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Tobin, MT, 2025. “What is raping somebody?” Exploring individualised meaning, understanding, and application of non-consensual penetrative sex terminology, a lay theories approach. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.
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Abstract
The Sexual Offences Act (2003) has been in effect for 21 years and in these years a number of cultural and social shifts have taken place around how people think and talk about sexual offences. Celebrity scandals, #metoo, and high-profile cases have brought sexual violence into the forefront of academic and public conversation. That being said, there is a wealth of evidence that suggests there may be a disconnect between legal definitions of sexual offence terminology and how people define and use these terms. This evidence spans a range of contexts, but focuses on victimisation acknowledgement, appraisal, and stereotyping. Acknowledgement research has shown victims do not always apply legal labels accurately to their own experiences. Appraisal research has shown participants are not always accurate in their judgements. Finally, stereotyping research shows that that are additional factors that are considered when deciding if an experience is truly a sexual offence, beyond the legal definitions/criteria.
The work of Harbridge and Furnham (1991), Peterson and Meuhlenhard (2004, 2007, 2011) and Haugen et al., (2018), has suggested that the variations in appraisal, acknowledgement, and to some extent myths and stereotypes can be explained through the presence of an individualised construction of the offence. These researchers suggest that individual constructions are being applied to real scenarios, rather than legal definitions, leading to variable and contextual perceptions. The works cited above, however, focus entirely on the offence of rape. Following academic discussions of the law, this thesis presents a discussion of non-consensual penetrative sex, a new term used to define any penetrative sexual acts covered within the offences of rape, assault by penetration, and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent. As such, the study aims to explore constructions of non-consensual penetrative sex, how these constructions develop, and how these constructions can be explained using theoretical models. The findings and perspectives of prior research and legal commentators are discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis, as well as the definition and justification for using non-consensual penetrative sex as an aggregated label.
Chapter 3 summarises the philosophical, ethical, and methodological approaches contained in Chapters 4-7. Chapter 4 presents a large-scale (N = 1532) investigation into victimisation acknowledgement of non-consensual penetrative sex, exploring prevalence differences between question-types, and between sex and sexuality groups. This shows that descriptive questions of victimisation elicit a higher prevalence rate than label-based questions, but that male and female participants are just as likely to acknowledge penetrative offences. This provides evidence for a general misunderstanding of sexual offence terminology. Building on this, Chapters 5 and 6 present qualitative evidence from public (N = 20) and professional (N = 15) samples exploring how they conceptualise non-consensual penetrative sex, and how this construct has changed over time. Both studies found that a majority of participants believed rape should encapsulate all forms of non-consensual penetration, including object penetration and forced-to-penetrate. These constructs also changed for most participants, adapting in response to new information and experiences. Finally, Chapter 7 presents an experimental study exploring the definition of rape and categorisation of sexual offences. Of the sample (N = 312), the majority of participants (n = 298, 95.51%) presented a definition that was inaccurate to the legal definition and included all forms of penetrative sex. Conversely, a significant minority (n = 10, 3.21%) held a legally accurate definition of rape. The majority (>59%) also categorised any vignette involving penetration as rape, and exactly half (50%) categorised female-female oral sex as rape. After the task, ~40% of participants had changed their construction of rape. Chapter 8 collates all evidence from the empirical chapters and previous literature and explores the findings. Chapter 8 also discusses the methodological, theoretical, and practical implications of the research, as well as the strengths and limitations of the research and future directions for possible investigation.
Based on all findings, the majority of participants across this thesis provided inaccurate definitions of offences and usually adopted definitions of rape that included all forms of penetration. It is likely that lay theories are the best explanation of how non-consensual penetrative sex is constructed at an individual level. Through gaining new insights and experiences, participants are reviewing and evaluating extant and new information and reshaping or consolidating their existing perceptions. This presence and process of constructions in non-consensual penetrative sex have a number of implications for research and practice. Most notably, it is suggested that research adopts a label of non-consensual penetrative sex in research concerning the phenomena, rather than using rape, and that a concerted effort is made to provide operational definitions of offences in research methodologies and outputs.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Tobin, M.T. |
| Contributors: | Name Role NTU ID ORCID |
| Date: | July 2025 |
| Rights: | This work is the intellectual property of the author. The copyright in this work is held by the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the author. |
| Divisions: | Schools > School of Social Sciences |
| Record created by: | Jeremy Silvester |
| Date Added: | 12 Dec 2025 11:00 |
| Last Modified: | 12 Dec 2025 11:46 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54860 |
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