The Developmental Antecedents of Sexual Coercion against Women: Testing Alternative Hypotheses with Structural Equation Modeling

Abstract

A unified model of the origin of sexual aggression against women on both adult and juvenile sexual offender samples has been developed and successfully tested. This model proposed three major causal paths to sexual coercion against women. In the first path, physical and verbal abuse was hypothesized to produce callousness and lack of emotionality, which disinhibited sexual drive and sexual fantasies. These in turn disinhibited hostile sexual fantasies, and led to sexual coercion. In the second causal path, sexual abuse contributed directly to the disinhibition of sexual drive and sexual fantasies, which through hostile sexual fantasies led to sexual coercion. The third path operated through early antisocial behavior, including aggressive acts. It developed as a result of both physical/verbal abuse and callousness/lack of emotion. It in turn directly affected sexual coercion and worked indirectly through the hostile sexual fantasies path. In the present study, the anonymous responses of a group of 168 blue‐collar, community males to an inventory (the Multidimensional Assessment of Sex and Aggression) were used in a structural equation model to test the validity of this model. Moreover, this model was pitted against Malamuth's (1998) two‐path model. Whereas the three‐path model had an excellent fit with the data (CFI = .951, RMSEA = .047), the two‐path model fit less well (CFI = .857, RMSEA = .079). These results indicate the superiority of the three‐path model and suggest that it constitutes a solid, empirically disconfirmable heuristic for the etiology of sexual coercion against women.

Transactional sex with casual and main partners among young South African men in the rural Eastern Cape: Prevalence, predictors, and associations with gender-based violence

“…Intriguingly, these same risk factors are also associated with a greater likelihood of rape perpetration (Jewkes, Dunkle, Nduna et al, 2006). In that context, it has been suggested the experience of trauma in childhood reduces men's ability to form emotionally intimate relationships with women and as a result they develop a preference for impersonal sex (Knight & Sims-Knight, 2003;Malamuth, 2003). Explicitly transactional sex and rape are both types of impersonal sex.…”

Does Alcohol Contribute to the Confluence Model of Sexual Assault Perpetration?

“…The confluence model has also been replicated and expanded by several independent research teams (Hall, Teten, DeGarmo, Sue, & Stephens, 2005;Knight & Sims-Knight, 2003;Martin, Vergeles, Acevedo, Sanchez, & Visa, 2005;Wheeler et al, 2002). The precise indicators used to assess each of the primary concepts have varied across studies, suggesting that the constructs of impersonal sex and hostile masculinity are robust.…”

Beyond sexual recidivism: A review of the sexual criminal career parameters of adult sex offenders

“…One striking observation that can be made is that while sex offenders have been described in so many ways along so many dimensions and factors, comparatively speaking, the very behavior that clinical researchers have aimed to explain, sexual offending, has been largely neglected. This is by no means an oversight, but illustrates the fact that most theoretical models of sex offending are based on the assumption that there is a stable propensity to commit sexual crimes and theoretical models should only be concerned with the description and the explanation of this propensity (e.g., Hall & Hirschman, 1992;Knight & Sims-Knight, 2003;Malamuth, 1998). Taken another way, these models primarily explain the clinical characteristics of sex offenders and to a far lesser extent the actual sexual criminal behavior of these individuals.…”