Coercive Rape Tactics Perpetrated Against Asexual College Students: A Quantitative Analysis Considering Students' Multiple Identities

Abstract

Coercive Rape Tactics Perpetrated Against Asexual College Students:A Quantitative Analysis Considering Students' Multiple Identities Amanda L. Mollet (bio) and Wayne Black (bio) Sexual violence has long remained a concerning problem within higher education, yet an overwhelming majority of scholarship about collegiate sexual violence centers experiences of white, cisgender, heterosexual women (Harris et al., 2020; Linder et al., 2020), although LGBTQ students experience even higher rates of sexual violence than their cisgender and heterosexual peers (Cantor et al., 2019). The exclusion of asexual students' experiences is not surprising given the erasure and invisibility of asexuality within hypersexualized collegiate cultures (Mollet & Lackman, 2019), but the expansion of scholarship has begun acknowledging violence experienced by asexual people, including unwanted sexual experiences (Mollet & Black, 2021; Lund, 2021). Mollet and Black (2021) found that in a sample of asexual college students, nearly one quarter had experienced rape, more than one half experienced unwanted sexual content, and nearly three quarters experienced unwanted non-contact sexual experiences during their lifetimes. Their study also identified verbal coercion tactics as more prevalent than coercion through substances. What could an asexual perspective add to understanding campus sexual assault (CSA)? Moving beyond studying the same normative population of students and considering substances as a primary risk factor can offer a more nuanced understanding of CSA. Without asexual examinations and consideration of students' multiple identities, knowledge remains limited in ways that suggest monolithic experiences that obfuscate realities of perpetration tactics and limit innovative prevention strategies. In response, the research question guiding this analysis is: What is the relationship between asexual students' multiple identities and predicting odds of experiencing specific coercive rape tactics used by perpetrators? COMPULSORY SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN COLLEGIATE ENVIRONMENTS Compulsory sexuality, which describes the system that perpetuates "the assumption that all people are sexual and . . . the social norms and practices that both marginalize various forms of non-sexuality, such as a lack of sexual desire or behavior, and compel people to . . . engage in sexual activity" (Gupta, 2015, p. 132), permeates society and collegiate environments in particular. Hookup culture represents one example of compulsory sexuality, which some scholars have found associated with CSA (e.g., Flack et al., 2016; Mellins et al., 2017). Maintaining [End Page 96] an assumption of compulsory sexuality limits the potential for understanding the experiences of other intimate relationships. Asexual students, who generally resist compulsory sexuality and hookup culture, still engage in intimate relationships but must navigate developing affirming relationship norms while balancing questions of identity disclosure (Mollet, 2021b). Research about CSA frequently centers the same students (i.e., cisgender white women), reinforces individual risk factors (e.g., fraternity and sorority membership), and highlights connections with alcohol (Harris et al., 2020). Evidence-based strategies for prevention have largely shifted toward bystander intervention programs that train students to intervene when they perceive precarious situations that could become assault (Linder et al., 2020). This approach is situated within the scope of research that advances the assumptions that perpetrators assault people primarily at parties or in similar social situations where peers could intervene. Evidence has also suggested potential attitude shifts from rape myth reduction programs, but limited evaluation or evidence exists of resulting behavioral shifts (Harris et al., 2020). Across the intervention programs and strategies that exist, limited evaluative data has confirmed long-term decreases in perpetration from these programs (DeGue et al., 2014). Perhaps, a new look at perpetrators' coercive strategies through a lens that does not center substance-based coercion or compulsory sexuality, can enlighten new or revised intervention strategies for preventing CSA. METHOD Data for this study came from the publicly available data of the 2019 Asexual Community Survey (ACS), an annual online survey conducted by members of the asexual community, which includes a variety of demographic and optional question blocks. The analytic sample for this study included 1,267 asexual participants from around the world who indicated being current graduate or undergraduate college students and responded to the sexual violence question block. We use the term asexual as inclusive of all asexual spectrum identities (e.g., asexual, demisexual; see Mollet, 2021a). Participants included 60% women, 26% another gender, and 13% men, with an overall mean age of 23. Racially, the sample was heavily...