Abstract
This paper examines the reactions of college men and women (primarily white) to scenarios depicting non-consensual intercourse between men and women with varying levels of prior intimacy. Women were more likely than men to consider the scenarios unacceptable, and the gender difference increased with the level of prior intimacy between the victim and the offender in the scenario. Respondents who reported knowing a rape victim were also more likely to consider the scenarios unacceptable, and this effect was significantly larger for men. We consider the implications of these results for understanding the role of salience of sexual assault and self-interest in shaping men's and women's reactions to non-consensual intercourse.
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We are grateful to Jane Allyn Piliavin for comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to the University of Wisconsin Department of Sociologys Ross Fund for support of data collection.
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Hattery Freetly, A.J., Kane, E.W. Men's and women's perceptions of non-consensual sexual intercourse. Sex Roles 33, 785–802 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01544779
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01544779