9 ms·

In interviews with rapists, student pursues not-so-simple question: why?

110 points by ValentineC 9y ago

devereaux 9y ago
Edit: I removed my comment. You win. You guys obviously know better than me.
- snowpanda 9y ago
  That's a very sexist comment to assume all men are like that. Replace "men" with "women", and I'm sure you're also the first person to scream sexism.
  - smt88 9y ago
    > Replace "men" with "women" This just doesn't work most of the time. For example, compare the two sentences: "A woman chased a man into the woods." "A man chased a woman into the woods." Just swapping the gender has a completely different connotation. Because gender dynamics are different in the world, you can't swap any generalization and say, "It's equivalent." "Women don't see men as human" would, I guarantee, not create much of an outcry because it's a generalization with no underlying truth.
    - ImSkeptical 9y ago
      What you've shown is that not all swaps are valid, but you haven't shown that this particular swap is invalid. The point of swapping the words is to illustrate that generalizing about people based on their sex is sexist. I hope you agree with that idea. If you do, then swapping the words can simply help put a more unfamiliar form of sexism into clearer view.
- zzleeper 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure the vast majority of men don't assume women are "sub human". This akin to saying "Arabs are terrorists", "Latinos are illegal immigrants", and similar BS.
  - smt88 9y ago
    "Sub-man" might be a better way to put it. I'm a man, and I agree with GP. It's uncommon for men to think of women as whole, three-dimensional, intelligent people with complex inner lives.
    - ImSkeptical 9y ago
      I think that attitude suggests you may have sub-normal acquaintances. I, for example, am not acquainted with anyone who doubts that women are people. In the US 91% of people rate gender equality (that men and women should have the same rights) as being "very important". The ideas that men think of women as less than men, but also think it's very important they have equal rights are hard to reconcile. I find your view perverse and lacking resemblance to reality. 1 - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/19/many-around-the-world-say-womens-equality-is-very-important/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/19/many-around-...
  - lox 9y ago
    It’s vastly more accurate than your statements. Look at the domestic violence statistics for most first world countries.
    - DuskStar 9y ago
      The statistics that show women abuse men about as often as men abuse women[0], and (iirc) that lesbian couples have the highest incidence of domestic violence? [0] http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-women-victims-of-partner-abuse/ http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-...
- wmeredith 9y ago
  Your blanket statements are false on their face. Saying that “men think women are subhuman” or really that men think anything as a group is obnoxiously sexist.
- mjevans 9y ago
  Those are extremely generic statements. Maybe you've had some really bad past personal experiences or know someone who has. The world view your comment presents is just as warped as that of the unrepentant rapists mentioned in the article. What they have done is wrong; but so too is the prejudice expressed above.
  - II2II 9y ago
    As awful as prejudice is, it is nothing compared to the physical and psychological violence perpetrated by rapists.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      It's actually more harmful. This sort of prejudice is harboured and acted upon by a lot more people than rapists, simply because there are no repercussions. So collectively, humanity suffers a lot more. Of course if you compare a single person's discomfort to the horror a rape victim goes through... Well you cannot compare.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mromanuk 9y ago
  Totally right. And is easy to look back in our history of not so long ago, and see past examples of tagging groups as sub-humans: women/slavery trading/“aboriginals without soul”, etc
  - meric 9y ago
    You’ve just tagged men as creatures lacking moral agency.
    - mromanuk 9y ago
      No I didn't, that's just a straw man. It's just difficult for our gender, see all the entitlements we have and recognize ourself on our gender past. I expected the downvote, kind of prove how unpopular feminism is around here.
      - meric 9y ago
        You’re still generalising your prejudice across a whole gender. You talk about prejudice while exhibiting the very quality. I see how it’s difficult for you but don’t project your difficulties on others.
- evanlivingston 9y ago
  It would be interesting if anyone disagreeing with your comments was a woman, instead of a man.
  - Posibyte 9y ago
    If it helps answer your question, I am a woman and I do not see all men as having narrow views of women. I feel as if there is still a cultural struggle to some degree, but to say all men feel that way is a bit extreme in my mind.
    - evanlivingston 9y ago
      It's astounding to me that the comment was flagged. I don't remember the exact words of the original comment, but I don't recall the OP saying "all men". The OP said women were perceived as property. It doesn't take all men to believe that, it just takes most men. A woman isn't raped by all men, she's raped by an individual man. It only takes one man to commit the crime, and a cultural problem of perceiving women as rapable is what creates a world where 1 in 5 women are raped.
