So this is a topic I've been kicking around in my head for a while, but when I saw adultswim post a letter from a rape survivor in the Hillary thread, I decided to try discussing it here. Since it isn't about the election or bashing a political party, I assume it will die quickly, but I have some free time.

Here's the link he posted, if you're interested:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/05/dear-hillary-im-a-sexual-assault-survivor-and-i-ca.html

---

So the first big question I want to ask is: Why is rape so bad?

Let's go ahead and clarify that I am not defending rape. I am, if anything, more anti-rape than society in general, in that I would happily see certain varieties of sexual assault included in the list of capital offenses. What I'm saying with that question is that I can't provide a satisfactory answer for why I feel that way, and I don't think most people could provide satisfactory answers for why they think rape is a uniquely heinous crime.

It may be said of rape that it violates a person's ownership of their own body. Sure. But so does kidnapping. So does punching somebody in the nose.

You might say that it is extremely traumatic and causes lasting psychological harm, but many would say the same thing of crimes we'd consider much less serious. A break-in or mugging can leave somebody afraid to sleep in their own house or go outside.

In terms of real, tangible consequences, really the only thing that makes rape unique is the possibility of pregnancy. But that's hardly a good answer, both because it's a rare consequence and because I don't think very many people would claim it as justification for having a particular loathing for rapists.

I think a large part of the answer for most people -- and this would help explain why so many laws describe rape solely in terms of happening to women -- is a sense that rape violates some intangible that is not really compatible with modern feminism. The liberated woman is not supposed to have some special "honor" tied to sexual purity, isn't supposed to be especially frail and dependent on men for protection. But I think these are at the root of why so many people have such a visceral reaction to the very word, "rape."

I'd love to hear some thoughts on this, and I freely admit I want input not so that I can adjust my position but so that I can better justify it.

---

The question of "Why is rape so awful?" is important because it is critical to answering my next question, which is How can we effectively talk about or try rape cases?

Because right now, we have a problem. A common criticism of the rape issue is that victims suffer when they press charges, because they have to keep reliving the experience and face questioning from defense attorneys that may be or seem accusatory.

I agree that reliving it must be traumatic, and "Why were you dressed so provocatively?" questions and their ilk are repugnant. Moreover, the number of false accusations is quite small. But even rapists deserve a day in court. The victims are often the only witnesses, meaning that the accused has few options but to undermine their credibility.

We don't get upset about "victim blaming" with other crimes. If a person is drunk when they are robbed, the defense attorney can say, "You were intoxicated at the time, how can we be sure your testimony or ID is reliable?" But if a person is drunk when they are raped, questioning their judgment or reliability is viewed by many as offensive and part of a pattern that prevents victims from coming forward.

Is there a way to provide justice to the victim and the accused? Sure, as a society we should banish from our heads the idea that anybody can "deserve" or "ask" to be raped. And judges could start drawing a hard line before some of the more outrageous questions about a victim's behavior. But that still leaves us with a gray area that goes to the horizon.

---

Peace Corps has a huge rape problem because so many of the countries that volunteers work in have neolithic standards of women's rights and equality and "consent" is often irrelevant. I know of several people in my group who were victims. PC has caught a lot of flack for their handling of rape on ever level.

When it comes to prevention, they are savaged for pre-emptive victim blaming -- "How dare you tell women to dress conservatively? It's not their fault that they get raped. You should be telling men not to rape!" Maybe, but we haven't had a whole lot of luck with that in our own country, we damn sure aren't going to make quick headway in Burkina Faso.

Then, when an assault occurs, they are criticized for telling victims that they can prosecute their crime, but that doing so means they have to quit the Peace Corps. It is not, they say, a punishment -- it's about safety. A person cannot safely work in a village or even country where they have accused someone, someone whose family or friends might seek revenge. In Benin, a few years before I arrived, a PCV was murdered by the associates of a teacher whose sexual misconduct she had reported.

So with Peace Corps we have another (albeit unique) example of a situation wherein policies are loathed by some of the very people they are trying to help. And at the root of the problem is that we haven't figured out how to talk about this subject in a reasoned, dispassionate way. And I think that the root of that problem is that we as a society can't even talk about why we can't be reasoned and dispassionate, because we don't know.

So those are my musings on the issue and I welcome some discussion, though honestly I'll be surprised if any is forthcoming.

5/17/2016 10:11:25 PM

Hmmmmmmm

5/17/2016 10:30:06 PM

Hmmmmmmm

5/17/2016 10:30:49 PM

Quote :

" Why is rape so bad?"

