Power, Sex, and Rape Myth Acceptance: Testing Two Models of Rape Proclivity

By Kristine M. Chapleau; Debra L. Oswald

The concepts of power and sex are closely associated in our society. A common example is describing sex as a conquest or as a surrender, which suggests that sex is about one person overpowering another. Similarly, describing being taken advantage of in a business trans- action as ‘‘getting screwed’’ sexualizes power transac- tions. The connection between power and sex is most apparent and serious in acts of rape. Indeed, earlier theories of sexual aggression examined if rapists are motivated by either power or sex (e.g., Brownmiller, 1975; Ellis, 1991; Thornhill & Thornhill, 1992). More recent theories, however, have examined how perpetrators are motivated by the combination of power and sex at the implicit (Bargh, Raymond, Pryor, & Strack, 1995; Kamphuis, de Ruiter, Janssen, & Spiering, 2005; Zurbriggen, 2000) and explicit (Malamuth, Linz, Heavey, Barnes, & Acker, 1995) levels of cognitive processing.

Publisher Routledge, 25 January 2010, 14p.