[dujzeqjg] Questions about Predator Theory

Questions to ask about the oft-cited Lisak & Miller 2002 paper, as soon as I get ahold of it and get around to reading it.

Has the rate at which a person commits rape been normalized by number of sexual partners he has had?  The null hypothesis is, everyone commits rape at the same normalized rate (perhaps the rate of miscommunication about consent), so those who have more sex naturally commit more rape.

The practical reason for this normalization is, would removing a "predator" decrease the amount of rape that occurs in society?  We assume the total amount of sex that society has will remain constant, so others will step up make up the difference in unmet sexual demand caused by removing a predator.  However, under the null hypothesis, the rate of rape will remain the same.

People have many orders of magnitude difference of how many sexual partners they have.  Cracking down on the most promiscuous under the idea that they are the predators simply punishes promiscuity, which is plausible as a hidden agenda: conservatives would like to see punished men who sleep around a lot, especially motivated by men who have cheated on them or people they care about.  But that is a different social problem.

Do the survey questions treat all rape as the same, or do they distinguish that rape causes vastly different amounts of psychological harm among different survivors?  Once again, the practical reason not to treat all rape the same is the ultimate goal to reduce harm:

We can imagine a plausible scenario in which removing a predator paradoxically increases overall harm: the predator was good at -- perhaps through practice -- selecting partners who are less likely to suffer psychological harm in the event of rape.  Perhaps they select partners who treat sex as a casual activity and who don't take consent very seriously (see link above).  Expressed somewhat more sinisterly, perhaps they select partners who will forgive them, and avoid reporting them them for rape.  The predator may also act in such a way -- again perhaps through practice -- to minimize psychological harm.  Perhaps they apologize sincerely.  However, as before, once the predator is removed, others step up to meet unmet sexual demand, but the newcomers have not honed these skills, so end up causing more harm.