Michael Kimmel is a sociologist at the State University of New York who has received international recognition for his work on men and masculinity. He says violent men often view their actions as revenge or retaliation. "They say, women have power over me because they're beautiful and sexual and I want them and they elicit that and I feel powerless," he says. "Just listen for a minute to the way in which we describe women's beauty and sexuality. We describe it as a violence against us. She is a knock-out, a bomb-shell, dressed to kill, a femme fatale, stunning, ravishing. I mean all of these are words of violence against us. It's like, wow, she knocked me out. So the violence then, or the aggression or the sexual violence is often a way to retaliate."
Philip is a 29-year-old man even prison workers at the Utah State Prison say is a charmer. He is serving time for sexually abusing his step-daughter. He says anger over a divorce led to his crime. "I wasn't thinking about her whatsoever, just she was there," he says. "Somebody to vent my anger, my frustrations, and my anxieties and pain. I didn't think about her, and if you ask the majority of people who are here on this same crime, they would tell you probably the same thing. They didn't really think. They just want somebody to vent their anger out on. A lot of people who do sex crimes, do these crimes out of anger. Now sex and anger go hand in hand."
Roby sees several kinds of sex offenders. Those, like Philip, for whom sexual assault is an extension of rage; those who have a need to control of have power over their victims; and those who derive sexual pleasure out of inflicting pain on others. Many of the rapists he's worked with also seem to have been motivated by sex. "Most of the individuals that I've worked with saw having sex with a woman as basically their final validation of them being a man. So they would decide prior to the time they went out and actually committed the rape that they were going to be sexually involved with some woman," he says. "The woman no longer really had a choice to make in that kind of relationship, but I don't think they started out saying what I want to do is to degrade or humiliate some other individual."
Approximately 25-26 percent of the inmate population at the Utah State Prison are sex offenders. Dr. Ron Sanchez is the supervising psychologist who works with them. "I think sex is part of it. I think it's a vehicle for their aggression. There again, it's not just about sex. Many of these individuals, at least on the surface, have relationships with women and are having sex on a regular basis, but for some reason have chosen to go out victimize people in this fashion."
Since the 1970s when Susan Brownmiller published her ground breaking book, "Against our Will," rape has been viewed as a crime of control and violence. But Michael Ghiglieri disagrees. He says men may use violence and force as a tool, but what they're after is sex. "That whole power and control thing as an end in itself is a myth. Power and control is used as an instrument to accomplish a sexual event with an unwilling victim. And to leave out that sexual event is to completely forget what the crime was, which was a copulation was stolen from a woman against her will. To take the motive out of the actual definition is crazy. It essentially places women in a place where they no longer understand the motive of the rapist. It's an immense disservice to women."
While some feminists are adamant that rape is not about sex, Jane Caputi, a professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico, claims it's specious to separate violence and sex. "I would disagree with some of the early feminists who would say rape is a crime of violence, not a crime of sex. Because, unfortunately, in this culture sex is completely interfused with violence, with notions of dominance and subordination. Our gender roles are constructed so we have these two genders, masculine and feminine, that are defined by one being powerful and one being powerless. So, powerlessness and power themselves become eroticized."