      - ImSkeptical 9y ago
        As I've replied in a previous comment, in the US, 91% of people view equal rights between genders as "very important" (source below). How does that fit with your implied belief that most people perceive women as property? Are you, perhaps, located in Saudi Arabia? I'm also curious for your source on the statistic that 1 in 5 women worldwide are raped. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/19/many-around-the-world-say-womens-equality-is-very-important/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/19/many-around-...
        evanlivingston 9y ago
        The number of people saying they feel as though women's equality is not the same as there being equality for women. Let's use a few examples: A majority of people don't approve of Trump, but he is however still the President. I have a very strong suspicion most people in the U.S. would say racism ought to not exist, but we know for a fact that it does. One of the more telling flaws in using the simple metric of a survey of opinions is that the U.S appears to be one of the leaders in gender equality according to the linked article. However U.S. legislation clearly shows this to be less true when compared to other countries, particularly Western Europe. Again, we can look at rape statistics to see how untrue this is. The 1 in 5 statistic I referenced came from a CDC survey. there are differing statistics, but none of them paint a very pretty picture.
ramzyo 9y ago
It’s so terribly sad that there are men who think this way.
- hux_ 9y ago
  Read\watch Camille Paglia. Generic feminism of the brand - we don't have power therefore someone has to give it to us - breaks down when it encounters the kind of men described in the article. "The only thing worse then fairness is make-believe fairness".
- Posibyte 9y ago
  I wonder if there's an analogous group of women that behave this way as well. The article didn't really dive into motivations, so I wonder how much of it is cultural and how much of it is related to general mental health. And if it is related to the latter, is it possibly a universal condition that also afflicts women as well, in such that it may not be sexual, but that small groups of women can have these predispositions to the worth, behavior, and attitudes towards men with little remorse for their ultimate actions against them.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    You'll find that a lot of predators (serial killers, sexual predators) were abused as children. Poverty seems to be a factor, but that alone doesn't usually cause such a lack of remorse later in life. Something like extreme affluenza seems to cause it in some people, too. That's probably more about having control over someone else and being used to get your way, even being rewarded for it. Wiki's got lots of information on the topic if you don't mind seeing how people can turn into animals.
    - jacobreg 9y ago
      The poverty thing could well be sampling bias, I'm sure rich folks have a much easier time avoiding convictions.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      The root cause (whether nature or nurture) seems to be a lack of empathy. Could you detect empathetic capabilities with fMRI? If deficient, would you mandate treatment? Besides therapy, is there a treatment?
tim333 9y ago
The Washington Post article on the same story has more detail and some of the researcher's ideas where the problem is https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/11/a-woman-interviewed-100-convicted-rapists-in-india-this-is-what-she-learned/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/11...
cm2012 9y ago
What a disturbing article. I wouldn't have thought all the men were remorseless.
- spodek 9y ago
  > she said she would only interview willing participants They selected themselves. Remorseful ones, if any, may have chosen not to participate.
  - ScottBurson 9y ago
    > Remorseful ones, if any, may have chosen not to participate. Conceivable, but then why were most of the murderers she interviewed remorseful? Why would remorseful murderers be willing to talk but not remorseful rapists?
    - BrandoElFollito 9y ago
      Maybe because the kind of remorse is different, with a different sigma attached? (just a thought) In other words maybe "I murdered" is a different remorse (or lack of) than "I raped"?
    - scotty79 9y ago
      >> Remorseful ones, if any, may have chosen not to participate. > Conceivable, but then why were most of the murderers she interviewed remorseful? Maybe it's easier to become convicted accidental murderer than convicted accidental rapist? Most people who killed didn't really want to do that. Maybe that's not the case for rapist.
  - Sniffnoy 9y ago
    But why would that only apply to rapists and not murderers? She found plenty of repentant murderers, according to the article.
    - xaqfox 9y ago
      Maybe sentencing differences are causing the selection bias. Remorseful rapists may be trying to avoid publicizing their convictions (with their plan being to reintegrate with society at a later time). The remorseful murderers may have all been serving life sentences.
wasx 9y ago
Is there anywhere we can read the responses? I would be interested in hearing how they justify their actions and attitudes
Alex3917 9y ago
