Rape and Social Structure

Rape, as shown by J. S. Brown, is a behavior pattern that is nearly universally met by very strong social sanctions.1 Only incest, among sex offenses occurring in modern societies, encounters equally severe and universal social opposition. Rape is commonly defined as enforced coitus.2 But this very definition suggests that there is more to the offense than the use of force alone. This must be so, since no society has equipped itself with the means for measuring the amount of force applied in an act of coitus. Hence, rape, like any other kind of crime, carries a heavy social component. The act itself is not a sufficient criterion. The act must be interpreted as by the female actee, and her interpretation must be similarly evaluated by a number of officials and agencies before the official designation of rape can be legitimately applied. Furthermore, is somewhat unique in that its negative evaluation in public opinion is very frequently extended to the victim as well as the offender. This aspect of the crime is clearly instrumental in reducing the number of such offenses that are brought to the attention of the police. This paper is not primarily concerned with force or the degree of its use in offenses. Rather, it investigates the role of anonymity and of status differentials between offenders and their victims as important components of the social situation that ordinarily accompanies this type of offense. In addition, variations in the sex ratio will be utilized in order to account for the unequal regional distribution of crimes of rape. In formulating hypotheses concerning the variables mentioned, we have used an axiomatic-deductive procedure, assuming that this method will facilitate our search for invariances in the behavior under investigation.4