ABSTRACT
This book, which is about men's sexual violence toward women, is the result of several demanding, often frustrating, sometimes gruesome, but always fascinating years in which my research associate, Joseph Marolla, and I entered men's maximum-and medium-security prisons and interviewed 114 convicted rapists as well as a contrast group of 75 other felons. Since research began on these men, I have had the opportunity to present the work to a wide variety of groups-students, academicians, feminists, rape survivors, professionals of all persuasions, the media, and the general public. Audiences always ask two questions: what motivated me to undertake the project, and what kind of an experience was it for me, a woman, to be confined daily in prisons talking face to face with men convicted of rape, murder, and assorted other crimes against women. Curiosity about why and how the research was done is often greater than interest in the findings. Therefore, it seems fitting to begin by reflecting on these questions. And because research inside of prisons, on people confined against their will, is complicated by practical obstacles, ethical dilemmas, and methodological problems that do not customarily occur in investigations of most other groups, it is appropriate to highlight a few of the more perplexing problems that surfaced during the course of this project.
