Background/Introduction
In the light of the popular social movement #MeToo around the world, there has been significantly greater transparency surrounding the acts of sexual harassment and sexual violence against women by men. In 2017, the Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 20% of women experience sexual assault since the age of 16, with 3.1% of women (510,000) experiencing it annually. Meanwhile, only 15% of incidents of sexual violence are reported despite 90% of victims knowing the perpetrator personally (Rape Crisis, 2020). Therefore, evidence points to the prevalence of the crime but due to underreporting and other factors, perpetrators are not always punished, and it is necessary to investigate the causes behind sexual violence, which primarily occurs by men assaulting a womanÑŽ
Sexual violence can be defined as an unwanted sexual act or activity from one person to another, ranging from rape and sexual assault to abuse, sexual exploitation, trafficking, forced marriage, and even genital mutilation. Sexual violence can be perpetrated by anyone, both men and women, strangers and familiar, but statistics indicate that men, particularly those whom the victim personally knows, are more likely to commit the crime (World Health Organization, n.d.). It has been long established that sexual violence goes beyond sexual gratification itself, but is a result of unequal power equations, real and perceived between men and women. Cultural factors and values play an important role, as well as socio-centric and ego-centric cultures, present different roles and representations between genders and attitudes toward sexuality (Kaira and Bhugra, 2013). Furthermore, sexual offenders most often suffer from a compromised capacity to empathize with victims, viewing women as objects rather than humans and reflecting a deeply disturbing psychological crisis (emotional neglect, childhood abuse, or even sexual violence as well) unto the criminal act as a method of establishing control and power (Greif, 2018). This paper will include discussions regarding elements of gender roles and relations, social class, and behavioral psychology that are inherent to the perpetration of sexual violence by men.
Literature review
Literature on the topic is diverse, encompassing a variety of potential motivations ranging from biological to cognitive and social stimuli. Toates, Smid, and den Berg (2017) present an incentive-motivation model to sexual violence which suggests examining the biopsychological processes to normal behavior. They argue that sexual violence arises as a combination between sexual motivation, sensation seeking, and some level of dominance/aggression motivations. The excitatory part of the motivation is rooted in brain dopamine levels, and sexually violent behavior occurs when excitation overpowers inhibition. The model states that motivation can be aroused by incentive stimuli, the triggering capacity of which is controlled by the internal state.
Seto (2017) similarly presents a motivation-facilitation model for sexual offending which highlights the primary traits of paraphilia, high sex drive, and intense mating effort as the main motivations for sexual offenses. When combined with personality traits such as antisocial demeanor and state of mind (intoxication), these factors can facilitate action on motivation when an opportunity arises. Sexual offending occurs when one of the three dimensions can be categorized as a risk factor: atypical sexuality (paraphilias including sexual sadism and exhibitionism, antisociality (individual differences associated with criminal behaviors or lifestyle instability, and interpersonal deficits (social skill difficulties and relationship problems). However, Seto (2017) recognizes that there may be distinguishable differences between first-time and repeat offenders, influencing onset and persistence factors. Such as, childhood sexual abuse is associated with the onset of sexual violence but not recidivism in offending.
Semerikova et al. (2019) further build on this, identifying that sexual violence can be either sadistic or masochistic. There is an inherent connection between lust and sexual violence, driving actions similar to that would be seen in anger. Similar to maniacal exaltation, transforming violent desires into destruction and murder, sexual exaltation translates to the attempts to relieve such sexual tension in situations where the act is not implied. Both sadistic and masochistic standpoints are characterized by physical reaction and role in sex. A masochist takes any infliction tempting on the urge, with feeling so strong, the pain is irrelevant, and lust desires are to be acted upon. Essentially, it is a let-out of emotion, common for rapists who force victims into sexual intercourse to release aggression and assert themselves. Sadists act directly on the urges, craving control of the object of desire significantly, and will attempt to bend the victim into submission, thus requiring extreme violence, domination, and humiliation to arouse sexually.
