Was It Rape? The Function of Women's Rape Myth Acceptance and Definitions of Sex in Labeling Their Own Experiences

By Zoë D. Peterson, Charlene L. Muehlenhard. 2004

343 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a6342cd95e7d44ea174679674a6f81ae75e84a39

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Citations in the corpus

Prevalence of Rape Myths in Headlines and Their Effects on Attitudes Toward Rape (2008, background): “Therefore, victims are less likely to report their own assaults because of fear (of judgment), self-blame, and mislabeling due to rape myths (Peterson and Muehlenhard 2004; Pitts and Schwartz 1997); and perpetrators are less likely to acknowledge their violent behavior as an assault (Lonsway and Fit”
An Ecological Model of the Impact of Sexual Assault On Women's Mental Health (2009, background): “Similarly, Peterson and Muehlenhard (2004) reported that sexual assault survivors who were high in rape myth acceptance were less likely to acknowledge that what had happened to them was indeed sexual assault.”
Does Drinking Alcohol Prior to Sexual Activity Influence College Students’ Consent? (2015, background): “It is important to recognize the existence of “unacknowledged rape” as some people (women in particular) may have an experience that meets an operational definition of sexual assault, though they may not define the experience as sexual assault or rape (e.g., Peterson & Muehlenhard, 2004, 2011).”
Rape myth acceptance: cognitive, affective and behavioural effects of beliefs that blame the victim and exonerate the perpetrator (2013, background): “This may prevent them from labelling these experiences as rape; it may also cause them to find fault with their own behaviour and, hence, to fail to report an incident to the police (Peterson and Muehlenhard 2004; Warshaw 1988).”
Stop Blaming the Victim: A Meta-Analysis on Rape Myths (2010, background): “However, as indicated by Peterson and Muehlenhard (2004), endorsement of rape myths minimizes the need for these changes, this is, by placing the responsibility for sexual violence on the victims rather than on the perpetrators and the society as a whole.”
A Match-and-Motivation Model of How Women Label Their Nonconsensual Sexual Experiences (2011, methodology): “A study by Peterson and Muehlenhard (2004) provided a more direct examination of incident–label match by investigating rape acknowledgment as a function of the interaction between the incident characteristics and the victim’s rape script.”