A new study published in the journal Violence Against Women has revealed that about 53% of male athletes attending college in the United States “sexually coerce” their partners.
Making a partner have sex without the use of a condom and using physical force or threats to commit rape, were among the “sexually coercive” behaviors.
According to the researchers, sexually coercing somebody meets the legal definition of rape. The study was done online. A total of 379 male undergraduates under the age of 23 from public universities across the southeastern part of the country participated in the online survey.
191 of the respondents were non-athletes, 29 were intercollegiate athletes, and 159 were recreational athletes.
The researchers said the respondents anonymously answered a variety of questions about their history of sexually inappropriate behaviors, as well as their beliefs concerning traditional gender roles and the nature of sexual assault.
The study is said to be a follow up on a past study published in 1995. The 1995 study showed that male college athletes were more likely to perpetrate sexual violence on women than their other male college peers. It also revealed that 19% of sexual violence cases reported to college judicial affairs offices involved intercollegiate athletes, a group that accounted for only 3 percent of the combined student populations at the time.
Although there was no data available from the previous study on whether this tendency extended to male recreational athletes, this latest survey sought to address that by assessing associations between attitudes towards women, acceptance of myths about rape, and the prevalence of sexual coercion among participants of the study.
The researchers said they wanted to look at factors that might be contributing to higher rates of sexual assault among male athletes so that they could identify things that prevention programs could try to address, such as attitudes towards women and beliefs about rape.
Co-author of the study, Sarah Desmarais, a psychologist at North Carolina State University, told The Independent in an interview: “We found that 54.3 percent of the intercollegiate and recreational athletes and 37.9 percent of non-athletes had engaged in sexually coercive behaviors – almost all of which met the legal definition of rape.”
Desmarais admitted that the true percentage of male college athletes who have committed an act of sexual violence against a female, may actually be higher than what the study recorded. She said the online survey only encouraged the respondent to be honest about whether they have sexually coerced their partners or not. Desmarais believes it is likely people are not completely transparent when asked about their sexual life with their partners.
Last month, Baylor University in Waco, in the state of Texas, suspended its football head coach, Art Briles, for eight years, after it emerged that Briles and the university had continuously ignored or minimized allegations of sexual assault committed by their male football stars.
The study also compared social attitudes and behavior towards women among athletes on sports teams and those who played sports recreationally. It revealed that attitudes about women and consent were rife with an ingrained prejudice against women.
More than half of athletes surveyed in new study say they engaged in sexual coercion https://t.co/qTio9kbaKK pic.twitter.com/uwlr1c7WY4
— Inside Higher Ed (@insidehighered) June 3, 2016
From this, the researchers said athletes are more likely to endorse negative attitudes toward women and believe common myths about rape than their non-athletic counterparts. The researchers argued that these differences in beliefs account for the greater rates of sexual coercion seen in the athletes.
“This study shows how important it is to change these attitudes. The ‘Attitudes Toward Women Scale’ used in the study was created in the 1970s, and includes some truly archaic, sexist items – and we still see these results today. That shows you how far we still have to go,” Desmarais revealed.
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persuading a partner to have sex without a condom doesn’t fit ANY sane definition of rape.
Please, stop conflating sexual coercion with rape. Rape is defined by the use of harm or threats of harm to force sex. Begging and a manipulative being a jerk when your partner isn’t in the mood, to get sex is disturbing, but partners need to learn to stand up for themselves too and take action and responsibility and not allow themselves to be coerced into sex. Giving in to such behavior is teaching your partner that it is an acceptable way to treat you.
Black college athletes are dangerous.