In some parts of the world (and western culture 50+ years ago, not really that far back), as you alluded to, it's bad strictly because of the "dishonor" it brings to your husband/family. This kinda ancient paradigm may be at least part of the reason why rape is still so contemptible today. it's like carried over into modern western culture, which is less male dominated, but still pretty patriarchal in so many ways.


But in our modern culture, even with most of us slowly moving beyond the patriarchal past, it would (and should) still be especially reprehensible. Rape is about power, not sexual purity; and it when it occurs, even to a liberated feminist, it's dredging up all of that Neolithic past: Might is right, the physically strong dominate those that are weaker, women are objects, men are just dicks with a reptilian brain and muscles attached, domination (in the physical especially) trumps other forms of interaction, women don't have a choice in their partners, women don't have choices. Period., men know best, men have the power, women shouldn't be allowed to deny women from anything or tell them what to, a woman's body is not her's to do as she wishes but belongs to a man do etc etc. it really goes on and on and on. Rape, and rape culture, eviscerates feminism; in some of the most concrete ways imaginable IMO.

5/17/2016 11:16:38 PM

Quote :

"it's dredging up all of that Neolithic past: Might is right, the physically strong dominate those that are weaker"

OK, sure; but could the same not be said of pretty much any violent crime?

When I posed these questions to my girlfriend she took a similar approach in saying that the biggest issue for her was that the crime is gendered and serves as an uncomfortable reminder of the fact that she is (and women are) generally smaller and weaker than men.

I can see the disparate power levels as being part of the explanation, if only because it is a factor in how we view so many other crimes. I think I can safely say that society takes a more harsh view of crimes committed against children than the same crimes committed against adults; we are outraged when acts of war are perpetrated against civilians but indifferent when the same are committed against armed soldiers. So I get that.

But if that's so, is any physical crime perpetrated against a woman worse than one done against a man? If so, doesn't that feed right back into the old patriarchal thinking that women are fragile and must be protected by men?

5/18/2016 10:12:04 AM

This is a bad thread, and you shouldn't have posted it.

5/18/2016 10:16:40 AM

This is a bad thread, and you shouldn't have posted it.

5/18/2016 10:23:55 AM

^^ to your last paragraph:

It's not just a strong versus weak context, there is a historical context that most of us recognize we need to move beyond. Just like hanging a black man is more sinister than hanging a white man, beating your wife is more sinister than beating a male spouse. It's precisely because lynchings and wife beatings used to be accepted in society (well, accepted on some level, even if just turning your head) that we treat them as extra reprehensible. Maybe the extra reaction is there because so many of us are EXTRA concerned about stamping out that acceptance in society

I'm not necessarily suggesting the law should reflect this, just trying to explain our individual reactions.

5/18/2016 11:10:02 AM

Quote :

"This is a bad thread, and you shouldn't have posted it."

Why?

I'm generally turned off by "meta" discussions too, but "rape" is such a loaded word, and accusations of insensitivity to it (to say nothing of the act itself) can be so damning, I think the conversation is worth having: how do we think about it, why do we think about it that way, how does that affect how we talk about it.

Quote :

" It's precisely because lynchings and wife beatings used to be accepted in society (well, accepted on some level, even if just turning your head) that we treat them as extra reprehensible."

OK, there might be something to this as an explanatory factor. And that's important to the discussion. But I'm still not sure it is satisfactory to justify our reactions, particularly in the law as written but also in terms of the media.

And if it is satisfactory, is it then also permanent? Is there an amount of time that passes between a violation being normalized and its condemnation being equally normalized, after which it no longer has special status?

Even now there is push back against "hate crime" having its own category, and to defend hate crime legislation on a rational rather than emotional level I have to reject the historical context argument as well as my (presumably learned, not innate) revulsion at the concept of attacking somebody because of their race.

5/18/2016 11:30:49 AM

Nah, I don't think it's permanent. As we progress, the emotions will drain from the topic and things will become more rational, as you suggest. It helps that we are moving into a much less violent period in our history too (well for the most part). It lets us take a step back and examine how we reacted to previous crimewaves instead of "battling criminals."

But I'd also point out that laws having a emotional aspect isn't necessarily wrong. I mean we should keep our emotions in check and not let them be controlling (being hysterical always backfires), but laws don't have to be perfectly coldly rational. That's not really the human condition.

5/18/2016 11:49:21 AM

Is this a troll post?

Seriously, there's no fucking reason to discuss why rape is so 'bad'. It's the most brutal, carnal violation a human can endure and attempt to recover from. smh

you're also assuming that only women can be raped, which is total fucking bullshit.


[Edited on May 18, 2016 at 11:53 AM. Reason : .]

