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Motives of Rape Other Than Sexual Desire Essays

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Motives of Rape Other Than Sexual Desire

Although there are many underlying motives behind why a man would rape, three of the most conspicuous are anger, power, and sadistic purposes. When an average person hears of a rape, he frequently assumes the offender was reacting to sexual frustration or that he was a demented sex-fiend harboring insatiable and perverted lasciviousness. The rape offender is often accused of being primarily motivated by sexual desires, and by committing the act of forced assault, he is gratifying only his sexual needs. On the contrary, according to A. Nicholas Groth and H. Jean Birnbaum, "Careful clinical study of offenders reveals that rape is in fact serving primarily nonsexual needs. It is the sexual …show more content…

The power rapist attempts to compensate for his perceived inadequacies, such as lack of power, control, identity, and authority through the act of rape; he strives to create a situation which will counterbalance these shortfalls. Groth explains, "The intent of the offender is to achieve sexual intercourse with his victim as evidence of conquest, and to accomplish this, he resorts to whatever force he finds necessary to overcome his victim's resistance and to render her helpless" (26). Typically, the power rapist feels insecure about his masculinity or conflicted about his self-perception; hence the assault by way of force and/or fear is a reaffirmation of his identity. Unlike the power rapist, who uses force and fear to perpetrate the act of rape, the anger rapist avoids the utilization of fear and focuses on the actual use of force, rather excessive force, to accomplish his goal. His intention, though not often understood, is not to engage in sexual relations; rather, his aim is to express his anger using sex as the chosen weapon. Groth explains, "The anger rapist typically finds little or no gratification in the rape - - in fact, his subjective reaction to the sexual act itself is

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