Tipping the Scales: Effects of Gender, Rape Myth Acceptance, and Anti-Fat Attitudes on Judgments of Sexual Coercion Scenarios

Abstract

A damaging belief exists that to become a victim of sexual violence, victims must be deemed sexually desirable. As a result, sexual violations where the victims are individuals whom society may deem as less attractive—such as overweight women—may elicit less empathy for the victim or minimize the likelihood they are believed. Yet, there is some evidence that overweight women actually report higher rates of sexual violence than women of other weight categories. Although there has been some research implicating weight biases in sexual assault cases, this has not been extended to cases of sexual coercion despite their growing share of police reports. A sample of 168 participants were recruited from Canada via social media ( n = 82) and through a midsized university in Ontario, Canada ( n = 86). Using a mock jury paradigm, participants responded to a vignette depicting the sexual coercion of a thin or overweight woman. Participants reported their opinions on the sexual coercion scenario, and prejudicial attitudes, using two standardized scales. Men reported greater rape myth acceptance, anti-fat attitudes, and victim responsibility and endorsed significantly more perpetrator mitigating factors and expressed more negative affect toward the victim. Participants in the overweight condition also expressed greater perpetrator sympathy, greater perpetrator mitigation, and less negative affect toward the perpetrator. These results suggest that overweight women may face additional barriers when reporting their experiences of sexual coercion, particularly to men.

The relation between weight bias attitudes and judgments of sexual assault scenarios.

“…It is plausible that greater emphasis on weight through the employment of visual images or greater discussion of the survivor's size would have yielded the hypothesized effect. Indeed, research has generally shown that greater weight bias is associated with lower perpetrator blame and higher survivor blame (Clarke & Lawson, 2009;Clarke & Stermac, 2011;Zidenberg et al, 2021), findings further supported in this investigation.…”

“…Generally speaking, greater weight bias (WB) has been associated with more favorable attitudes toward the perpetrator and less favorable attitudes toward the survivor of a sexual assault (Clarke & Lawson, 2009; Clarke & Stermac, 2011; Zidenberg et al, 2021), particularly among study participants who are men (Gotovac & Towson, 2015). Weight bias, also termed weight stigma, refers to the discriminatory acts and negative ideologies targeted toward individuals because of their weight and size.…”

“…Several theories have been proposed to explain how and why survivor weight may impact victim-blaming attitudes (Clarke & Lawson, 2009; Clarke & Stermac, 2011; Gotovac & Towson, 2015; Zidenberg et al, 2021). One theory suggests that women with less sexual experience may be viewed as being less responsible for a sexual assault, and women with obesity may be viewed as having less sexual opportunity due to weight bias.…”

Gender Prototypes Shape Perceptions of and Responses to Sexual Harassment

“…In one of our studies (Goh et al, 2022, Study C1), participants assigned less severe punishments to perpetrators who harassed nonprototypical women than to those who harassed prototypical women. Similarly, other researchers have found that perpetrators who sexually assault overweight (vs. not overweight) and Black (vs. White) women are perceived as less deserving of punishment (Foley et al, 1995;Zidenberg et al, 2021). Additionally, Black, compared with White, assault victims are more likely to receive substandard care, discriminatory treatment, and secondary revictimization from medical practitioners and police officers (Coker at al., 2015;Jacques-Tiura et al, 2010).…”

Rape Stereotype Acceptance in the General Population of England and Wales

“…Additionally, Zidenberg et al (2021) and Barnett et al (2018) both carried out studies in which men were more likely to accept rape stereotypes than women, while other factors additionally had an effect, such as religiosity, anti-fatness, and sympathy for victims. It will be useful to gain a similar understanding of gender and rape stereotype acceptance in the UK.…”