Horan and Beauregard (2017) also explore how marginalized individuals are more likely to be victims of sexual violence, targeted by violent offenders, including sadists. Sex offenders targeting marginalized victims use different strategies from traditional offenders. A marginalized individual is anyone not part of a dominant group in a society or even a particular environment, prone to social problems and highly unstable lifestyles. Offenders against marginalized victims are more easily able to rationalize degradation such as intoxicated victims, forcing sexual acts, and humiliating the victims. Toates et al. (2017) support this claim by describing how violent sexual behavior is associated with a lack of empathy among sexual offenders who lack awareness of the feelings of their victims. Rapists have low empathy while psychopaths lack empathy or conscience completely, thus inhibition is present. Building on the motivation-specific model for brain processes, there is a range of interactions between the motivational process. For some people, attachment is necessary for interaction with sexual desire. That is an empathetic reaction that can be observed in consensual sexual activity in normal males while representations of forced activity decrease arousal. Therefore, since empathy inhibits arousal in forced sexual arousal, rapists who do not feel empathy, feel similar levels of arousal no matter if the situation is forced or not. On a motivational/stimulation level, they cannot tell the difference.
Farmer, McAlinden, and Maruna (2016) discuss the environmental influences that may contribute to motivations for sexual offending. They recognize that sexual violence results from a combination of environmental and individual factors. After all, aggressive offenders are not aggressive all the time, even when having deviant motivations, but criminal behavior arises through interaction with the environment. The environment can present cues to influence behavior, social pressure is exerted in specific environments, moral constraints can be weakened in other environments, and finally, the environment can produce emotional arousal.
Motives for sexual violence differ based on circumstances as well. For example, Stairmand, Polaschek and Dixon (2020) identify that with intimate partner violence, motivations for courtship violence include uncontrollable anger, intimidation, and retaliation. They suggest that it is important to distinguish motives from specific reasons, attributions or contextual factors when it comes to sexual violence. Meanwhile, de Vogel and de Spa (2018) identifies that male offenders are more likely to commit sexual violence out of the need for power, dominance and personal gain with a sexual motive. Males are more likely than females to commit violence against strangers, motivated by criminal and sexual motives which differs from females that commit sexual violence against people they are familiar with, often for personal relationship causes.
McGinley (2018) suggests that sexually harassing and violent behaviours are similar in schools and workplaces. The motives to these are socially based, focused on proving the masculinity of the perpetrators both individually and as a group, punishing those who do not adhere to gender expectations and does not uphold conventional gender norms. There are many forms of masculinity which are ultimately in competition with each other, mediated by factors such as race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and national origin. Toates et al. (2017) elaborate on this by suggesting that societies or environments where macho culture, male toughness and dominance, and acceptance of violence (including media depictions) are prone to sexual violences. Equality between sexes and anticipated consequences of rape can be influencing factors on frequency of sexual violence as at the individual level, the perpetrator may conduct a cost-benefit calculation.
However, the Toates et al. (2017) also argue that power-sex lings are not universal and inhibitory controls arise from role modelling of empathetic relationships. If early childhood is associated with hostility and harsh inconsistent punishment, a sexual aggression may form, as the process of sensory preconditioning associates two stimuli of an internal negative state (anger) with sexual arousal, thus triggering one may trigger the other. Those without childhood trauma, may have desire to dominate as a result of dominance related words or sexual fantasy. Males with likelihood of showing sexual harassment tend to overestimate the frequency of power-sex combinations, thus to these individuals’ sexuality and dominance are closely related concepts. Meanwhile other sexual offenders have been found to engage in violent fantasy, both reruns of past crimes or visualizations of crimes or future planning. Fantasy would serve the same principles of behaviour as particular operant conditioning.
In the context of the literature review, the proposed research would serve more to elaborate on the personal perspectives and narratives in regard to motivations of sexual violence perpetrators. The majority of literature investigates highly specific cases (sadism, interpartner violence, marginalized groups) or limits itself to strictly scientific explanations of the motivational factors based on the biological or psychiatric characteristics of the individuals committing violence. An investigation into the motives rather than the drives, reasons, contextual factors and others as identified by one of the studies as being a key distinction, is vital to supporting the literature. More than likely many of the discovered motivations will fall into one or some of the categories of causes of sexual violence of men against women, but the research will contribute to drawing some of these connections.
