Neuroscience of Rape

Jun 27

Most people agree that rape is wrong. But far fewer understand what it actually is—and what it isn’t. In this episode, we confront the myths and misconceptions that continue to shape how we define rape, treat survivors, and pursue justice.

We explore the neuroscience behind trauma responses like freezing and fawning, and why these involuntary reactions are still so often misunderstood in courtrooms, conversations, and cultural narratives. From the impact of the #MeToo movement to the hardwired survival mechanisms of the brain, we examine what needs to change—and why it matters.

This is not an easy conversation. But it’s one we all need to have.

If you have any topic suggestions for future episodes, don't hesitate to reach out! Send us an email at info@brainblownpodcast.com.

We'd love to hear from you.

REFERENCES

Medicolegal Findings of Rape Victims: A Retrospective Study of 69 Cases at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Dhaka City
Palash Kumar Bose, Mamtaz Ara, Md. Syedur Rahaman, Mohammad Jubaidul Kabir, Prodip Biswas

Assault-Related Self-Blame and Its Association with PTSD in Sexually Assaulted Women: An MRI Inquiry
Zohar Berman, Yaniv Assaf, Ricardo Tarrasch, Daphna Joel
Rape Myth Scale: Factor Structure and Relationship with Gender Egalitarianism Among Japanese Professionals
Masayo Uji, Masahiro Shono, Noriko Shikai, Toshinori Kitamura
Neuroscience Evidence Counters a Rape Myth
Ebani Dhawan, Patrick Haggard
Neuropsychological and Electrophysiological Evaluation After Rape: A Case Study of a Teenage Girl
Lucía Ester Rizo-Martínez, Miguel Ángel Guevara, Luis Francisco Cerdán, Francisco Abelardo Robles-Aguirre, Araceli Sanz-Martin, Marisela Hernández-González

General Outline of Episode

1. Intro & Overview

Common Questions & Misconceptions: Address lingering questions and common misconceptions that weren't fully covered in the main episode.

If talking about sex isn’t always easy, then this episode might feel darn near impossible. But that makes it all the more important that we have the conversation, and while we’re grateful you clicked on this episode, we hope you’ll choose to stay through to the end.

Because while most of us agree that rape is wrong, many still misunderstand what it actually is. And in this case, that misunderstanding matters. It shapes how we treat survivors, how we prosecute crimes, and how we teach—or fail to teach—consent.

So Laine, can you help us start to untangle this? What is rape, really—and what do we need to understand before we go any further?

2. Common Misconceptions

Goal:

So what does this mean?
Is this even real?
How would you know you or someone else is doing it?

Laine: For something many people are familiar with, there are a lot of misconceptions of what rape is. That is partially because the definition of it has changed over time, primarily due to evolving understandings of consent, power, rights, and even what goes on in the brain. The dictionary definition of rape is that it is an “unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against a person's will or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent because of mental illness, mental deficiency, intoxication, unconsciousness, or deception”. There are additional definitions of rape that include an act or instance of robbing or despoiling, that were written more about property that we still have in the English language today and it is important to remember that that exists because at one time women’s bodies were considered property.

Even the way we look at rape as a cribe has changed, even recently. For the FBI, this used to include forcible, but about 12 years ago, forcible was remove,d and the definition was changed. It is now “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

We look to define and often redefine it, as we continue to grow and learn, and understand that we have many misconceptions about something.

We are human and flawed, but we try to get it right. That being said, when it comes to rape, we still have a lot of things wrong, specifically with misconceptions..

We took to the internet and to our listeners to explore some common misconceptions.

An old historic one that Washington University cites is that: “The victim must have “asked for it” by being seductive, careless, drunk, high, etc.” This is one that is interesting to start with because, for as much as most people will colloquially tell you this doesn’t exist anymore, it still is very prevalent in the minds of victims. But more on that later on this episode.

Washington University also cities the important myth that if the victim did not physically struggle with or fight the assailant, it wasn’t really rape. If you have been listening to this podcast a while, it probably won’t surprise you why this is a myth, but this goes so much deeper than we think

Fact: A “freeze” response is a normal response to trauma, rendering a victim unable to physically fight back. Furthermore, offenders are not looking for a fight and they use many forms of coercion, threats and manipulation to commit sexual violence. Many victims do not fight back because they are afraid or feel compelled to cooperate in order to survive. Alcohol and other drugs are often used to incapacitate victims.

