The relationships among sex role orientation, egalitarianism, attitudes toward sexuality, and attitudes toward violence against women

Relationships among U.S. college students' (N = 618) attitudes toward rape myths and their sex role orientation, affective responses to sexuality, sex role egalitarianism, and attitudes toward violence against women were investigated. Results indicated that men were more tolerant of rape, more likely to attribute blame for rape to the victim, and less negative in their views of rapists than women were. In addition, for men, but not for women, masculinity and femininity were predictive of rape attitudes and attributions of blame to rape victims. Positive attitudes toward sexuality were predictive of intolerance of rape for the total sample and for men, but not for women, and were predictive of perceptions of women as innocent victims of rape for both the total sample and the sexes separately. Attitudes toward pornography were unrelated to attitudes toward rape. Acceptance of violence against women and a lack of sexual egalitarianism were predictive of acceptance of rape myths. Androgynous, masculine, and feminine individuals were less tolerant of rape than undifferentiated persons were.