5/18/2016 11:50:28 AM

this shitty thread is the definition of mansplaining

5/18/2016 11:56:26 AM

I don't know how common rape results in pregnancy, but for me, the risk of pregnancy was always my biggest outrage at rape over, say, aggravated assault, which from a cursory web search can be punished with up to 20 years in prison. As such, I don't think the law as written punishes aggravated rape worse than aggravated assault, they both can be for up to 20 years in prison (in North Carolina), which doesn't seem to punish rape inherently more at all. The only difference seems to be in the minimum sentences, which for rape is five years and aggravated assault is one year. Which makes sense to me, as it is absurd to argue they only wanted to rape them a little bit, but reasonable to say you only meant to assault someone a little bit.

I myself never disagreed with societies outrage over rape. What bothered me was the inherent implication that somehow aggravated assault was a lesser crime to rape, which to me just isn't so. Many such grievous assaults are hard to prove because the only witness is the victim, just like rape, so the police tend to let such cases lapse in favor of prosecuting people for non-crimes such as drug use, which is relatively easy to prove.

5/18/2016 12:24:06 PM

Quote :

"you're also assuming that only women can be raped, which is total fucking bullshit."

I'm not, but very often society and the law do. I specifically avoided the question of "What is rape?" because I've seen that discussed a lot on this site and the internet in general, and I wanted to avoid the inevitable "Some girls just regret it the next day and then decide they didn't consent" crap.

Quote :

"this shitty thread is the definition of mansplaining"

Quote :

"Seriously, there's no fucking reason to discuss why rape is so 'bad'."

I'm sorry you both feel that way, but I disagree.

I'm not "mansplaining" anything. I'm not even regular old explaining anything. I've already said that I agree with society in considering rape to be one of the most abhorrent crimes there is, and I've not tried to define rape, exclude any actions from the definition, or minimize its impact on victims or society as a whole.

And I strongly disagree with the second thing. Any time you are talking about putting someone in prison, I think there is room to discuss why what they are doing is wrong. As a society we permit civil disagreements about what is and isn't, say, genocide. We permit civil disagreements about why certain widespread military actions actions are acceptable, and others are criminally bad. That doesn't mean that anybody is pro-genocide or yay-war crimes.

I'm not sure that we permit the same level of civil discourse about rape, and I'd like to explore the reasons for that.

Quote :

" What bothered me was the inherent implication that somehow aggravated assault was a lesser crime to rape, which to me just isn't so."

See, this is the kind of thing I want to talk about. On some level this position makes rational sense to me. But on another, I want to say that it's self-evident that rape is worse because...because...I don't know why. 1-20 year seems reasonable for an assault. 5-20 years seems laughably short for a rape.

Quote :

"laws don't have to be perfectly coldly rational. That's not really the human condition."

This, to me, is its own can of worms. I'm in favor of some brutally harsh punishments for certain crimes, largely for emotional reasons -- but when it comes to actually suggesting and supporting policies, I try very hard to get to the cold rationality that to me seems like it should be the basis for law. That is, I try to look at penalties as a way to prevent crime rather than a way to punish crime (though I confess I'm not always successful).

---

So now, to clarify: No, I am not trolling. I am not trying to get anybody riled up -- in fact, my hope (as I've stated several times, including in the thread title) is for reasoned discussion.

I sincerely think that it is important for people to consider their views on any question of crime and punishment, but this one is particularly important because the laws and policies governing it are so varied and sometimes convoluted that they are having adverse effects on top of the already awful consequences of the crimes themselves. Particularly in a university campus setting, rape and rape culture are serious issues, but our reaction to them is so reflexive that there is no coherent response, with the result that the term "rapist" can be applied in situations where we probably don't think it fits -- and if you don't agree, I hope you never had a drunken hook up in college.

I am not saying that rules should be relaxed. I am not saying that it's OK to take sexual advantage of a drunk person. I am not one of those people who thinks colleges are teeming with women who decide after the fact to cry "rape" out of regret.

[Edited on May 18, 2016 at 1:52 PM. Reason : disagree, not agree]

5/18/2016 1:51:52 PM

Quote :

" I agree with society in considering rape to be one of the most abhorrent crimes there is"

One of the most? Aside from murdering someone, I don't see how anything can be more heinous than rape, aside from physically torturing someone. The ensuing psychological aftermath is enough to leave many people in and out of mental hospitals for the rest of their lives. You're also forgetting that a continuum of rape exists from the victim being completely unconscious/drugged to fully aware of the pain/violation. I get that you're trying to come to terms with your own shit, but you're doing a pretty bad job of oversimplifying it.

Seriously, this thread sucks.

5/18/2016 2:05:50 PM

Yes, "One of the most." You just listed two other possibilities, murder and torture. We might consider tossing slavery up there, too, but regardless we have established that other crimes do exist.