Has the actual paper been published yet? I'm wondering if she also tested them for IQ, blood lead levels, etc. Given that the WaPo article says that many of them had only a third or fourth grade education, this strikes me as possibly just making fun of people with disabilities.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  They're working class Indians, probably mostly laborers. I'm not sure you can classify this group as disabled. From my perspective I have to assume alienation from society allows these men to commit the crimes they do and remain remorseless. If you've lived a tough or unforgiving life in a society that doesn't care if you live or die, you won't necessarily show the same courtesy to anyone else. Why respect the social norms of a society that shows you no respect? I'm not excusing their behavior either. This alienation is also what I think drives US mass shootings, drug abuse, and other social crimes. That's just my opinion though, I've little other than intuition to back up my stance.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    Exactly. "Screw this hellhole I'll litter if I want to it can't make this dump any worse" applies to non-victimless crimes too.
- smt88 9y ago
  > this strikes me as possibly just making fun of people with disabilities What about this is "making fun"? Did you mean to say that, by mentioning the education level, they're stigmatizing people with disabilities? Because there are millions of people around the world with no cognitive impairment who don't finish elementary school...
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    I meant sentences like: > Pandey had a burning need to know what these rapists were thinking. She decided to ask the rapists themselves. > Their utter lack of remorse came as a surprise to her. > She saw a pattern of "cognitive distortion" — they had created their own version of the crime that allowed them to justify their actions. Statements like that imply a certain level of cognitive capacity and agency, which maybe these inmates have, but if so that isn't demonstrated anywhere in the article. All I'm saying is that the implications of the research are very different depending on whether these folks are upper middle class, college educated with normal IQ, EQ, etc., versus if half of them have severe lead poisoning or TBIs or whatever.
justinnhli 9y ago
A list of Madhumita Pandey's publications can be found at https://theconversation.com/profiles/madhumita-pandey-276284 https://theconversation.com/profiles/madhumita-pandey-276284
donatj 9y ago
I would be interested to see results of similar studies compared across different cultures.
warbaker 9y ago
The analysis is kinder to the rapists than the data. They state that they believe that this ruins the woman's marital prospects forever, but that didn't stop them from doing it. Even within their belief system, they are acting monstrously. Interviewing them is a great idea, but the researchers should be open to the idea that the main problem is the boring, standard idea that violent criminals have little empathy for their victims, and little impulse control.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  Agreed. I hate this trend of trying to mellow everything down to some harmless palatable cause. People rape because they are worthless scum who don't think about their victim's wellbeing. People murder because they don't value their victim's life. I don't need to justify their fucked up behaviour using some humane analysis of their psyche. Just lock them up and throw away the key.
  - Domenic_S 9y ago
    Are you misunderstanding this as a personal analysis to _understand_ the rapist personally? I don't think that's it -- she gave them numbers after all. At a population level, it's interesting to study. Our brains are machines that we don't fully understand, it could be useful to discover why rapists rape. If you had lived one of those guys on the bus' life, would you have participated? Or are people like this born broken, never to be fixed, and we may as well throw away the key? It's a bit like Star Trek: Nemesis. In some future if we could give a convicted rapist a pill that we scientifically know would prevent him from ever having a rape impulse again, would we accept him back into society? What if it was preventative?
  - warent 9y ago
    This is a mentality that humans have had since the dawn of history. Not necessarily towards rape specifically, but to things the broader popular society finds morally reprehensible. Your line of reasoning is totally normal for the human condition and has been used for thousands of years now. Here we are today without any lack of morally reprehensible problems. Don't you think it's time we changed our strategy and rose above this animalistic, purely instinctual nature? It's time we got out of this mess.
megaman22 9y ago
Keystone Light. Zhenka. Mr. Boston. There's your reasons for most cases of sexual assault on college campuses.
alexanderstears 9y ago
Where was the "why" question and answer?
ck425 9y ago
This reminds me of the Netflix series Mindhunter, about the FBI doing the same with serial killers in the 70s. It's based on real life work. Well worth watching both for the complicated but well handled subject matter and for the direction (David Fincher) and performances. For anyone doubting the 'morality' of this researc or presuming rapists are just vile apathetic scumbags and nothing more, go watch it or better yet read the real life story it's based on. This kind of research has saves hundreds of lives and prevented many men (mostly) from becoming serial killers. Let's hope this new research does the same for rapists.

