Introduction
Throughout the history of humankind, people think and interpret events differently. Social psychologists ascribe a person’s thinking and event interpretation to his/her behaviour. Personality, character, and attitude influence one’s behaviour, actions, and all these values result from how a person perceives things. On the other hand, people may act in a manner that seems better from their beliefs or the situations they get themselves in. Such behaviours and actions originating from the way people think underscore the attribution theory. With marital rape, there are two schools of thoughts; critics do not agree with marital rape while proponents attribute marital rape to some factors like illiteracy and/or low education, cultural myths surrounding women, and early marriages among others.
Attribution theory and marital rape
Although different people, cultures, and communities view marital rape from different points of view, it is true that many spouses in a marriage experience sexual abuse in the form of marital rape. In some marriages today, there is no consensual sexual affection and several underlying factors attribute to this marriage thorn. Many women in the society have inherent fear over men and think men have the right to sex. These misconceptions twinned with fear lead to many women thinking that husbands are entitled to sex any time they demand and have the right to force it if not availed willingly (Finkelhor & Kersti, 1985, p.123). The misguided thought drags many women into unwanted sex. The implication here is that, the non-consensual sex is not out of any enforcement or threat, but out of a certain way of misguided thinking because the women will definitely give in.
Illiteracy and/or little education among many females in many communities especially in developing countries, causes total economic dependency to the husbands; therefore, women hold that if they refuse the demands of their husband, they risk abandonment. According to Markus, “…these women most of them illiterate or very poorly educated are married at very young ages” (2008, p.246). The attribute of illiteracy and poor education to marital rape is also misdirected. When women fail to communicate in a marriage on the pretext of illiteracy and assume that the husband has all the rights, then this misconstrued thinking and perception leaves the woman without liberty on sexual issues. If couples could speak out their attitudes and feelings openly to one another then illiteracy would not attribute to marital rape.
Cultural myths associated with human sexuality contribute greatly on thinking of many people in different communities. In this case, people’s thinking depends on these myths and therefore their behaviour is inclined to the cultural myths. Personal character and attitudes of these people depend on the myths as well. To the surprise of McCammon and Knox, “some myths ascribe to the belief that when women say ‘yes’ they mean ‘no’ and good wives enjoy sex and therefore their duty to have sex throughout” (1998, p.356). This belief coins the people’s thinking to accept this lie, which remains an outright misconception. Couples under the forces of such myths have little to do other than comply with their cultural believes.
Conclusion
Attribution theory helps to clearly explicit and shade light on the controversial marital rape problems. Although critics hold that marital rape is nonexistent, it is clear that couples in some marriages do experience marital rape attributed for factors like illiteracy, poor economic backgrounds, myths surrounding the communities, and early marriages. Through these factors, people’s thinking and interpretation of events tend to influence their behaviours in their sexual lives and therefore end up committing ‘vices’ as marital rape.
Reference list
Finkelhor, D., & Kersti, Y. (1985). Licence to rape. New York: The free press.
Markus, F. (2008). Social psychology. New York: Wiley.
McCammon, S., & Knox, D. (1998). Making choice in sexuality, Research and Application. USA: Macmillan publishing.