A criticism of rape trauma syndrome as currently conceptualized is that it delegitimizes a person's reaction to rape by describing their coping mechanisms, including their rational attempts to struggle through, survive the pain of sexual assault, and to adapt to a violent world, as symptoms of disorder. People who installed locks and purchased security devices, took self-defense classes, carried mace, changed residence, and expressed anger at the criminal justice system, for example, were characterized as exhibiting pathological symptoms and "adjustment difficulties". According to this criticism, RTS removes a person's pain and anger from their social and political context, attributing a person's anguish, humiliation, anger, and despair after being raped to a disorder caused by the actions of the rapist, rather than to, say, insensitive treatment by the police, examining physicians, and the judicial system; or to family reactions permeated with rape mythology.
Another criticism is that the literature on RTS constructs rape survivors as passive, disordered victims, even though much of the behavior that serves as the basis for RTS could be considered the product of strength. Words like "fear" are replaced with words like "phobia", with its connotations of irrationality.
Criticisms of the scientific validity of the RTS construct are that it is vague in important details; it is unclear what its boundary conditions are; it uses unclear terms that do not have a basis in psychological science; it fails to specify key quantitative relationships; it has not undergone subsequent scientific evaluation since the 1974 Burgess and Holstrom study; there are theoretical
allegiance effects; it has not achieved a consensus in the field; it is not falsifiable; it ignores possible mediators; it is not
culturally sensitive; and it is not suitable for being used to infer that rape has or has not occurred. PTSD has been described as a superior model since unlike RTS, empirical examination of the of the PTSD model has been extensive, both conceptually and empirically.
