The Threat of Rape: Its Psychological Impact on Non victimized Women

Abstract

Abstract One of the most controversial hypotheses about rape and sexual violence holds that rape serves to show women their place in society and hence contributes to the preservation of the societal status quo of male dominance (e.g., Brown-miller, 1975; Griffin, 1979). In what is probably the most widely known statement of this hypothesis, Susan Brownmiller suggested that rape “is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” (Brownmiller, 1975, p. 15 [italics added]). Whereas it is difficult to assess the assumed conscious nature of this assumed process of intimidation, the hypothesis that the threat of rape has an intimidating effect on women in general is amenable to empirical research.