Another old myth is that rapist are strangers, when our data actually tells us that the majority are known to the person who were harmed. They are friends or partners, family members, coworkers, exs. That is scarier for most of us, because it is easier to think that the people who harm us are strangers. And thought that myth is old, its still prevalent again amongst a lot of those who have been harmed, because its hard to believe otherwise.

A myth I still find funny that exists is “Rape is caused by the perpetrator’s uncontrollable sexual urge”. If we think that people have no control over their bodies, wouldn’t we do something about it. In fact that is the heart of this podcast. Learning more and more teaches how much control you do have, and this podcast would argue that if you can commonly control your heart beat, you can control your sexual urges. In fact we just covered how difficult it can be sometimes to have sexual urges and all the things that can go wrong in all bodies to impact that. Also its important to remember that rape is less about sex and more about power and control. Rape can happen with inantimate objects, and violence that cooccurs with it is not uncomon.

Also important is the myth that men can’t be sexually assaulted. And I will quote the university on this one. “Men are sexually assaulted. Any man can be sexually assaulted regardless of size, strength, appearance or sexual orientation.”. And although the majority of rapes are commited by men it is important to remember that it is also a myth that “Only gay men sexually assault other men.” Statistics prove that “most men who sexually assault other men identify themselves as heterosexual”. Again the fact that this is believed that rape is about sex, when it is instead about power.

But regardless of how much we are learning that the idea that rape is about sex is a myth, we still struggle ot believe it, so much so that the myth that “Sexual arousal, including climax, erection or ejaculation during a sexual assault means the survivor wanted it or consented to the sexual contact.”. That is part of the reason it is good to look at the neuroscience of sex. We know that all of this is more complicated than we want to understand.

Another important myth is that people, often feminine-presenting people, will play “'hard to get' and say 'no' when they really mean 'yes'”. This is where teaching early, and teaching well about sex is important. Because a lack of teaching leaves us fraught with problems. Specifically:

here is a very important part to know about this ‘common myths and misconceptions part of our podcast. According to a study by Julia Occonor, “Rape Myth Acceptance predicted rape proclivity at later time points and vice versa. The findings concerning predictive causality indicate that the relationship between the two constructs is complex and multifaceted. Using longitudinal data, this study demonstrates an association between the two constructs over time: men who accept rape myths at a given time point are more likely to show rape proclivity at future time points, indicating a temporal sequence. The same was found for rape proclivity, with rape proclivity at early time points being associated with Rape Myth Acceptance at later time points”

It is also important to cover the myths about people who have bene raped. Washington University also cities the important myth that if the victim did not physically struggle with or fight the assailant, it wasn’t really rape. If you have been listening to this podcast a while, it probably won’t surprise you why this is a myth, but this goes so much deeper than we think, but to know more on that, you’ll have to listen to the neuroscience part of this episode. Also a myth still believed is “If the person didn’t say 'no' then it wasn't rape”. That one is going to be hard for a lot of people to believe, but when we understand what goes on in the brain when we are at risk, we understand that “not saying ‘no’ is not the same as someone giving their consent. If someone seems unsure, stays quiet, moves away or doesn’t respond, they are not agreeing to sexual activity.”

Another important myth is to understand that “Victims and survivors should act a certain way after being raped” is a myth. I’ll be honest, I’m going to through the field of mental health a little shade on this one becaue this is still a myth that many uneducated providers have. Neuroscience, spericially around trauma and fight/flight/freeze teaches us that” everyone responds differently to rape and other types of sexual violence, and there's no right or wrong way to be or to feel afterwards. It's common for people to feel numb after a traumatic event like rape or sexual assault. And some people don't feel the effects of trauma until a long time after a traumatic event has happened”

The Rape Crisis center of the UK reports “Myths about rape and other forms of sexual violence and abuse hold a lot of power in our society – and that can be really dangerous.”. Specifically, these myths can “cause victims and survivors to feel shame about what happened to them, or to blame themselves.” It can also negatively affect how society views survivors. And this can trickle down into the criminal justice system, as well as health and support services.”

3. Case Study

Goal: Where do we see this?

I’ll be honest, there were a lot of case studies we could cover. This isn’t rare, this is a well-known matter. And a lot of them have a lengthy history of survivors not being believed, to the point where many did not come forward.

