Mix of rape and volitional sex

The fact that in much of the research rape and volitional sex is mixed up is a serious problem. Such research does not prove anything for volitional relations. On the other hand, if volitional relations do not cause harm (or at least are less harmful) the harm caused by rape looks less serious.

The last effect may be important especially for boys. Indeed, boys react much more positive, the part of harmless volitional sex is greater than rape. Instead, the majority of girls react negatively, therefore, the effect will be not so important for girls.

This hypothesis may be tested. There is a sufficient number of research studies, and a meta-analysis has shown the following results:

from Rind et.al. 1998

Because a sizable minority of the studies restricted their definitions of CSA to unwanted sex only, we took the opportunity to examine relations between CSA and adjustment as a function of level of participation. We did this separately for males and females. Table 7 shows the results. For males, when just considering samples that included all types of CSA (that is, both willing and unwanted sex), we found that CSA accounted for only 0.16% of the adjustment variability, which was not statistically significant. When just examining samples where the CSA was unwanted, CSA accounted for 1.69% of the adjustment variability, which was statistically significant. This value was greater than the previous value for both willing and unwanted sex by a factor of 10.

Taken together, these two results imply that, for boys, willingly engaging in CSA is not associated with poorer adjustment. For females, on the other hand, CSA was associated with poorer adjustment whether both willing and unwanted CSA were considered together or unwanted CSA only was considered. In the former case, CSA accounted for 1.21% of the adjustment variability; in the latter, it accounted for 0.64%.