If someone told me that a stranger millions of miles away was raped, then no, it wouldn’t hit me as heavily as if it was my friend or relative, no. But my gut reaction wouldn’t be, “The stranger was only mildly assaulted and it comes with the territory–but the person who raped my friend should face serious consequences.” The impression I got from Shagnasty is that it doesn’t really impact a prostitute as much if she’s raped–suck it up and deal.
It wasn’t the stranger vs. loved one thing that got to me. It was the “my daughter” vs. some lesser woman who sells herself type of thing.
It may be a gut reaction but it’s a really harmful attitude that needs to go, much the same way that we’d react in horror if someone said that their “gut reaction” to seeing a black man killed just wasn’t as big a deal as seeing a white man killed.
ETA:
I think that’s why Shagnasty’s attitude terrifies me. Just the idea that rape is worse for certain type of people. If you’re “pure,” it’s a crime, but if you’re a prostitute or “easy” it’s not.
I don’t think Freudian Slit was commenting on Shagnasty’s more vehement reaction to the hypothetical rape of a family member so much as his comment about crack whores having to accept rape as an occupational hazard, coupled with his meh appraisal of date rape.
Well it is an idea that still exists in practice in the application of rape law, and was officially part of English rape law, to the extent that for a large period of history, only virgins could be raped, and forcible sex with a married woman was considered to be a crime against the husband. Kind of like going round and borrowing your neighbor’s lawnmower without permission.
I can understand it, sort of. Imagine for a moment that you are a teenage kid who’s never been in a fight before and some burly guy accosts you in a parking lot for no reason and delivers a roundhouse punch to your jaw. That is likely to be more scary, traumatic and harmful physically than if that same guy were to slug a prizefighter in a bar.
And I tend to agree somewhat with Malacandra and Maastricht about rape being a separate class of crime. I’ve never understood why a person can attack someone, stab them, break their bones, pistol whip them or gouge out an eye, and receive considerably less punishment than someone who commits a rape but doesn’t otherwise harm his victim.
That comparison seems remarkably stupid. In fact, change seems to is and remarkably to what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you. For your analogy to make any sense, you would have to be comparing a person who has never been raped to the callow youth and a victim of multiple rapes to the prizefighter.
Unless you’re saying all sex is rape. Is that what you mean to say?
Part of the problem with thinking that crack whores or prostitutes in general who get raped should just take it as the cost of doing business (and let’s not forget that the same thing often goes for murder, and goes double for ethnic minorities) is that every rape victim has then got to be held up (down?) to that standard. Using drugs or alcohol, wearing revealing clothing, promiscuous – each a mark against her character and somehow making the crime against her lesser.
As Skald pointed out, having a lot of sex, even professionally, does not make you more prepared for rape.
As for the OP – my gut goes with vigilante justice. My brain isn’t that naive.
My gut supports heinous acts of torture against people that murder, rape, or steal. My gut also suggests that the death penalty is appropriate for people I find rude, or obnoxious, people who drive too slow in front of me, or too fast behind me, people who liter, or try to jump lines. My gut supports minor jail sentences for people who do not think I am awesome.
My brain suggests that my gut is full of shit and should not be listened to.
Nor does prizefighting make one more prepared for a knuckle-sandwich to the mouth in a bar.
But the point I was addressing, and which I still feel to be correct, is that a stronger punishment should be meted out when the offense causes greater psychological and/or physical harm to the victim, and in my opinion the rape of a schoogirl or a housewife abducted from a mall is a greater offense than the rape of a crack addicted prostitute who was likely trying to figure out a way to rip off her eventual rapist at the time they met. The schoolgirl or the housewife would likely suffer more physically, and would undoubtedly suffer more psychologically, as the result of forcible rape than would the crack-addicted prostitute.
This is not to say that rape in the case of a prostitute (or “easy” woman, as was alluded to by Freudian Slit above) is hunky-dory; clearly it’s not. But in my opinion, if the rape causes more damage to the victim it should be punished more severely, thus my belief that while both forms of rape are justifiably criminal offenses and subject to stiff penalties, I would find myself in favor of harsher punishment for the rape of a housewife or college student than I would of a prostitute or an aggressively and carelessly promiscuous woman.