As documented by the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, “In the United States, about 43.6% of women and 24.8% of men experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetime. About 81.3% of female victims and 70.8% of male victims experienced their first completed or attempted rape before the age of 25. Acording to the national sExual Vioence and REsource Center, about 93% of rapes and sexual assutls go unreported. Most people will report this is due to risk or fear of being retaliated for reporting, shame or embarrassment, and belief that they will not get helped. If a person reports, “the survivor’s body becomes a part of the crime scene. If a survivor reports the assault to the police and goes to a medical facility or rape crisis center, the survivor can choose to have a medical professional photograph, swab, and conduct an invasive and exhaustive examination of the survivor’s entire body for DNA evidence left behind by the attacker—a process that takes four to six hours to complete. That evidence is collected and preserved in a sexual assault evidence kit, commonly referred to as a rape kit. When tested, DNA evidence contained by rape kits can be an incredibly powerful tool to solve and prevent crime.

Despite this, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested in police department and crime lab storage facilities across the country in what is referred to as the “rape kit backlog” or the “untested rape kit backlog.” Social justice movements have been active and made progress to reduce backlog that would take sometimes decades to be run, if they ever were, but accorgint to a study by STrom Et All in 2021 estimated that there were 300,000 to 400,000 unsumiteted kits and the joyful hear troundation found that was around over 2000 in 5 years between 2013 and 2019.

Speaking up about rape has a history world wide of being difficult.

So let's speak to a major case study that changed that.

In 2006, Tarana Burke worked consistently with survivors of sexual violence. She specialized in women of color from more impoverished backgrounds. She found that the simple expression “me too” helped more and more survivors speak up. Historically, this started on Myspace. In 2015, Actress Alissa Milano moved this to Twitter and gave it a hashtag. When interviewed, she cites that she got the idea from a friend. She asked people to retweet it, and it went viral. Widespread coverage of this happened pretty quickly, and the movement went global. Forbes reports that a legal defense fund was launched, and over 5000 people have come forward to ask for help from this fund. And it has spread from Hollywood to C-level execs to everyday people in many different areas of life.

The National Women’s Law Center reports that “Six years after #MeToo, 24 states and the District of Columbia have passed more than 80 workplace anti-harassment bills:

Times Up Legal Defense Fund reported that “ several states have adopted what are known as 'Anti-SLAPP' laws to help protect survivors who are targeted with defamation claims when they speak out. This is important because more than 70% of workers who report abuse are retaliated against in some way—whether they are fired, demoted, given fewer hours on their schedule, denied a promotion, or threatened with legal action.”

Forbes states, “Sexual harassment is ultimately about power; who has it and who doesn’t. Part of the progress of the #MeToo movement has been to help shift more of the power back into employees’ hands.”

Not to mention the movement is credited with the very public convictions of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Photographer Jean Claude Arnault, USA Gymnastics team national doctor Larry Naer, and Former Michigan State University Willimas Strampel, as well as Singer R. Kelly, celebrity chef Mario Batali.

4. Neuroscience

Forbes news states, “While some people may argue that #MeToo is dead or is not needed anymore, the truth is that change with any social movement is slow, nonlinear, and doesn’t happen all at once. The #MeToo movement of 2017 and 2018 grew with survivors finding community and resulted in holding hundreds of powerful men accountable. It’s clear that sexual harassment isn’t only an individual issue; it’s also a systemic issue. It requires protections in the form of laws to help prevent it from happening in the first place, or to put better structures in place to create accountability.”

One area that is still needed for improvement is to lose more our common myths and misunderstandings. So with that in mind

This is the Neuroscience of Rape.

To dig deeper one area that needs to be on what it means to prove that rape has occured. Accoring to Dhawan and Haggard, even with as many rapes that are starting to be reported (due to support from movements like MeToo) about 3% were lead to a charge. They state “Legal definitions of RSA are based on absence of consent. However, establishing consent or lack thereof is challenging.” and “Legal actors in Rape and Sexual Assault cases are susceptible to stereotypes (‘rape myths’) about how a ‘real’ victim would behave”. One of the biggest ones being that someone should have struggled while being rape. Though we have removed the idea of struggle or force from legal definitions, “rape myths such as this continue to influence thinking of jurors, lawyers, judges and wider society”. They argue this occurs because of a “cognitive model of intentional action that underlies all criminal law. Healthy adult humans are assumed to have voluntary control over their actions, and to carry out their actions intentionally” specifically in rape cases there is the consistent belief that if the victim could have resisted or fled, then they would have.