110 points by ValentineC 9y ago

devereaux 9y ago

Edit: I removed my comment. You win. You guys obviously know better than me.

snowpanda 9y ago
That's a very sexist comment to assume all men are like that. Replace "men" with "women", and I'm sure you're also the first person to scream sexism.
- smt88 9y ago
  > Replace "men" with "women" This just doesn't work most of the time. For example, compare the two sentences: "A woman chased a man into the woods." "A man chased a woman into the woods." Just swapping the gender has a completely different connotation. Because gender dynamics are different in the world, you can't swap any generalization and say, "It's equivalent." "Women don't see men as human" would, I guarantee, not create much of an outcry because it's a generalization with no underlying truth.
  - ImSkeptical 9y ago
    What you've shown is that not all swaps are valid, but you haven't shown that this particular swap is invalid. The point of swapping the words is to illustrate that generalizing about people based on their sex is sexist. I hope you agree with that idea. If you do, then swapping the words can simply help put a more unfamiliar form of sexism into clearer view.
zzleeper 9y ago
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of men don't assume women are "sub human". This akin to saying "Arabs are terrorists", "Latinos are illegal immigrants", and similar BS.
- smt88 9y ago
  "Sub-man" might be a better way to put it. I'm a man, and I agree with GP. It's uncommon for men to think of women as whole, three-dimensional, intelligent people with complex inner lives.
  - ImSkeptical 9y ago
    I think that attitude suggests you may have sub-normal acquaintances. I, for example, am not acquainted with anyone who doubts that women are people. In the US 91% of people rate gender equality (that men and women should have the same rights) as being "very important". The ideas that men think of women as less than men, but also think it's very important they have equal rights are hard to reconcile. I find your view perverse and lacking resemblance to reality. 1 - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/19/many-around-the-world-say-womens-equality-is-very-important/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/19/many-around-...
- lox 9y ago
  It’s vastly more accurate than your statements. Look at the domestic violence statistics for most first world countries.
  - DuskStar 9y ago
    The statistics that show women abuse men about as often as men abuse women[0], and (iirc) that lesbian couples have the highest incidence of domestic violence? [0] http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-women-victims-of-partner-abuse/ http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-...
wmeredith 9y ago
Your blanket statements are false on their face. Saying that “men think women are subhuman” or really that men think anything as a group is obnoxiously sexist.
mjevans 9y ago
Those are extremely generic statements. Maybe you've had some really bad past personal experiences or know someone who has. The world view your comment presents is just as warped as that of the unrepentant rapists mentioned in the article. What they have done is wrong; but so too is the prejudice expressed above.
- II2II 9y ago
  As awful as prejudice is, it is nothing compared to the physical and psychological violence perpetrated by rapists.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    It's actually more harmful. This sort of prejudice is harboured and acted upon by a lot more people than rapists, simply because there are no repercussions. So collectively, humanity suffers a lot more. Of course if you compare a single person's discomfort to the horror a rape victim goes through... Well you cannot compare.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mromanuk 9y ago
Totally right. And is easy to look back in our history of not so long ago, and see past examples of tagging groups as sub-humans: women/slavery trading/“aboriginals without soul”, etc
- meric 9y ago
  You’ve just tagged men as creatures lacking moral agency.
  - mromanuk 9y ago
    No I didn't, that's just a straw man. It's just difficult for our gender, see all the entitlements we have and recognize ourself on our gender past. I expected the downvote, kind of prove how unpopular feminism is around here.
    - meric 9y ago
      You’re still generalising your prejudice across a whole gender. You talk about prejudice while exhibiting the very quality. I see how it’s difficult for you but don’t project your difficulties on others.
evanlivingston 9y ago
It would be interesting if anyone disagreeing with your comments was a woman, instead of a man.
- Posibyte 9y ago
  If it helps answer your question, I am a woman and I do not see all men as having narrow views of women. I feel as if there is still a cultural struggle to some degree, but to say all men feel that way is a bit extreme in my mind.
  - evanlivingston 9y ago
    It's astounding to me that the comment was flagged. I don't remember the exact words of the original comment, but I don't recall the OP saying "all men". The OP said women were perceived as property. It doesn't take all men to believe that, it just takes most men. A woman isn't raped by all men, she's raped by an individual man. It only takes one man to commit the crime, and a cultural problem of perceiving women as rapable is what creates a world where 1 in 5 women are raped.
    - ImSkeptical 9y ago
      As I've replied in a previous comment, in the US, 91% of people view equal rights between genders as "very important" (source below). How does that fit with your implied belief that most people perceive women as property? Are you, perhaps, located in Saudi Arabia? I'm also curious for your source on the statistic that 1 in 5 women worldwide are raped. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/19/many-around-the-world-say-womens-equality-is-very-important/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/19/many-around-...
      - evanlivingston 9y ago
        The number of people saying they feel as though women's equality is not the same as there being equality for women. Let's use a few examples: A majority of people don't approve of Trump, but he is however still the President. I have a very strong suspicion most people in the U.S. would say racism ought to not exist, but we know for a fact that it does. One of the more telling flaws in using the simple metric of a survey of opinions is that the U.S appears to be one of the leaders in gender equality according to the linked article. However U.S. legislation clearly shows this to be less true when compared to other countries, particularly Western Europe. Again, we can look at rape statistics to see how untrue this is. The 1 in 5 statistic I referenced came from a CDC survey. there are differing statistics, but none of them paint a very pretty picture.

