Bob CollinsAccording to a study from the University of North Dakota, 31.7 percent of the men surveyed said they would force a woman to have sexual intercourse.
Just stop and think about that for a minute before you continue reading. One out of every three men said they could see themselves raping a woman.
Unless you asked them that question and then only 13 percent — still a pathetically high number, of course — say they’d rape a woman.
“We need to be aware there is this group of men who do not consider their own actions to be rape, although they would qualify for any legal definition of sexual assault or rape,” Sarah Edwards tells the Fargo Forum. “We need to find a way to talk with these men, to engage them in our prevention efforts, so we can actually challenge their faulty assumptions and attitudes and beliefs around women and sexuality and respectful relationships and what it means to get consent.”
Eighty-six college students students — none from UND, she notes — participated in the survey. Most of them were white men. Most were juniors in college.
The study says the men who don’t see things as rape won’t benefit from any “traditional college programming on the subject” since they don’t see themselves as rapists.