If you have not listened to our last episode on Appeasement, we would recommend doing that. In fact most of this season has been dedicated to furthering the understanding that just because we behave a certain way with one person does not mean we are the same person in a different environment. That is a deep-seated human belief. I have this type of personality. I am this type of person, and the mental implications when we don’t act in a way we feel is congruent with that.

Our nervous system literally changes when we don’t feel safe. We go into fight/flight/freeze/fawn. All of those are examples of the body saying “I am not safe”. When we are not safe, we do not respond the same way. We can’t.

And yet there is this assumption that we must still be and act very specific ways, and one of the ways this shows up repeatedly in is in the case of rape convictions. We believe for it to be nonconsensual, someone must have fought back or fled. We don’t understand freezing and fawning. Dhawan and Haggard state, “ We argue that the assumption that victims intentionally choose immobility over resistance is neuroscientifically incorrect. We suggest that RSA victims may remain immobile because of an involuntary neural response to threat, which blocks the brain circuits that provide voluntary control over body movement.”

They further argue that not understanding that, creates a strong double standard, stating “law has long recognized ‘loss of control’ defences, and can accord diminished responsibility in specific situations where evidence suggests actions are made outside of voluntary control. These include some medical conditions such as sleep disorders, but also extreme situations of coercive control, and emotional triggering.” We know, as we have been covering further and further in depth on this podcast, that our cognitive beliefs of something and how we respond in fear and threat, are not the same. Our body will override because that part of your brain and nervous system are older. “Neural and behavioural responses to threat depend on the severity and proximity of the threat, and also on perceived ability to escape. Many animal studies describe freezing as brief anticipatory, attentive immobility that occurs before a threat becomes immediate.” and go on to prove this further with data, showing “70% of women attending an Rape and Sexual Assult emergency clinic appeared to have experienced tonic immobility during Rape and Sexual Assult. Victims frequently describe themselves as ‘frozen’. Because they consistently report inability to move or cry out, this behaviour more closely corresponds to tonic/collapsed immobility, rather than the attentive anticipatory ‘freezing’ described in animal literature.”

What happens in the brain during this process?

Dhawan and Haggard reflect on a lot of what we have covered here. If this is not your first Brain Blown episode, it will be no surprise to you that this starts in the amygdala. Dhawan and Haggard specifically state that the amygdala “receives sensory inputs from evolutionarily-ancient subcortical circuit, but also from the association cortex, thus explaining how cognitive factors can potentially modulate threat-processing circuitry and thus reduce feelings of fear”. They further explain why this matters, as immobility will occur if specific circuits that they mandala outputs requires it. They state that “ The central nucleus of the amygdala projects to the ventrolateral subdivision of the periaqueductal grey,” and in some studies, we notice this projecting into the brain stem. Looking into the brain stem, we see a switch occurring that changes the body from moving to stopping. We see this in mice and cats as well. They propose that “a circuit linking amygdala, periaqueductal grey and the brainstem motor nuclei may underlie threat-evoked immobility in humans, potentially including IRSA”. From this, they argue that a circuit linking the amygdala, the periaqueductal grey, and the brainstem motor nuclei may underlie threat-evoked immobility in humans, potentially including IRSA. From this, they argue that the ventrolateral periaqueductal gray is likely causing the brainstem motor neuculie to stop the body’s ability to move through inhibitory circuits, as this is something we see in other mammals.

5. Practical Application (Strategies & Takeaways)

Goal: Offer concrete strategies to resolve the problem in your scenario, based on the science.

What practical solutions or strategies can address the problem based on the research?

Example: "How can you rebuild trust with your team after communication has

So why does this matter? Regardless of what we try to tell ourselves, we sometimes struggle with a concept. If we can normalize and distance the idea of what we should do, or even what we want to do, from what the body needs, we can understand further why our body responds in this way.

This potentially matters a great deal on a legal landscape. We are in what can feel like a never ending cycle with rape. Rape surivisors don’t want to report because they don’t feel they will be believed. They struggle with whether it was their fault and why they didn’t do x thing to have changed the situation. Society struggles with that as well. If a rape surivior ocmes forward, their body becomes evidence. Despide the fact that we know that rape cna take place without leaving any evidience behind. The body stil lundergoes intrusive and difficult procedures to try to ‘prove’ that rape occured. If the person ocmes forward and if they get a rape kit, then it is questionable on IF the rape kit will be tested. If the rape kit is actually tested and it goes to trial, the trial is decided by a jury. Who also questions why the victim didn’t do more. The jury struggles on if there was proof without a reasonable doubt that this existed. Even though there may be no physical evidence. Even if the rape sruvivir didn’t fight. But the jury will struggle and often the rapist will walk. And survivors know this. So they don’t report.

