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tling to realise that rape and men's violence towards women became a serious social and political issue only through feminist attention to them' (Segal, 2003, p211). She credits Brownmiller for the questioning of what became known as the 'myths of rape', which has revolutionised the study and treatment of this crime (Segal, 2003, p212). The myths she refers to are the myth that rape is a rare event and the myth that men have a desire to protect women from violence. Certainly statistics bear out this latter myth; statistically sexual offenders are almost entirely male, with only around 2% of offenders being women (Jones, 2001, p444); this is also seen in other countries, in Australia the figure is 7% (White, 2005, p61). We have already considered the statistics of this crime and know that the first myth is indeed a myth, below we will consider whether or not biology is a factor in this statistic; we will also consider the second myth, that of men's attitudes towards women being benevolent and consider the validity of the argument that it is not. These factors must be born in mind when drawing conclusions on this subject using statistics.
 
The arguments about male sexual violence being a result of their biology are vigorously disputed. It has been suggested that one reason men are more sexually violent is because they have an uncontrollable sex-drive (Jones, 2006, p445). Jones points out that although the male hormone testosterone is responsible for sexual arousal, it is not responsible for the 'quality or nature of sexual arousal' (Jones, 2006, p445). Generally, aggression in any form is considered to be a result of social context rather than anything physiological (White, 2005, p63). Evolutionary biologists have suggested that men's propensity to sexual aggression could be explained as the need and desire to procreate, in order to ensure the continuance of his genes; however, there is a flaw in this argument, as many sexual offences are carried out on those too old or too young to procreate; this also would not account for rape with an inanimate object or the rape of men Croall, 1998, p209).
 
Feminist's object to the use of these physical arguments, claiming they absolve men from the responsibility of their actions. Hazell Croall points to studies in the USA that suggest men rapists do consider rape to be their way of claiming dominance (Croall, 1998, p210). However, this is likely to be an oversimplification of a complex problem. The feminists of the 1970s and 80s saw rape and other sexual offences as the result of 'patriarchy'; a belief in men's right to lead and control that can be traced throughout history. They argued that it is in men's interest to keep women in a state of fear and that rape is one way of achieving that end. As we have argued earlier, it is claimed that the primary force for sex is not desire for the act itself but a demonstration of the ability to dominate.
 
When looking at crime statistics we observed that the prevalence of crimes of sexual violence towards women has increased substantially over the last 150 years. As we have seen, Feminists have suggested that rape was used in a patriarchal society to subjugate women; yet this does not appear to be substantiated by history. Roy Porter undertook a study of women's writings, which includes diaries and letters from seventeenth-century England; in these texts he discovered very little mention of rape or sex本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。