Rape: Understanding Its Causes Directly Helps Effective Prevention
Many women have likely experienced an inexplicable feeling of discomfort from unpleasant touch or conversation. Often, they dismiss the feeling as nothing or think that they are being overly sensitive. However, these instincts should not be ignored or justified away, since violence against women, especially rape, is increasing as a serious societal issue today. In 2021, Sarah Everard was randomly kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a police officer who had long planned to commit a sexual assault.
After the crime, the criminal went back to his normal life with his family and dog. Coming back from a trip with his children and wife, he was finally arrested by the police. This incident has drawn people’s attention to the heated challenges of rape offenses and violence against women, underscoring society’s urgent need for preventative strategies. To mitigate the intensity of the issue, empirical prevention should serve as a priority by rectifying the potential causes of such offenses and coming up with suitable solutions.
Although rapes must not be justified by any excuses, it is crucial to navigate the causes of rape offenses for successful prevention. This paper aims to draw out the preventative strategies, examining and understanding critical factors which potentially lead to rape offense, including innate inclination and societal or societal, cultural influences.
Why do those criminals commit rape offenses? Initially, what directly contributes to the commitment of such crimes entails natural psychopathy, lacking particular brain functions, distorted relationships in childhood, and childhood trauma. Apparently, psychological factors associated with both nature and nurture serve as potential causes of rape and other sexual offenses.
Analyzing differences between the brain activities of sexual offenders and nonoffenders through FMRI, research conducted by PMC indicates that sexual criminals’ brains have similar patterns, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, operating for impulse control, decision-making, and emotional regulation. Their brains show reduced activity in the prefrontal area, leading to a lack of ability to control the impulses. Innate brain structures that cannot properly regulate certain impulses increase the chance of engaging in violent or inappropriate behaviors at the moment. Moreover, some of them also demonstrate structural abnormality, related to psychopathic traits, in the brain’s white matter connectivity.
Their brains have reduced connections between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, a limbic system that contributes to emotion processing like empathy and fear, and reduced activity in the amygdala, resulting in psychopathy traits and lack of empathy. The study also reveals that offenders’ brain regions related to reward processing may possess altered dopamine regulations, and this absence of proper brain functions may lead them to have hypersexuality or compulsive sexual behaviors. Sexual offenders tend to indicate these distinct brain patterns in the areas particularly associated with impulse control, psychopathy, and reward processing. Thus, these innate structures of the brain and characteristics within the brain function can increase the risks of having an offensive tendency, especially leading to sexual violence. In addition to innate characteristics, childhood environment is another critical factor that affects sexual offenders’ formation of offensive tendencies.
Experiencing abuse in early life develops a distorted perception of relationships, fixes the unhealthy view of power dynamics in relationships, and increases the likelihood of manifesting offensive behavior in adulthood. In fact, the study conducted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information proves a correlation between adverse childhood experiences and commitment to sexual offenses, showing that 75% of the participants who offended sexual violence experienced at least one type of childhood abuse. Survivors of childhood abuse often experience trauma, struggling with forming healthy relationships and perceiving aggression normally. As a result, earlier abuses in childhood likely instill misconceptions regarding control of power, and dominance of relationships, developing sexually aggressive behaviors later in life.
Although it indirectly promotes rape offenses and rape culture, social influence has to be recognized and restrained for the prevention of rape; it is becoming a trend that the media often normalize, trivialize, or romanticize sexually offensive behaviors against women. The media, including movies, TV shows, social media, and advertisements, have a profound impact by creating an environment that amplifies the mob mentality, a phenomenon in which individuals are likely influenced by a larger group of people regarding their perceptions, decisions, or behaviors. Thus, most people adopt these offensive behaviors as being excused or normalized while they are not able to notice the views are normally not acceptable. This phenomenon makes it difficult to go against the social norm. Hence, it plays a crucial role in perpetuating the rape culture, desensitizing individuals within the seriousness of the problem, obstackling a proper decision-making process, and eventually raising the risks of rape offenses.
This tendency exacerbates a boost of inappropriate cultures in the media that normalize sexual offenses. For example, movies often portray aggressive and obsessive behaviors, such as stalking, coercion, or sexually submissive positions set for female characters, as romantic and normal. It blurs the line between romantic behaviors and physically or emotionally abusive behaviors, influencing the audiences to believe offenses as normal and precluding them from being challenged against the societal norm. Similarly, some advertisements frequently sexualize women to target male consumers, treating women like objects rather than human beings. This consequently builds misconceptions for men that sexual violence against women’s bodies is trivial and justifiable.
Social and cultural influences in media aggravate the issue of sexual offenses against women by normalizing and even romanticizing aggressive behaviors. Addressing such influences will alleviate the issues regarding the rape culture and increase the intensity of sexual offenses. Therefore, understanding how media and societal norms contribute to trivializing and justifying abusive behaviors against women, as well as, how natural characteristics resulting from abnormal brain structure, and aggressive personality traits developed from childhood trauma that make people struggle in keeping healthy relationships improves effective prevention strategies of rape offenses and helps rectify the issue.
