masteen wrote:It's also the fact that a man can force a girl to have sex (and you run into the issue of "implied" force), but it'd be difficult for a woman to do the same, even if she was physically stronger than the boy.
Physical duress isn't the only way to force an impressionable youth to have sex. A person in a position of authority, a teacher for example, could easily force a student into having sex because the student fears that teacher's authority. Though, I'm sure that isn't what happened in this case... Just pointing out that there are other ways of raping someone and, in point of fact, most rapes don't involve physical duress - physical duress is almost entirely limited to stranger rape which accounts for only 10-20% of all rape. Acquaintance rape which, on the other hand, accounts for 80-90% of all rape involves the kind of emotional pressure discribed above, or similar, or the use of drugs to cloud the intended victim's judgement.
Given those statistics, it's fairly clear that women are nearly as capable of raping men as men are raping women.
I don't think that the assumption boils down to a difference in physical strength but rather the psychological differences between men and women. Because of cultural, chemical, and genetic influences men are more likely to be aggressive in taking what they want. Because of this, men are more likely to rape than women, who are generally encouraged to be more passive and are not biologically as predisposed toward aggression.
It also is derived from the general sexual double-standard that men are allowed, even encouraged, to be sexually promiscuous while a woman engaged in similar behavior would be labled a slut and shunned. It's why organizations like
Cake NYC and others that promote the acceptance of sexually assertive women on equal terms with men are so important. The more equal men and women are, the less likely there is to be rape, in either direction.
War pickles men in a brine of disgust and dread.