ramzyo 9y ago

It’s so terribly sad that there are men who think this way.

hux_ 9y ago
Read\watch Camille Paglia. Generic feminism of the brand - we don't have power therefore someone has to give it to us - breaks down when it encounters the kind of men described in the article. "The only thing worse then fairness is make-believe fairness".
Posibyte 9y ago
I wonder if there's an analogous group of women that behave this way as well. The article didn't really dive into motivations, so I wonder how much of it is cultural and how much of it is related to general mental health. And if it is related to the latter, is it possibly a universal condition that also afflicts women as well, in such that it may not be sexual, but that small groups of women can have these predispositions to the worth, behavior, and attitudes towards men with little remorse for their ultimate actions against them.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  You'll find that a lot of predators (serial killers, sexual predators) were abused as children. Poverty seems to be a factor, but that alone doesn't usually cause such a lack of remorse later in life. Something like extreme affluenza seems to cause it in some people, too. That's probably more about having control over someone else and being used to get your way, even being rewarded for it. Wiki's got lots of information on the topic if you don't mind seeing how people can turn into animals.
  - jacobreg 9y ago
    The poverty thing could well be sampling bias, I'm sure rich folks have a much easier time avoiding convictions.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    The root cause (whether nature or nurture) seems to be a lack of empathy. Could you detect empathetic capabilities with fMRI? If deficient, would you mandate treatment? Besides therapy, is there a treatment?

tim333 9y ago

The Washington Post article on the same story has more detail and some of the researcher's ideas where the problem is https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/11/a-woman-interviewed-100-convicted-rapists-in-india-this-is-what-she-learned/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/11...

cm2012 9y ago

What a disturbing article. I wouldn't have thought all the men were remorseless.

spodek 9y ago
> she said she would only interview willing participants They selected themselves. Remorseful ones, if any, may have chosen not to participate.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  > Remorseful ones, if any, may have chosen not to participate. Conceivable, but then why were most of the murderers she interviewed remorseful? Why would remorseful murderers be willing to talk but not remorseful rapists?
  - BrandoElFollito 9y ago
    Maybe because the kind of remorse is different, with a different sigma attached? (just a thought) In other words maybe "I murdered" is a different remorse (or lack of) than "I raped"?
  - scotty79 9y ago
    >> Remorseful ones, if any, may have chosen not to participate. > Conceivable, but then why were most of the murderers she interviewed remorseful? Maybe it's easier to become convicted accidental murderer than convicted accidental rapist? Most people who killed didn't really want to do that. Maybe that's not the case for rapist.
- Sniffnoy 9y ago
  But why would that only apply to rapists and not murderers? She found plenty of repentant murderers, according to the article.
  - xaqfox 9y ago
    Maybe sentencing differences are causing the selection bias. Remorseful rapists may be trying to avoid publicizing their convictions (with their plan being to reintegrate with society at a later time). The remorseful murderers may have all been serving life sentences.

wasx 9y ago

Is there anywhere we can read the responses? I would be interested in hearing how they justify their actions and attitudes

