I know that. You’re correct that I overlooked it, but what I was saying is that the qualifier “rape distinct from the physical assault” is pointless: it’s the same crime with or without the violence. The issue with rape isn’t violence, it’s consent. Sex with a woman who hasn’t consented, which definitely includes one who’s passed out drunk, is rape.
That strikes me as highly unlikely. And rape isn’t bad because it might cause pregnancy. It’s no less a crime if the woman isn’t fertile. The rapist doesn’t get freaking brownie points for using a condom. :smack:
Absolutely. Are you seriously telling me rape is a “no harm, no foul” kind of crime? The idea that the woman would have ZERO memory of it, even if she was drunk, is ludicrous anyway. Doing this to a woman is still having sex with her without her consent, which is what rape is. Let me restate that - you said this in your first post, and I’m not sure you understand how wrong you are. Rape isn’t bad because it can cause pregnancy or disease, both of which can happen during regular sex. Rape is horrifying and traumatic because the victim is made to have sex WITHOUT HER CONSENT. The fact that you can’t see how any of this is different from a wet willy is absolutely amazing to me.
To revise the old saying, Surreal, a tree falling in the forest makes a sound- even if you pretend it doesn’t.
The assumption in some of these posts that a woman being more afraid of penetration of her vagina than her ear is a social taboo is insane. That’s not a social custom, it’s biology. Not only is one organ more sensitive than the other.
Oops, I meant to delete the end of that. But what I was going to say is that claiming a woman views her ear and her vagina or anus differently just because of ‘social programming,’ and that without it, she wouldn’t care about being raped any more than she’d care about getting a wet willy, is also absurd.
At this point I can only refer to Simon X’s excellent suggestion above. First, find an annoying friend and have him administer a wet willie. Then bunk with the fattest ugliest most sadistic death row inmate you can find. If the two experiences seem equivalent to you, well, then I guess there’s nothing more to say.
And yes there are “Better” and “worse” rapes, and, I suppose better and worse wet willies. But even the least bad rape, one that involved no physical violence or major physical injury, is still far far worse than any realistic wet willie. The fact is, even a rape that involves no threat of physical harm, say, an aquaintance drugging their date or just taking advantage of their drunken state, still leaves lasting psychological scars.
And if someone actually did perform a rape-like wet willie: That is they held a gun or a knife on their victim and repeatedly banged their finger in their ear, I think the law would look at this as a serious assault.
Can these be put in order of badness? If in all cases the act was done without consent?
a) finger into anus, without pain.
b) finget into anus causing pain.
c) finger into ear, without pain.
d) finger into ear, bursting ear drum.
e) finger into eye, causing blindness.
f) finger into mouth, without pain.
g) finger into vagina, without pain.
h) finger into vagina, causing pain.
What if it wasn’t a finger but was a tongue or a penis? Is it the sexuality of the act, or the pain of the act that causes one act to be worse than another? If it is the sexuality of the act, then what other than ‘social programming’ defines any of the acts outlined above as more sexual than any of the others?
The penis and vagina are sexual organs. The anus is included on this list as well (out of charity? ;)) The eye and ear are not sex organs, for reasons I hope I don’t have to explain. Poking someone in the eye or ear and doing damage would be assault, not rape, which involves SEX, thus sexual organs must be involved.
It’s not society that made the penis and vagina sex organs, pal. That’s biology. And yes, I’d say the act does change depending on the parts involved. A guy shoving his penis anywhere it’s unwanted (sex organs, near the eye, the ear, wherever) can qualify as sexual assault (if not attempted rape), as opposed to just assault, because it’s a SEX ORGAN. (Where’s a friggin seventh grade health textbook when you need it? :p) The law does not have to treat all kinds of ‘shoving something in someone’s face’ the same, because it’s not the same - mostly because of the psychological damage caused. The implication that it’s “social custom” says to me that some people think the (non=psychical) damage caused by rape is just in their minds, like it’s hypochondria or something. What bull.
Also, if it’s just social custom, why are children (who aren’t fully socialized) scarred so badly by sex abuse?
It is true that biology names penis and vagina reproductive organs. But the assigning of sexuality to organs is more social, c.f. the anus being considered sexual, in some cultures the mouth is considered very sexual (Japan I believe, though I am cite less on this).
Would someone who considers themselves to have been violated by some other sticking their tongue into their mouth, have been raped by that other person? What if they considered themselves to have been raped in as bad a way as if they had been buggered?
The effect of any assault mentally is dependent on the victims mental state. Someone may be more traumatized by some things than others. Is the trauma of having a sex organ pushed into a victims face necessarily worse than the trauma of having excrement pushed into a victims face? Is having a penis forced up a victims anus necessarily more traumatic than having a knife forced into the same orifice?
I believe rape is terrible far above the physical damage caused. I am just exploring the ‘gray’ edges for my own, and hopefully other’s improved understanding.