Aims and objectives
The primary objective of the proposed research is to identify and categorize motivations that drive male criminals to commit sexual violence against women in Western society. This is a topic that is commonly driven by significant emotion and stigma, focusing on blame and consequence for the perpetrator but rarely identifying the key causes of the assault. The unfortunate frequency of sexual violence in the UK suggests that the issue goes beyond individual psychological or behavioural deviance but can be based in gender roles, cultures (domestic or workplace), and public conversation surrounding sexual relationships. I am hoping to determine the motivations behind such terrible sexual violence in order to identify potential patterns both behavioural and societal that contribute to instances of sexual violence. Potentially, the knowledge can be utilized for preventive measures of various kinds in contexts where male-dominated sexual violence is prominent.
Methods
The proposed methodology for the research would utilize a mixed methods approach between secondary analysis of crime reports and official statistics combined with survey research through the use of questionnaires and interviews. It is recommended to utilize a multitude of research instruments in social researchers to avoid potential fallacies in data-gathering strategies which place too much reliance on a single method in commonly rather complex which must balance real-life and external validity with quantitative data, internal validity, and control. Mixed methods design entails placing a priority and sequence questions, determining how components of qualitative and quantitative research should be weighed and the order at which they must be carried out (Davies and Francis, 2018). For this research, as it entails an analysis of the causes of the crime, qualitative data from interviews will be weighed equally to quantitative data gathered from statistics and questionnaires. The methods will be carried out simultaneously.
Given the nature of the research, contact with individuals who have committed sexual violence is required to identify causes. Sampling may be challenging, requiring to contact those who have been placed on the public sexual offender registry or those who are incarcerated (with proper permissions) for extremely violent sexual crimes. In primary social research of this type, it is proposed to use survey questionnaires along with interviews. Survey research is an emerging tool in primary data gathering, with analytic survey research being able to explore questions of cause and effect similar to traditional experimental research. Survey questionnaires can record either expressed attitude or claimed behaviour, which is fundamental to the very research question this proposal is trying to address in regard to the criminology investigated (Hagan, 2010). The structured nature of surveys allows for the data collected to be organized quantitatively and analysed statistically to support qualitative data gathered in interviews.
Interviews refer to the face-to-face interaction with the purpose of gathering information. It is likely that the majority of subjects for the research would decline an interview due to the sensitive nature of the topic. However, being able to interview even a small sample would provide valuable information to evaluate context of the existing research (also based off professional interviews and surveys) and compare with primary research questionnaires. During interviews, a semi-structured approach would be used where prepared questions will be used by the interviewer, but there will be opportunities for open-ended discussion with the subject and the interviewer may choose to deviate from the prepared questions in order to elicit more information. Interviews have an advantage of personal contact which allows for observation, including emotional response as well as the possibility to reflect the subject’s true attitudes and intentions far beyond the capabilities of a standard survey (Hagan, 2010).
Unobtrusive methods of research will likely be used to supplement the primary research. This would consist primarily of secondary analysis of archival and existing data as well as statistics. If given access or available publicly, it may be viable to examine criminal cases with law enforcement accounts and conclusions alongside with court transcripts for the subjects’ trials. Official statistics can be used for comparison in primary research to identify patterns in devious behaviours, and potentially identifying similarities in causes (Hagan, 2010).
Ethical issues
In order to adhere to scientific and ethical guidelines, the research must be approved by a certified ethics board based on the location and sponsorship of the research. Second, it is necessary for the study to be voluntary. All subjects, whether incarcerated or not must give their explicit permission to participate in the study, aware of its subject matter and an overview of information that may be asked from them. At any time, subjects may not be deceived regarding the nature of the research or intentions of the researcher. Similarly, honesty applies to the analysis and reporting stage of the research, by presenting all relevant collected data without manipulation. Research should notify the reader of limitations and discuss potential shortfalls in data, including potential errors in collection or challenges where data does not meet expectations of the researcher (Maxfield, 2015). Sexual violence is a highly controversial and sensitive topic, with some of data responses potentially seemingly crude, abusive, or justifying such criminal behaviour. It should be published appropriately, with warnings if necessary and discussed by the researcher in the analysis in regard to the significance of the general topic.