Alex3917 9y ago

Has the actual paper been published yet? I'm wondering if she also tested them for IQ, blood lead levels, etc. Given that the WaPo article says that many of them had only a third or fourth grade education, this strikes me as possibly just making fun of people with disabilities.

wavefunction 9y ago
They're working class Indians, probably mostly laborers. I'm not sure you can classify this group as disabled. From my perspective I have to assume alienation from society allows these men to commit the crimes they do and remain remorseless. If you've lived a tough or unforgiving life in a society that doesn't care if you live or die, you won't necessarily show the same courtesy to anyone else. Why respect the social norms of a society that shows you no respect? I'm not excusing their behavior either. This alienation is also what I think drives US mass shootings, drug abuse, and other social crimes. That's just my opinion though, I've little other than intuition to back up my stance.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Exactly. "Screw this hellhole I'll litter if I want to it can't make this dump any worse" applies to non-victimless crimes too.
smt88 9y ago
> this strikes me as possibly just making fun of people with disabilities What about this is "making fun"? Did you mean to say that, by mentioning the education level, they're stigmatizing people with disabilities? Because there are millions of people around the world with no cognitive impairment who don't finish elementary school...
- Alex3917 9y ago
  I meant sentences like: > Pandey had a burning need to know what these rapists were thinking. She decided to ask the rapists themselves. > Their utter lack of remorse came as a surprise to her. > She saw a pattern of "cognitive distortion" — they had created their own version of the crime that allowed them to justify their actions. Statements like that imply a certain level of cognitive capacity and agency, which maybe these inmates have, but if so that isn't demonstrated anywhere in the article. All I'm saying is that the implications of the research are very different depending on whether these folks are upper middle class, college educated with normal IQ, EQ, etc., versus if half of them have severe lead poisoning or TBIs or whatever.

justinnhli 9y ago

A list of Madhumita Pandey's publications can be found at https://theconversation.com/profiles/madhumita-pandey-276284 https://theconversation.com/profiles/madhumita-pandey-276284

donatj 9y ago

I would be interested to see results of similar studies compared across different cultures.

warbaker 9y ago

The analysis is kinder to the rapists than the data. They state that they believe that this ruins the woman's marital prospects forever, but that didn't stop them from doing it. Even within their belief system, they are acting monstrously. Interviewing them is a great idea, but the researchers should be open to the idea that the main problem is the boring, standard idea that violent criminals have little empathy for their victims, and little impulse control.

dingo_bat 9y ago
Agreed. I hate this trend of trying to mellow everything down to some harmless palatable cause. People rape because they are worthless scum who don't think about their victim's wellbeing. People murder because they don't value their victim's life. I don't need to justify their fucked up behaviour using some humane analysis of their psyche. Just lock them up and throw away the key.
- Domenic_S 9y ago
  Are you misunderstanding this as a personal analysis to _understand_ the rapist personally? I don't think that's it -- she gave them numbers after all. At a population level, it's interesting to study. Our brains are machines that we don't fully understand, it could be useful to discover why rapists rape. If you had lived one of those guys on the bus' life, would you have participated? Or are people like this born broken, never to be fixed, and we may as well throw away the key? It's a bit like Star Trek: Nemesis. In some future if we could give a convicted rapist a pill that we scientifically know would prevent him from ever having a rape impulse again, would we accept him back into society? What if it was preventative?
- warent 9y ago
  This is a mentality that humans have had since the dawn of history. Not necessarily towards rape specifically, but to things the broader popular society finds morally reprehensible. Your line of reasoning is totally normal for the human condition and has been used for thousands of years now. Here we are today without any lack of morally reprehensible problems. Don't you think it's time we changed our strategy and rose above this animalistic, purely instinctual nature? It's time we got out of this mess.

megaman22 9y ago

Keystone Light. Zhenka. Mr. Boston. There's your reasons for most cases of sexual assault on college campuses.

alexanderstears 9y ago

Where was the "why" question and answer?

ck425 9y ago

This reminds me of the Netflix series Mindhunter, about the FBI doing the same with serial killers in the 70s. It's based on real life work. Well worth watching both for the complicated but well handled subject matter and for the direction (David Fincher) and performances. For anyone doubting the 'morality' of this researc or presuming rapists are just vile apathetic scumbags and nothing more, go watch it or better yet read the real life story it's based on. This kind of research has saves hundreds of lives and prevented many men (mostly) from becoming serial killers. Let's hope this new research does the same for rapists.