Relative Risks of Rape by Age, and Is Rape "About Control … Not About Sex"?

(Eugene Volokh)

A commenter on an earlier gun license thread writes:

It isn't just young, pretty women who get raped, by a long shot. Middle-aged women do get attacked, and elderly women are even more vulnerable. Rape is about control (just like disarmament) not about sex.

Yes and no. It's true that middle-aged women do sometimes get attacked, but according to the National Crime Victimization Survey (2007 data), the rate of attempted or completed rape or sexual assault is:

Age
Rate per 1000


16-19
4.9


20-24
5.9


25-34
2.4


35-49
1.8


50-64
0.3


65+
0.2

And while other crimes, such as robbery, tend to affect younger women more than older women as well, the drop-off is much less sharp than with rape.

It thus seems to me that sexual attacks on women are pretty strongly correlated with their being in the years of maximum sexual attractiveness. (Naturally, the question whether "pretty women" are more vulnerable is much harder to study than the question whether young women are more vulnerable.) This suggests to me that rape is generally both about sex and about violence and control, not just about one or the other.