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

In a phenomenon called unacknowledged rape, many rape victims do not label their experience “rape.” Does their level of rape myth acceptance influence this labeling process? In this study, 86 college women whose experience met the legal definition of rape described their experience, indicated how they labeled it, and completed the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale. Logistic regressions indicated that, for 2 rape myths (e.g., if women don't fight back, it's not rape), women who accepted the myth and whose experience corresponded to the myth (e.g., they did not fight back) were less likely than other women to acknowledge their experience as rape. Women were also unlikely to acknowledge rape when they did not label the nonconsensual sexual behavior “sex.”