And I will say, we immediately have concerns on the other side. What if this was a false report? And I will ask you, where else in society, in crimes humans commit against others, are we ever so focused on that.

When we look at take aways, we are often looking for solutions. What do we do about this? A quick internet search will show you the number of ways we focus on the person being raped. Most young women have heard these. They include “trust your insteincts, avoid being alone, be aware of whaer you are, keep your cellphone charged, stay away from deserted areas, hold your keys in your hand so you can harm someone with your keys. Remember to cry fire instead of rape.

This episdoe alone shows it is so much bigger than that. Our take aways can not be individual alone, they need to lok at hte bigger issues. We need to explore our own misconceptions, as we have evidence to show the more we believe them, the more rape can and will occur. One of the biggest ones is that all people being harmed must fight or flee. We need to remember fawn and freeze.

We need to understand that people do not deserve to be harassed, abused, asulted or raped. We need to support and believe people, and create space for survivors. We need to challenge the victim blaming statement. We need to challenge the culture well before it goes to rape. We need to challange culture about jokes that pputate rape cutlure or sexism are not ok. We need to teach about consent - what it is? How you know you feel consent? What different types of consent are? How different levels of consent feel on the body. How to know to engage with someone physically or sexually only if they are able to fully consent? How to know what that looks like. I’ve heard men often afraid of being accused of rape, yet very few are afraid of commiting it, when there are definitely purpattrators of rape who never knew that is what they were doing. The education needs to start so much sooner. We need to teach what freeze looks like and that freeze is not consent. We need to start creating different narratives.

We can do this. We are capable of great change as humans and we have already come so far. Dameon Centola will say to make great change, you really only have to change about 25% of people on average. When we cna reach a new norm for about 25% of people, we start to notice greater social change overall.

This is possible. We can do this.

6. Closing & Recap

Goal: Wrap up the episode by summarizing key points and encouraging action.

An important piece for recap is for those who culture has not changed for. For those who have been harmed or hurt. Know that you are not alone. Know that there are spaces that will believe you. Know that it is normal for it to also impact you long after the harm is done.

Rizo-Martiez et al. cite that “sexual violence has been reported to have a profound impact on physical and mental health in both the short and long term”. They cite some of the most frequently reported symptoms are depression, anxiety, dissociation, aggressiveness, inappropriate or early sexual behavior and activity, loss of self-esteem, suicide or attempted suicide, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder”. Berman, Assaf, Tarrasch, and Joel address that there are several studies on the symptoms of sexually assaulted individuals. They cite that the most common one is self-blame, which is not understood. There is science to show why self-blame in sexual violence survivors is higher than in any other area of harm, specifically, there is activation in the cluster CMB in the medial occipital cortex. They found activation specifically “self-blame-related GMV alterations bilaterally in the lingual gyrus and adjacent intracalcarine cortex(referred to here as ‘the lingual cluster’). GMV in this cluster was also predicted by intrusion and negative social reactions.”. This is important. Throughout my time, I have worked to educate providers who work in sexual assault. One thing I continue to teach is to stop saying it's not your fault to a survivor. Sometimes, when we’ve been harmed in such a way, where we had no control over what happened to us, we had no say over our bodies, it needs to be our fault. If it's our fault, maybe we can stop it from happening again.

Specifically, if you are a provider, know that this is currently hardwired for the person who experienced harm. We need to change what is going on in the activation of the brain for this to change. You saying something over and over will not help. The body’s response needs to be recognized.

For survivors, if you feel like it's your fault, perhaps you feel like you didn’t do enough, did x things wrong - that is a very common and normal way to feel.

Its important for you to recognize, regardless of what happened, that you didn’t deserve this happening to you.

If you are a victim of sexual assault, it is not uncommon to have reactions long after the event. That does not mean something is wrong with you; it means something happened to you. There is help available. A possible resource is going to traumahealing.org and looking for practitioners in your area. You are deserving of being heard. You are deserving of care. You are deserving of healing.

Cherys Austin