contra rayiner, the reason that hypothesis is described as "uncomfortable" is that it implies people commit rape because they desire sex. Rayiner has made a good statement of the feminist-cultish alternative belief, usually summarized as "rape is not about sex".

Studies show that rapists are not, in general, men who can't get sex another way, but rather men who want to exert power over women. The uncomfortable hypothesis is that prostitution fulfills the same urge to exercise power.[1] It's uncomfortable because of what it implies about the nature of prostitution.

[1] The quote, usually attributed to Charlie Sheen, that "you don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterward" is illustrative of this hypothesis as well.

Charlie Sheen was a man who didn't have problems getting a woman to agree to sleep with him. That doesn't mean he had sex out of a love of exercising power instead of the normal sexual drive; the quote is telling you that he considered a prostitute's monetary cost to be a lower price than paying nothing to a girl who would then brag to all her friends and the National Enquirer that she was Charlie Sheen's girlfriend, flip out when she saw him kissing an actress, show up crying at his house in the middle of the night, etc etc etc.

> "you don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterward"

How is that about power? It plainly reads as "I want sex, but I don't want to maintain a relationship with a woman to get it." If anything that confirms that prostitution is about sex.

>The uncomfortable hypothesis is that prostitution fulfills the same urge to exercise power.

one can also see that for many being a manager (or a state senator, or a police, etc... ) fullfills the same urge to exercise power.

>It's uncomfortable because of what it implies about the nature of prostitution.

and about the nature of any situation where people exercise power. Some people definitely do it for power, some - for other reasons.

> Studies show that rapists are not, in general, men who can't get sex another way, but rather men who want to exert power over women.

No, they don't.

This is not and cannot be the result of any study.

This is just baseless feminist dogma.

You have been lying all over this thread. Stop lying.

The definition of rape hinges upon the detail of consent. So the reality is that many rapes are not particularly violent. I realize people don't like hearing that but men are typically bigger than women and the socially expected thing is for men to be the pursuers. So in cases of, for example, date rape, men often do not realize they committed rape unless they are charged with it. There is often alcohol and miscommunication involved.

So it really doesn't help to understand the problem space to characterize rape as a "violent" crime and rapists as "violent criminals." That is often not how it happened at all.

Yes and no. Yes, violent stranger rape is a tiny percentage of rapes, but the communication thing is (according to a study by Lisak) largely a post-hoc rationalisation; at the time communication is actually quite clear, but because of this myth, pretending to misunderstand etc proves an effective form of plausible deniability. Alcohol, yes, definitely, as again it's just another cloak of plausible deniability and 'social license'.

I have seen studies as well. And written two college papers on the subject. And was raped -- by someone whom I am quite confident thought he had my permission...until I began screaming and crying. At which point, he got up and left, without ejaculating. I am confident he did not intend to hurt me. So my first-hand experience, as the victim, indicates that, at least some of the time, no, honest, it was a really terrible misunderstanding.