered nature, among others. These findings provide insight into how this demographic conceptualizes and theorizes rape, which is an important step in reducing its prevalence.

Notes

The state in which the research was conducted defines rape as a criminal offense if a person, intentionally or knowingly, (a) causes the penetration of the anus or sexual organ of another person by any means, without that person’s consent; (b) causes the penetration of the mouth of another person by the sexual organ of the actor, without that person’s consent; or (c) causes the sexual organ of another person, without that person’s consent, to contact or penetrate the mouth, anus, or sexual organ of another person, including the actor. This definition (adopted in 2005, last amended in 2017) closely aligns with the definition adopted by the Justice Department.

Although we do not endorse these stereotypes, both early and contemporary studies of perceptions of rape have found that a fairly stereotypical concept exists of what constitutes a “real” rape, that is, a sexual assault that is easily and widely perceived as constituting rape (e.g., Anderson, 2007; Estrich, 1987; Ryan, 1988). Features of the “real” rape (Ryan, 2011) include a male stranger suddenly approaching and assaulting a female victim at night, in a place that she unquestioningly has a right to be. She struggles, shouts, and makes every effort to prevent the assault but to no avail; the assailant overpowers her through extreme force or even through the use, threatened or real, of a weapon. She is abandoned after the assault, brutalized and badly beaten. She immediately reports the rape. Throughout this investigation, we contrast this stereotype of a “real” rape with the much more common acquaintance or “ambiguous” rape while recognizing the veracity of both experiences as constituting rape.