I am aware of the potential psychological aftermath.

I am not forgetting about the "continuum" as you call it.

I am trying to get us to reflect on these and other facets of rape as a problem, so that we can condemn them justly and effectively rather than just heaping negative adjectives on the issue. You are saying reflection on these matters "sucks."

[Edited on May 18, 2016 at 2:15 PM. Reason : ]

5/18/2016 2:14:47 PM

It's a philosophical discussion. I understand some of you are big on knee jerk reactions, but it's okay to explore ideas that may be wrong. Anti-intellectualism toward touchy subjects is a problem.

5/18/2016 2:16:30 PM

Quote :

"Peace Corps has a huge rape problem because so many of the countries that volunteers work in have neolithic standards of women's rights and equality and "consent" is often irrelevant. I know of several people in my group who were victims. PC has caught a lot of flack for their handling of rape on ever level. When it comes to prevention, they are savaged for pre-emptive victim blaming -- "How dare you tell women to dress conservatively? It's not their fault that they get raped. You should be telling men not to rape!" Maybe, but we haven't had a whole lot of luck with that in our own country, we damn sure aren't going to make quick headway in Burkina Faso. Then, when an assault occurs, they are criticized for telling victims that they can prosecute their crime, but that doing so means they have to quit the Peace Corps. It is not, they say, a punishment -- it's about safety. A person cannot safely work in a village or even country where they have accused someone, someone whose family or friends might seek revenge. In Benin, a few years before I arrived, a PCV was murdered by the associates of a teacher whose sexual misconduct she had reported. So with Peace Corps we have another (albeit unique) example of a situation wherein policies are loathed by some of the very people they are trying to help. And at the root of the problem is that we haven't figured out how to talk about this subject in a reasoned, dispassionate way. And I think that the root of that problem is that we as a society can't even talk about why we can't be reasoned and dispassionate, because we don't know. "

Are you saying that within the Peace Corps, there's pushback against telling women to dress differently in countries with different cultural standards?

And it seems like a good practice for the Peace Corps not to require someone to be in a place where there's a specific reason they can be targeted. Seems they should work to relocate people though, not kick them out.

5/18/2016 2:20:43 PM

Quote :

"Are you saying that within the Peace Corps, there's pushback against telling women to dress differently in countries with different cultural standards?"

From female volunteers there is, yes, to a certain extent. Most go along with it, more so when it is framed in terms of broad cultural integration rather than inviting unwanted sexual advances. But the latter is a thing in many countries, where prostitutes and sexually available women are perceived to have a "uniform," so to speak.

5/18/2016 2:48:57 PM

How can rape be any worse than the female mutilation that occurs in Africa? That is one of the few things that come to my mind that could rival rape.

5/18/2016 4:54:26 PM

great thread. This is something I have never heard brought up which is pretty cool. My initial feeling was to stay out of it because I agree with most of the people in thinking rape is certainly bad, but this thread has made me realize that i don't find my own explanation as to why its so bad sufficient. I've never even put thought into it. UJUSTWAIT has done a pretty good job explaining why most people think rape is bad but there is still room for discussion.

Quote :

"It's a philosophical discussion. I understand some of you are big on knee jerk reactions, but it's okay to explore ideas that may be wrong. Anti-intellectualism toward touchy subjects is a problem."

5/18/2016 6:33:33 PM

Quote :

"1-20 year seems reasonable for an assault. 5-20 years seems laughably short for a rape."

Uh, the cap for murder is 25 years. So, what punishment seems reasonable to you given this information? It is true that these penalties were set a long time ago when life expectancy was low and 25 years in prison was practically a death sentence.

But, sorta, once you hit 25 to 30 years in prison, only thing higher is execution. Which brings up the death-penalty, which I think should never be imposed in cases where the evidence is not conclusive. But, given conclusive evidence and a history of similar behavior, I'd be open to a death sentence for both rape and aggravated assault.

So, I guess my question is thus: which is worse, first-degree murder, or aggravated sexual assault?

The answer to me is, most certainly, murder. By a fairly big margin.

[Edited on May 18, 2016 at 6:58 PM. Reason : .,.]

5/18/2016 6:56:02 PM

Yeah, I don't think you can compare the physical and psychological trauma of being raped to really anything else. I don't want to dismiss the suffering of victims to lesser crime, but rape does have some pretty unique and severe consequences. I mean, especially if it happens at a young age, we're talking about potentially ruining a person's entire ability to have normal sexual relationships. Long term depression that eventually leads to suicide isn't uncommon in rape victims. Just the public shame is enough to indefinitely ruin someone's life. It's crazy how many serial rapists go in and out jail, it's not treated as the serious crime it should be by our justice system. I think that's step one, at least making sure the people we convict with adequate evidence are punished to an extent that matches the suffering of their victims, which in many cases should mean the death penalty.

