I’d put it differently - the rapes in Bosnia etc. were deliberate acts of ethnic atrocity, or so I understand. They were in effect committed intentionally to humiliate and dishonour the hated enemy. Most individuals not involved in a bitter ethnic dispute lack this sort of motive. Mere loss of social norms is not at work here, so much as the replacement of ordinary social norms by ones focused on revenge and hatred against traditional ethnic enemies.
What I am a loss to understand is the high prevelance of rape in South Africa. Mere lack of enforcement isn’t a good explaination, as there are plenty of places in the world that have even less in the way of police and yet do not have as high a rate of rape. I simply do not know enough about South African society to understand it.
True, if the war rapes in Bosnia etc. were merely rapes of opportunity. My understanding is that they were deliberately organized and encouraged in order to “punish” the ethnic enemy.
That too. And thats my understanding that much of the raping had nothing to do with “fun” of any kind.
They killed the men they could and raped the women. Its better than killing them instead.
And on the flipside, in a war scenario, there is all kindsa stuff women would do too that otherwise would be nearly unthinkable. And, again, I think thats pretty irrellevant as well. If 30 percent of women are prostitutes in a war zone does that mean that 30 percent would be prostitutes in peace time if they thought it was under “ideal conditions”?
I don’t really want to derail the conversation, but is anyone else curious as to what billfish is getting at in the above quote? Especially the section that I bolded. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it came across to me as a “so what men rape - but women do bad stuff too”.
In ideal circumstances, and war would certainly be ideal circumstances, the numbers are probably depressingly high, and I don’t even want to guess.
I would like to point out that Skald’s “ideal circumstances” are, essentially, what we called “marriage” through most of Geography and Time (save the Western World in the last … century or so? Less?) – if the husband wanted sex, by George he got it!
I have little faith in Humans, of any stripe, creed or gender…
billfish’s meaning was pretty obvious to me. He wasn’t equating rape and prostitution by any means. He was saying that humans behave in different circumstances.
I tend to agree. I think there are many men who would never rape in civilian life who might engage in a gang rape during war, because there would be different stressors and pressures. (This does not mean that rape is any morally different in wartime.)
thanks for the clarification - I was reading too much into it. Agreed that war is shitty circumstances wherein all people’s regular moral code is under pressure.
In my experience, sex with a woman who isn’t an enthusiastic, willing, active partner just isn’t any fun. I can’t imagine how any man could enjoy doing it with a woman who’s out cold, let alone one who’s trying to fight him off.
If you asked most women today under the conditions they currently live in if they would kill someone or fuck for some spending cash if they “get away with”, very few would answer yes.
Throw em into a war and IMO a good fraction of those no women would become yes women under the right conditions. In which case, are you going to point at all these women and then conclude that women in general are a bunch of killing whores? Yeah, I guess that would be technically true I guess, but thats not the conclusion I’d draw. And, therefore, I think drawing big conclusions from wartime scenarious is crock in general.
Its about being a damn war.
IMO if this poll is about what you might could possibly do under the most extreme conditions thens IMO its a worthless poll.
I bet if you put me in a room with Ghandi long enough I could get him to kick me in the nuts. And that didnt work I would bring in Gilbert Ghodffrey? to work on him.
There is plenty of things I would “not” do, but if you make the scenario extreme enough, I’d at least consider doing it.
True up until the 199os in many states, at least form a legal standpoint.
I really don’t know what to click. Who does? I know there have been surveys asking just this (not sure what languag they used) on school campuses and the results have been scary. As has been mentioned, ‘ideal’ conditions might have more to do with geography and culture than a specific one-on-one (or two or more on one, I guess) scenario e.g. finding oneself alone in a dorm room.
I do think war zones are relevant, though. It has been suggested that kids who grow up in impoverished US neighborhoods with high crime rates experience some of the same conditions as those who grow up in war zones – might help explain cases like the one from a few months back where the 15-year-old girl was gang raped outside a school dance in Richmond, California.
I chose “*I am male, and I think it’s between 11 & 25% *”; as a guess on the lower end of that range. 15% say. When you pile up the psychopaths, sexists, unthinkingly selfish, and so on all together that’s a fair number of people. I think you’d get about the same number for all sorts of bad behavior, and not just from men; robbery, murder, poisoning a rival, whatever.
Add in the Husband-Wife scenario; the already rapists able to do so again, then the pedophiles and others who could now legally get away with acting out their fantasies; the War Rape scenarios; the fraternity parties where now consequences aren’t needed, the porn industry which could cash in on the legalized rape scenarios, the prison systems in which every prisoner gets a chance to have sex with a female though I assume they’d still have to remain in prison afterward. And anything else I’ve forgotten to mention. Namely the big ones for me though were Statutory situations, Relationships, and intoxicated females- those are much more likely than the forcible rape scenarios, and the gist of where my voting comes from.
I pretty much took the OP at face value- every male pretty much gets “their” scenario whatever it need be for any form of unconsensual sex that would allowed could be allowed- ie: each male got ‘their scenario’ for when they could take advantage of someone- would they do it.
That’s why I went with the up to 50%, because I’m an optimist. :sigh:
But screwing for cash during wartime would be, one assumes, for survival, and killing someone would be, again one assumes, in self-defense (even in a roundabout way e.g. before they kill you). As stuthehistoryguy points out, you can’t rape someone in self defense, or to survive. I suppose you could argue that your gang or crew would kill you if you don’t take part in a gang rape, but beyond that it’s just not comparable.
I think it’s under 1%. Maybe that makes me far too cheery about human nature - but, damnit, we’re social animals. We empathize instinctively with one another, and it isn’t that easy to overcome that instinctive behavior. Yes, there are many many rapes - far too many (hell, one is too many. But there are 7 billion people walking around - you don’t need a large percentage of them to be willing to rape to get an awful lot of rapes.
I’d never rape anyone, for the same reason I’d never beat the shit out of someone just for the hell of it, or shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die - it’s simply, profoundly anathema to the sort of person I am. And I think the overwhelming majority of people are like me, or we wouldn’t even have a society that condemns these things.
Yeah, that was my basic thinking, too. An individual man might feel he had to, as you say. But it’s not like men in general have to rape. They may be more likely to, but it’s not like rape follows as a survival tool. The women who are prostitutes genuinely have to to survive because they get money/food in exchange for a service. But what is the man getting when he rapes that he so desperately needs?
