Male sex aggression and three psychiatric hypotheses

The objective of this study is to investigate the tenability of three psychiatric hypotheses of male sex aggression. Male sex aggression, however, is an extremely amorphous and heterogeneous phrase which can encompass behavior concerned with the acquisition of a variety of erotic goals, ranging from a goodnight embrace to rape. In order to obtain a more homogeneous and speciScally defined phenomenon which would lend to the testing of more specific hypotheses, only one particular type of male aggression will be considered here. The respondents were asked: Have you, since entering college, made an aggressively forceful attempt for sex intercourse? Please report only those attempts which were forceful to the point of being disagreeable and offensive to the girl To what extent the male achieves his objective is incidental and tangential to the aims of this study. Two criteria and usually three were employed to assess whether the reported episode was to be accepted as offensively aggressive. First, the male respondent had to affirm that he made an aggressively forceful attempt for coitus to the point of being disagreeable and offensive to the girl involved. Secondly, he had to indicate that the female responded to the aggressive behavior with offended reactions, e.g., crying, fighting, screaming, pleading, etc. Both of the above were required for the episode to be accepted as aggressively offensive. Thirdly, the respondents were given the opportunity to describe the aggressive acts. Nine of the respondents offered insufficient description of the episode and, consequently, their evidence was not utilized as a criterion for inclusion in the tally of aggressive-offensive episodes. For the remainder, however, these descriptive statements appeared to adequately validate the acknowledged aggressive episodes. These sexually aggressive acts represent behavior not ordinarily expected during the course of dating-courtship relations to label it average or normal and yet, with respect to the degree of violence and persistence of effort to gain the erotic goal, it falls short of those aggressive acts reported as rape and sexual assult. Nonetheless, the persistent demonstration of sexually aggressive behavior of this variety