Quote :

"That is, I try to look at penalties as a way to prevent crime rather than a way to punish crime (though I confess I'm not always successful)."

Well sometimes a severe punishment is the best way to prevent crime. People have to respect the justice system and it's potential to fuck up your life. There's a reason drunk driving rates started to drop when we started treating them like murderers.

[Edited on May 18, 2016 at 7:00 PM. Reason : .]

5/18/2016 6:56:12 PM

Quote :

"But, sorta, once you hit 25 to 30 years in prison, only thing higher is execution. Which brings up the death-penalty, which I think should never be imposed in cases where the evidence is not conclusive. But, given conclusive evidence and a history of similar behavior, I'd be open to a death sentence for both rape and aggravated assault. "

I know its a bit off topic but capital punishment, and the concept lengthy sentences as punishment instead of rehabilitation are both inhumane concepts to begin with.

Prison should be based on rehabilitation so the real question is how long does it take to rehabilitate a rapist?

Also, how does statutory rape factor into all of this? Is that rape or is the wrong term being used for that crime? If not, how can the same exact thing be a heinous crime in one state and 100% legal "love" a few miles away? I'd consider the states to be the same general "society"

5/18/2016 7:08:36 PM

My first thought when reading this title was, "Good Luck!"

This is an excellent thread. As adults it's important to be able to debate any topic. What's more, if you choose to make a claim you need to be able to articulate it in order for that position to have merit.

Knee jerk reactions like UJustWait84 has had in this thread are a perfect example of why conversations like this are important to have. It's important to challenge assumptions and to delve into why we think what we think.

Rape is bad. It's very bad. "Is it uniquely bad?" is a more interesting question. What's more the continuum question is an interesting one. Statutory rape is much less bad than a violent rape for example because in one you're questioning the validity of consent, when a person is capable of making an informed decision (this is clearly in question since laws vary by state and sometimes the age of the adult rapist determines if it is a crime) vs. a case where someone clearly did NOT consent and in addition there may be other aggravating circumstances like threats or the use of a weapon.

With rape you have a combination of several crimes. You have a physical assault, you often have emotional/pyschological trauma, and you also have aspects of kidnapping because you have robbed someone of their autonomy. It ticks a lot of boxes for things we consider bad. It's clearly one of the worst crimes you can commit. Things like torture, slavery, and murder are the only things I can think of that are at the same level or worse.

What's more, IMO, one of the reasons we view it so harshly is that we recognize that people who are capable of committing such a crime are often objectively evil and capable of doing horrible things. It's one of the things that makes serial killers so much worse than someone who "just kills a guy." If you are deriving pleasure from something like rape, whether you get off on the power of it or if it's say, the only way you can derive sexual pleasure it indicates that there is something deeply wrong with you on a psychological level and you cannot be part of society. The fact that we can see this in people is one of the reasons that rapists and child molesters fair so poorly in prison.

To your second question, which I think is the more interesting part, I think we need to be very careful any time we try to reform or change the way we try cases. If you want an example of why one only needs look at the disastrous ways that colleges and universities are attempting to adjudicate accusations of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. They have massively lowered the burden of proof and it has resulted in a slew of unjust punishments resulting in massive civil suits that the colleges are losing over and over again.

Because I don't believe rape is uniquely bad I don't believe it should be prosecuted in a unique way or have a uniquely lowered burden of proof.

If it cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt there should not be a conviction. Our system is set up to make sure that innocent people are not punished, not to make sure that all guilty people are punished. There are a lot of good reasons for that, imprisoning someone who didn't do the crime is much worse, you have punished someone unjustly and you have left someone outside who is a danger to he community. If you find a guilty person innocent you only get the second of those two negative impacts.

I think we need to be more supportive in helping accusers come forward, we need to encourage prompt collection of rape kits, quick testing to ensure accurate evidence, we need to allocate more money for testing, etc.

5/18/2016 7:10:59 PM

Quote :

"we're talking about potentially ruining a person's entire ability to have normal sexual relationships"

Good luck having a normal sexual relationship after a homophobe beats you nearly to death and your genitals require extensive reconstructive surgery from being kicked repeatedly.

Quote :

"Long term depression that eventually leads to suicide isn't uncommon in rape victims"

Such outcomes are similarly not uncommon among victims of brutal aggravated assault (the kind that would get 20 years). They live their life afraid of everyone they meet, unable to go outside, the shame that they were nearly killed for being themselves (think of those targeted for being cross-dressers, homosexuals, members of a minority, etc).