Since there is no one obvious cause of the commitment of rape offenses, it is impossible to eradicate all sexual violence committed in reality. Granted, prevention is the best way to protect women and society. Resulting of various factors, sexual violence is a complicated issue; thus, collaborative strategies and an environment where individuals, society, and government all endeavor to make a safer world are essential to address it. The prevention should not only be addressed by individual women, but also a change of the societal norm, elimination of the rape culture developed by the media influences, and harsher legal systems are needed to comprehensively approach the problem.
How should individuals create an initiative to reduce sexual offenses? The most basic and explicit approach for individuals to deal with this is to grow situational awareness and less tolerance. To maintain awareness of the situation, individuals can improve their safety by carrying protective tools or receiving self-defense training. Convincingly, the study held by the University of Oregon revealed that there was a significantly decreased probability of experiencing sexual assaults when the participants had received the self-defensive training.
Individuals must also set their boundaries to actively avoid dangerous situations, and they should learn the way not to tolerate uncomfortable or abusive actions. On the other hand, to approach this problem more effectively, individuals should provide proper parental education to prevent the initial development of psychopathic and offensive behaviors by examining how innate tendencies develop the offensive behaviors, particularly in those who were born with tendencies of lacking empathy, inability to control impulse, and atypical methods of reward processing. Parental education teaching children with psychopathic inclinations how to build healthy relationship dynamics, how to empathize with someone else’s feelings, and how to control their minds are crucial for them to live harmoniously in society.
One of the most compelling examples is the case of the neuroscientist James Fallon who shows the significance and efficacy of education in preventing the development of innate psychopathy into actual offensive behaviors. Fallon was observing PET scans of the serial killers’ brains and normal brain structures to find a correlation between distinctive brain patterns and psychopathic tendencies. Surprisingly, during the observation, he found out that his brain scans also showed similar patterns, indicating lower activity in the frontal and temporal lobes. However, the difference between him and the serial killers who had developed innate psychopathic tendencies into the actual commitment to murder was the environmental factor in early life: parental education.
While he had innate aggression and lacked empathy, his inclination was sublimated by parental education followed by careful attention and love, which helped him to learn how to temper those behaviors and harmonize in society. Hence, although some people show psychopathy in the early stages, careful attention and proper education from parents can prevent the further development into aggressive personality and actual offensive behaviors. In summary, individuals can prevent sexual violence, including rape offenses, by increasing awareness and improving their ability to self-defense, and parents must provide adequate education to their children to reduce the actual commitment to violence. However, it is essential not to put the whole responsibility on women and parents to protect themselves and prevent the early formation of aggressiveness. The society and government’s duty is necessary for prevention; the society and government should play a pivotal role in this issue by analyzing the factors that contribute to the commitment of rape offenses to provide an adequate level of education, minimize detrimental societal influences, and reinforce the law regarding the punishment.
Societal influence through the media is exacerbating the rape culture and increasing rape offenses nowadays by normalizing and romanticizing violence against women’s bodies. As a result, society should take initiatives to reduce such influence worsened by the mob mentality with the following actions. Society must ensure those abusive behaviors depicted by the media are not romanticized or trivialized, shifting its perspective of sexual violence against women and recognizing the seriousness of such offenses. Furthermore, legitimate sex education should be provided for students to give them proper knowledge about their bodies, sex, and how serious sexual offenses are, and society must change its perspective toward sex education since it is still lacking in many societies.
Meanwhile, the government’s effort is also crucial to accelerating the shift of societal perspective; for instance, the government needs to set the proper restrictions on media content, such as movies that normalize abusive behaviors and advertisements that hypersexualize women’s bodies. In addition to necessary restrictions, the government should tighten the laws regarding sexual offenses, taking it more harshly to prevent them from repeating. Strict laws and organized rules are essential to keep the social order and structure; otherwise, they are likely to collapse. Government duty is not only associated with providing appropriate laws but also free education. Accessible education from schools and community programs would make an impact in reducing the violence against women by promoting equality and eliminating rape culture.
Aggressive and psychopathic tendencies are primarily developed from a lack of brain functions and distinct brain structures in certain areas related to empathy, impulse control, or reward processing. Childhood trauma likely triggers a further development of those innate traits, eventually leading to a commitment to sexual violence and offenses in reality. Increasingly, rape culture and trivialized depiction of sexual offenses in media manipulate the societal view to normalize and even grow the actual violence against women today.
Rape offenses must not be justified or trivialized anywhere, but it must be critically recognized. To the end, effective prevention which requires a collaborative approach of individuals, society, and the government is essential: education at the early ages received from parents plays a significant role in preventing innate tendencies being demonstrated as violent behaviors, society’s perspective of rape culture and sexualization in media must also be shifted to reduce the destructive media influence and mob mentality, and the government must provide strict laws and restrictions to enlighten the seriousness of the issue. Otherwise, rape offenses will not be prevented in our community. Prevention of sexual violence against women, including rape offenses, is required to protect our society’s safety and well-being.
By: Shiwoo Hur
Write and Win: Participate in Creative writing Contest & International Essay Contest and win fabulous prizes.