So it really doesn’t have anything to do with “purity” as Freudian Slip alluded to; it has to do with the degree of harm likely suffered by the victim.
Why exactly would it be less painful for a crack whore to be raped? I don’t really see how you can say that it’s worse for a housewife or a schoolgirl. If you’re arguing that a crack whore has been raped before, then you could just as easily say that you’re raping someone who’s already in a vulnerable state of mind. Considering that there are people who have the attitude that raping a prostitute isn’t as bad as raping someone else, I’m sure a lot of guys would be more likely to go after a prostitute in the hopes that they’d see little punishment. Which makes them really skeevey and also makes it kind of scary–like we’re creating this class of people that it’s not SO bad to rape or hurt. I don’t think we should create any kind of division like that.
So…again, why is rape not so bad for a promiscuous woman?
Where are you and StR getting this notion that I’m arguing crack whores have been raped before?
It should be perfectly obvious that a woman who has careless, unthinking sex with four or five scuzzy men a day for $20 bucks or so each, and whose main concern in life is her next score, is going to suffer less from forcible rape than an innocent high school or college student or housewife abducted while on their way to class or the mall. My feeling is that for the crack whores it would be more of an annoyance than anything else, and while you likely wouldn’t think it, I’ve known a few of these types of women fairly intimately (in a non-professional sense) and know at least somewhat how they think.
This is a good point and one which, frankly, I hadn’t considered. I may have to re-evaluate my position.
Yeah. But then again, There’s a whole list of offenses that I advocate execution for, that people would disagree with. Simple assault, if repeated by the same offender over and over and over again, stuff like that.
Because if you’re saying that a prostitute isn’t as affected by a rape because she’s had a lot of sex before, that argument doesn’t make sense. Lots of people have had sex, but rape is a lot more violent and intrusive when it’s non consensual than when someone consents to it.
Careless unthinking sex still isn’t rape. I can go around giving twenties to bums on the side of the street all day, and it will still affect me negatively when someone steals my wallet. I don’t think that any woman who’s had a huge amount of sex–prostitute or not–finds a rape less traumatic because of the consensual sex. It’s really not the same at all.
Again, I haven’t said that the rape of a prostitute or crack addict is a victimless crime, which you seem to feel I’m advocating. I’ve merely been saying that there are degrees of harm, and that the greater punishment should go to crimes where the harm is greater.
And in case you missed it, I do feel you have a good point with regard to creating a sub-class of victims for whom society more or less says “It’s okay, or at least less offensive, if you rape these women instead of more upstanding ones,” and while I’m not sure that most rapists give the class of their targets and their own likely punishment that much thought, I’m still inclined to change my view based on the very good point you raise.
Not exactly. Most date rape has to do with misunderstanding/ miscommunication. The guy thinks that he’s not a rapist and that the woman wants the same thing he does. Some date rape is definitly… fucked up. Like the guy has “Spur Posse” dumbass frat boy overprivilaged white male ideals of sexuality.
Stranger rape however is fucked up. I’m sorry, but nothing can rehabilitate someone who randomly attacks someone they don’t even know.
But what if it turns out that that schoolgirl has slept with every boy in her grade? What if that housewife abuses prescription drugs and is involved in the S&M scene? I don’t think either should mean their vagina is public property, but they’re exactly the sort of thing that can come up in a rape investigation and/or trial, or to shame a victim out of pressing charges in the first place (they’re not supposed to).
Maybe I’ll regret this, but… Cite? As most rapes aren’t stranger rapes, that’s a whole lot of miscommunication. (I’m on the fence about the use of the term ‘date rape’ – something about it just implies that both parties were drunk on a date and one ‘went too far,’ when it’s often used to describe any type of acquaintance rape. I do get that it was originally invoked when rape really was equated with a stranger in an alley rather than a friend’s cute brother or your charming math tutor.)