Such would now be a hate crime. That extra 5 years would bring the 20 years up to the 25 year sentence of murder.

5/18/2016 7:15:56 PM

Quote :

"Anti-intellectualism toward touchy subjects is a problem."

calling this thread anything close to intelligent is right up there with giving "fair and balanced" coverage of the kooks who hold extremist views.

5/18/2016 7:18:45 PM

I hate to double post, but some interesting stuff brought up while I was typing.

Quote :

"I know its a bit off topic but capital punishment, and the concept lengthy sentences as punishment instead of rehabilitation are both inhumane concepts to begin with. Prison should be based on rehabilitation so the real question is how long does it take to rehabilitate a rapist? "

I don't know that hey can be rehabilitated. I've always thought that we ought to have two levels of incarceration. One based on rehabilitation for non-violent offenders or low level violent offenders and one to protect society from people with no place in it, your rapists, murderers, and serial violent offenders.

Maybe some day we can "fix" murderers, at which point we should do away with prison, unless you believe that punitive sentencing is desirable. Until then though we should use our justice system and prison sentences to protect society from dangerous people.

5/18/2016 7:18:55 PM

Quote :

"calling this thread anything close to intelligent is right up there with giving "fair and balanced" coverage of the kooks who hold extremist views."

No problem has ever been solved by refusing to examine it.

5/18/2016 7:26:34 PM

Quote :

"I don't know that hey can be rehabilitated. I've always thought that we ought to have two levels of incarceration. One based on rehabilitation for non-violent offenders or low level violent offenders and one to protect society from people with no place in it, your rapists, murderers, and serial violent offenders. Maybe some day we can "fix" murderers, at which point we should do away with prison, unless you believe that punitive sentencing is desirable. Until then though we should use our justice system and prison sentences to protect society from dangerous people."

Thats the same sort of problem though. Let psychologists determine if a criminal can be rehabilitated or not. People just assume violent criminals can't be rehabilitated and never attempt to rehabilitate them when indeed, research continuously shows that rehabilitation is not only possible, but already works. Does it work in every case? no, but it works most of the time. A guy who kills 77 people in Norway gets a shorter sentence (21 years) than a drug dealer in the US and the american drug dealer is more likely to commit a violent crime when he comes out of our prison punishment than the rehabilitated Norwegian serial killer.

I don't know about rape but there must be research out there I am just afraid to search for it.

5/18/2016 7:44:42 PM

Yes, rehabilitation works. Most people can be rehabilitated. I truly hope that we can find a way to predicatbly and consistently rehabilitate violent criminals. Until then I think we have a duty to protect society from people likely to commit repeated offenses or from people who have shown they are capable of doing truly awful things.

That's sort of off into the future though as we are able to understand the brain more and more. And even then let's say we do discover an anti-evil pill (just to dumb it down) is it ethical to force someone to take it?

[Edited on May 18, 2016 at 7:55 PM. Reason : sfsdfdf]

5/18/2016 7:54:27 PM

Weird you made this thread...I was actually just thinking some of the same stuff the other day on the way to work, spurred by a piece I heard on NPR.

I know exactly what you're saying, and that you aren't minimizing anything. I think it takes an extraordinarily cold, dispassionate, clinical, objective view to have this discussion, though. Frankly, I'm not inclined to waste much time trying, because it's obvious that this sort of discussion isn't going to happen in here.

Quote :

"I agree with most of the people in thinking rape is certainly bad, but this thread has made me realize that i don't find my own explanation as to why its so bad sufficient."

That was essentially my thought while driving. That, and extrapolated to society, not just me.

Quote :

"I don't know that hey can be rehabilitated."

That question itself points to the crux of this thread. We view basically all rapists as deviants (aside from the 19 year with statutory charges against a 16 year old or something). We view other violent criminals as people who made a bad judgment, or miscreants, or victims of their environment, or whatever, but in most cases, not necessarily depraved deviants across an entire category of crime. It's not only a matter of which offense is "worse."

If a guy beats someone's ass, we don't say "I don't know that he can be rehabilitated."

(now, one might argue that rape is so much more taboo than battery, that it's more likely to take an incorrigible deviant to commit a rape than a battery). At any rate, it's an interesting thing to think about.

5/18/2016 8:17:30 PM

There's a lot that's happened in here that I want to talk about, and I will, tomorrow. But for now:

Quote :

"calling this thread anything close to intelligent is right up there with giving "fair and balanced" coverage of the kooks who hold extremist views."

