What if you lived in a country where one in every four men had raped a woman or girl? Or where one in every 25 had perpetrated gang rape? Rape with impunity.
Precisely these figures have come to light in a current Australian co-sponsored study of sexual violence in six Asia-Pacific countries. They are data averages from more than ten thousand men interviewed by the United Nations Partners for Prevention 'Change Project'.
In one country, of the men who admitted to rape, more than one in two said they'd started raping in their teens. Across the entire region, one in every two men said they had used violence against an intimate partner.
Why do men commit sexual violence? This is the question driving the research.
The study's preliminary findings, presented at the United Nations in March, show that, on average, nearly one in two perpetrators says they rape women 'for entertainment' or out of 'boredom'. Roughly one in three says he rapes out of anger and the desire to punish.
Perhaps the most disturbing finding was that almost three out of every four claim rape is men's prerogative. Men, they say, are entitled to take what is rightfully theirs — women's bodies — regardless of consent. This chimes with Australian research showing that men who kill their partners do so mainly out of possessiveness.
Why, to date, have we heard so little from rapists about why they rape? Is it out of the misguided belief that trying to make sense of criminal behaviour is the same as condoning it?
Some say involving men in analysing the problem either excuses the perpetrator or blames the victim. Neither is the case. Working toward getting perpetrators to take responsibility and accept the consequences — preferably restorative justice, incarceration if necessary, but not the death penalty — is part of resolving the problem.
The idea that, by raping women, men 'prove their manhood' is not just a key part of the problem; it also points to its source: the way men are socialised into manhood.
Nearly nine out of every ten men in the study said that 'to be a man you need to be tough'. Of the men who were subjected to peer pressure to join in gang rape and refused, many said they had been ridiculed as a result: 'You are not a real man; you are gay' is the usual taunt, said one anti-violence educator.
'Above all else', said an interviewer,