A critical element of this research to remain ethical is that no harm must be done to participants. First, the researcher and anyone collecting or accessing the information must ensure the safety and privacy of the subject. Due to the sensitive nature of the attitudes may be revealed during this research, subjects may face retaliation from authorities, community members, or other third parties for the responses they provide. Strong efforts must be undertaken to ensure confidentiality of data including providing numeric identifiers to subjects during data collection and subsequent analysis and publication, with any personal information that can be used to identify the individual eliminated. Furthermore, there is the issue of psychological harm as subjects will be asked to reveal personal and emotionally vulnerable information about themselves, particularly in interviews. Steps can be taken to reduce psychological trauma in such instances, including providing the possibility to the subject to exit the interview or the research study altogether, going back to the voluntary nature of the research (Maxfield, 2015).
Dissemination of results
Social and criminal on sexual violence is becoming more prevalent and has found tremendous use in a variety of applications. First, research on sexual violence greatly contributes to the overall knowledge and research evidence on the topic which is still not widely investigated or known. Therefore, any meaningful contribution can be used to drive further research. Second, investigating the inherent causes of sexual violence behaviours and criminality may be used by programs aimed at preventing or responding to sexual violence, providing better understanding to differing motivators of conflict-related sexual violence. These results can be used to create appropriate models and best practices that integrate appropriate sexual violence responses, aid survivors, and help destigmatize sexual violence for individuals and communities so that potential interventions or education initiatives can be made to prevent sexual violence (Research themes and questions, 2016).
Results from this research can also contribute to the evidence-base in the justice system, which guides recommended penalties for sexual violence. It may potentially open up means to restorative justice or other rehabilitation methods which may benefit both the victim as well as ensuring cautious re-integration of less violent criminals into the community among the stigma that sexual violence carries to prevent recidivism. Research can be useful in identifying the usefulness of the intensity of interventions and penalties, and which are most beneficial in effecting change (National Institute of Justice, 2008).
References and Appendices
Davis, P & Francis, P (2018) ‘Doing Criminological Research’3rd edition, Sage.
de Vogel, V. and de Spa, E. (2018) ‘Gender differences in violent offending: results from a multicentre comparison study in Dutch forensic psychiatry’, Psychology, Crime & Law, pp.1–13.
Greif, D. (2018) ‘Why do men sexually assault women?’, The Guardian, Web.
Farmer, M., McAlinden, A.-M. and Maruna, S. (2016) ‘Sex Offending and Situational Motivation’, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 60(15), pp.1756–1775.
Hagan, F. (2010) Research Methods in Criminal Justice and Criminology. Eighth Edition. London: Allyn and Bacon.
Horan, L. and Beauregard, E. (2016) ‘Sexual Violence Against Marginalized Victims: Choice of Victim or Victim of Choice?’, Victims & Offenders, 13(2), pp.277-291.
Kaira, G. and Bhugra, D. (2013) ‘Sexual violence against women: Understanding cross-cultural intersections’, Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 55(3), pp.244–249.
Maxfield, M (2015) Basics of Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology. Sage.
McGinley, A.G. (2018) ‘The Masculinity Motivation’, Stanford Law Review, 71. Web.
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Research themes and questions toguide research on sexual violencein conflict and post-conflict settings. (2016) Web.
Semerikova, A.A. et al. (2019) ‘The Role of Sadomasochism in Shaping Violent Sexual Motivation’, Journal of Forensic Psychology Research and Practice, 19(5), pp.409–433.
Seto, M.C. (2017) ‘The Motivation-Facilitation Model of Sexual Offending’, Sexual Abuse, 31(1), pp.3–24.
Stairmand, M., Polaschek, D.L.L. and Dixon, L. (2020) ‘Putting coercive actions in context: Reconceptualizing motives for intimate partner violence perpetration’, Aggression and Violent Behavior, 51, p.101388.
Toates, F., Smid, W. and van den Berg, J.W. (2017) ‘A framework for understanding sexual violence: Incentive-motivation and hierarchical control’. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 34, pp.238–253.
World Health Organization. (2013) Sexual violence. Web.