So, to be clear, I'm not saying we need to give equal consideration to the views of rapists or "pro-rape" people, whoever those might be. I'm not saying, "Let's look at both sides and decide whether rape is as bad as we thought." I've repeatedly said it is just as abhorrent as we think, and that I'm not really open to changing that position. I'm saying, let's define why it is so bad rather than simply taking it as a given.

Again, we permit this sort of question regarding other crimes of the highest gravity -- genocide, for example. I'm not sure why rape should be above any discussion whatsoever, unless you merely find it distasteful.

I'm getting a little tired of explaining what I'm not doing, all the more so since I think it should be clear to anybody who as actually read the thread and not just the bolded questions. But I'll keep doing it anyway.

[Edited on May 18, 2016 at 9:43 PM. Reason : ]

5/18/2016 9:42:45 PM

Quote :

"No problem has ever been solved by refusing to examine it."

what problem are we trying to solve? this thread wasn't started to end rape.

Quote :

"I'm saying, let's define why it is so bad rather than simply taking it as a given. Again, we permit this sort of question regarding other crimes of the highest gravity -- genocide, for example. "

this is stupid. nobody ever says "gee, well why is trying to wipe out an entire ethnicity so bad?" or "can we define why something like the holocaust was actually bad instead of just calling it bad?"

forget mansplaining, this is just psuedo-intellectualism

[Edited on May 18, 2016 at 10:11 PM. Reason : .]

5/18/2016 10:10:11 PM

His second question in the opening post was clearly about solving a problem. We do a poor job prosecuting rape.

Maybe you could argue that his first question should have been why is rape uniquely bad or is rape uniquely bad or what makes rape uniquely bad. If you can't see that as something that merits discussion especially with regard to the second question perhaps you should just ignore this whole thread.

5/18/2016 10:21:54 PM

this thread is a sausagefest. hard to have a reasonable discussion on why rape is bad when it's 100% dudes.

5/18/2016 11:02:39 PM

Quote :

"this is stupid. nobody ever says "gee, well why is trying to wipe out an entire ethnicity so bad?" or "can we define why something like the holocaust was actually bad instead of just calling it bad?""

He was trying to pinpoint exactly why rape is worse and more traumatic (usually) than being assaulted. It's a fair question that is tough to fully explain. Instead of frothing at the mouth when you see "rape" and "GOP" together, maybe restrain yourself when someone is trying to have an open discussion.

Quote :

"mansplaining"

Quote :

"this thread is a sausagefest. hard to have a reasonable discussion on why rape is bad when it's 100% dudes."

Hold on now, men are raped too. And not all women are rape victims. So I don't know what point you're trying to make.

[Edited on May 19, 2016 at 12:04 AM. Reason : .]

5/19/2016 12:03:06 AM

Not all women are rape victims? You don't say.

The large majority of rape victims are females, and that doesn't factor in the unreported ones. Just seems like a Republican boys' club meeting about what the best abortion laws are without getting any female input. Minus the Republicans I guess. I mean this thread is comprised of 100% males, and I doubt any of us have served time in butt-rape prison to where men getting raped is on our radars other than "man I don't wanna go to prison!"


[Edited on May 19, 2016 at 12:14 AM. Reason : .]

5/19/2016 12:13:37 AM

So men can't talk about rape because women are raped more? Look, feel free to share opinions from women if you have links/videos/whatever. Everyone here seems to have a pretty open mind.

People want men to be more aware of rape and its effects. Here is a thread consisting of men trying to learn more about rape. The reactionary attitudes and claims of "mansplaining" are unnecessary.

[Edited on May 19, 2016 at 12:27 AM. Reason : .]

5/19/2016 12:26:19 AM

Men can talk about anything, including rape. I just think "you're" going to only get half the story when it's just a bunch of dudes being intellectual about why forcefully penetrating orifices is bad. I dunno, I still don't get this thread. But it's kind of like when the white privilege thread is full of posts by white people. Or when only dudes are coming to Bruce/Caitlyn's defense about his/her decisions and what it means for her to be a woman. Or a bunch of white people talking about slavery. It's an incomplete discussion so far, though again, I don't really understand the point, except that Grumpy, unlike the rest of us, deals with some fucked up Peace Corps shit in 3rd world countries where it's still cool to rape women.

5/19/2016 1:35:52 AM

It'd be great to get some female input, but all three (and that's being generous) of the ladies that occasionally post in TSB are uninterested in posting or are off doing something more important. That's no reason to shut down an entire discussion, even if it's not a complete discussion. We have a 70 page abortion thread with minimal female posts, so what? This is like trying to close down Sports Talk because none of the posters are athletes.

5/19/2016 6:09:51 AM

^^ this is a good example of safe-space logic making it impossible to discuss controversial topics

5/19/2016 9:42:58 AM

Quote :

"this is stupid. nobody ever says "gee, well why is trying to wipe out an entire ethnicity so bad?""

Well, actually, it has been discussed repeatedly in history. There was debate when Andrew Jackson wanted to deport all the indians to death. Bismarck has some famous remarks on the fate of the Poles.

But if I take your point, there is still room to debate what constitutes genocide, and what separates war crimes from legitimate war actions. In both cases, part of that debate entails arguing over which traits define an act as particularly "bad."

Quote :

"this thread is a sausagefest. hard to have a reasonable discussion on why rape is bad when it's 100% dudes."

I agree wholeheartedly, but this forum is what I've got. The internet in general is a sausagefest, and though I'm sure there are discussion forums with more women, they are not places where I have an established presence. Even here, where I'd like to think most people know I'm not a troll, people have accused me of trolling with this thread. Nobody would take it seriously somewhere it was my first post.

---

Now back to yesterday:

Quote :

"Uh, the cap for murder is 25 years."

I don't know what kind of legal definitions we're working with here. Last I heard, murderers could get life sentences or the needle. Which are precisely the sentences that seem reasonable to me.

Quote :

" rape does have some pretty unique and severe consequences. I mean, especially if it happens at a young age, we're talking about potentially ruining a person's entire ability to have normal sexual relationships. Long term depression that eventually leads to suicide isn't uncommon in rape victims. Just the public shame is enough to indefinitely ruin someone's life."

Well I don't know where exactly you draw the line for "young age," but I would treat crimes against children as a different category. For one thing, we have a near-universally accepted understanding that children are weak and adults should protect them -- a value that we used to have about women but don't, supposedly, anymore.

Depression and suicide plague the survivor community, and certainly satisfy the "severe" qualification, but they are hardly unique.

And public shame is a serious problem, but it's outside the scope of reasons why rape is bad -- it doesn't make sense to say, "Society hates rape because society shames people who get raped."

Quote :

"Well sometimes a severe punishment is the best way to prevent crime."

Oh, I agree -- my point was tha punishment would not be an end goal unto itself, ideally. That is, we are not balancing out some cosmic scale. It's why "The punishment should fit the crime" doesn't really cut it for me on a cerebral level (though of course it appeals on a baser one).

Quote :

"one of the reasons we view it so harshly is that we recognize that people who are capable of committing such a crime are often objectively evil and capable of doing horrible things"

Here we run into what should be one of the greatest debates, whether people can be "objectively evil" in any meaningful sense. And if they are evil, whether that is something for which it is right to punish them -- there are a host of causes of "evil" behavior, from intangible angst to thoroughly tangible brain tumors (Charlie Whitman, anybody?).

Again, my gut says, "of course there is evil and evil people should be destroyed," but my brain comes along and says, "As a practical matter, 'evil' as a personal trait is irrelevant. Just try to figure out how to prevent or deter evil actions."

5/19/2016 9:59:39 AM

When I talk to my students about sex and rape I use a philosophical and spiritual approach. It's going to sound hippy-dippy to some of you but it makes a lot of sense from a mental health position.

A sexual act is the combining of two bodies into one. This means that two souls are now sharing the same body, which fully exposes one soul to another. This is when our spirits are the most vulnerable, making sex both the holiest and most dangerous thing a person can do. A positive sexual partner who treats you with kindness and respect will not only protect your soul, but strengthen it. But a violent sexual act will hurt a person's soul and often break it. A broken soul will struggle to connect with others and might never function the same way again. This could mean never being able to trust or be vulnerable with another human being ever again.

Those of you who don't believe in the concept of souls or spirits, just replace the word "soul" with "mental stability" and it's a pretty accurate portrayal of what happens.

[Edited on May 19, 2016 at 4:10 PM. Reason : -]

5/19/2016 4:10:16 PM

so during rape, two people's "mental stability" shares one body

your explanation is dumb, i hope your students ignore it

5/19/2016 4:29:26 PM

^lol savage

5/19/2016 4:51:22 PM

perhaps one of the dumbest things I have ever read on TWW. congrats

5/19/2016 5:28:46 PM

This is a good example of how people on this site don't want to leave their boxes. Maybe it is a dumb thread and a dumb premise (i don't know) but it would be nice if you explained why you think its dumb instead of just saying its dumb. When you respond with a one liner and no supporting statements like ^that, you only make the entire premise even more compelling.

5/19/2016 6:22:11 PM

I assumed ^^ was talking about ^^^^^

...but yeah.

5/19/2016 8:12:58 PM

^

5/19/2016 9:04:16 PM