Please avoid that stupid phrase ‘just in the mind’ our response to all senses is ‘just in the mind’ so all physical and mental damage is ‘just in the mind’. Please understand that ‘just in the mind’ is everything you or anyone else will ever experience, there is no ‘just’ about it.
Getting back to the OP. One assault is worse than another based on several criteria.
The unwanted contact to the victims body.
The violation of the victims privacy/ socialy unacceptable behaviour.
The immediate physical damage suffered by the victim.
The immediate mental damage suffered by the victim.
The long term physical damage suffered by the victim.
The long term mental damage suffered by the victim.
The intent of the person commiting the assault.
The social stigma attatched to the victim due to the assault.
The social repugnance against the culprit for that form of assault.
It can be seen that a ‘wet willy’ is bad in 1 or 2 of those criteria.
Whilst Rape in its many forms is bad in from 4 to 9 of the criteria.
Theres a point that I haven’t seen made here. Rape isn’t necessarily sexual. It’s a power trip for most rapists. The thought and action of forcing someone to do the most taboo of acts is thrilling to these individuals. It’s just one step down from murder IMHO. A wetwillie is more akin to kicking someone in the shins not stripping them of their dignity. Rape doesn’t always include the rapists sexual appendage. Sometimes it includes broom sticks, bottles, hands… you get my point. I wonder if Surreal has any male friends that would be willing to talk about themselves getting raped anally. I doubt it. It’s hard enough for us women to talk about it.
One of the reasons they’re treated so differently by the law is because of the impact on the victim; a ‘wet willy’ you recover from in a few minutes, a rape you never, ever recover from. Hence the tariff society, through the courts, demands is much heavier.
I think you just need to think about someone on the street giving you a ‘wet willy’ and someone else forcing you to the ground, undressing you against your will and forcing their fist up your arse for 15 minutes. If you don’t view the impact of those two events on you as likely to be different, could you explain why ?
All emotion aside, I believe rape is different from a wet willie because a wet willie’s introduction of saliva does not threaten one’s genetic line. Rape has been a powerful tool through the ages – gratuitous pop culture reference: prima nocte as memorialized in Braveheart – as a method of tainting the enemy’s line and as a means of destroying the families of the other. In many cultures, a rape victim is considered tainted and will be executed alongside her rapist.
We are almost hardwired in our modern societies to abhor rape without generally considering its implications. This thread will likely be closed because of the subject matter, but I appreciate the spirit of the debate and the possible origins of our modern views of rape. This modern view of rape is independent of sex, possibly by extension.
Some scientists have hypothesized the human foreskin (eases intromission) has allowed rape to be used as an important ancestral strategy. Consider also the “spermicidal” quality of another man’s semen, as noted in Sperm Competition Theory.
This all excludes the sheer physicality of the rape act. We as primates have a simple “fight or flight” mechanism to which restraint and forceful sexual penetration are diametric. Wet willies, while infuriating, do not necessarily provoke the base limbic response.
Are you saying they aren’t scarred as badly by other physical abuse?
For what it’s worth, a 1998 study showed that children who have only unwanted sexual experiences are scarred, but children who have both unwanted and unwanted experiences, or only wanted experiences, “[do] not differ from controls in current psychological adjustment” by college age. I suspect that in this case, the feeling of helplessness during an unwanted assault is far more relevant than whether the assault is sexual or not.
the degree of mental trauma inflicted on the victim is much different in the 2 situations. And the ear isn’t considered nearly as sacred or personal as the vagina or anus.
No, where would you get that impression? I asked why, if the trauma of rape comes from socially constructed notions, children who are too young to have acquired those ideas are still so hurt by sexual abuse.
And I think that’s probably right. But I don’t think this idea conforms to the notion that rape is damaging because of social programming- it deals with the fact that rape is an invasion and is damaging for emotional reasons. For some reason, it appears other posters don’t think that dimension matters. For example:
Rape doesn’t necessarily threaten a genetic line either. For a long time (in the West anyway), it was considered impossible for a husband to rape a wife, but not so anymore. A man raping his wife isn’t threatening his genetic line. Quite the contrary.
Prima nocte was apparently a fiction, though what you say about war and destruction here is true.
What bearing does the sex our ancestors had have on this question?
The modern view of rape does indeed have less to do with sex; I think it has more to do with the advent of psychology (another thing cavemen didn’t have). While this stuff is all interesting, none of it deals with the harm done to rape victims. Why is that excluded?
I posted in the pit thread, so I feel obliged to drop in here too. Here goes…
I think that’s part of how the conversation is morphing, as conversations are wont to do. We started out with an analogy–admittedly an offensive one–and have since incorporated psychology, biology, sociology, history, genetics, evolutionary genetics, etc into the debate so far.
For me, I think that psychology, biology and evolutionary genetics are the biggest parts of the equation. Yes, it’s the psychological effect, the biological fact that ears are more accessible and less important than genitals, and a deep seated genetic revulsion that tweaks our basic primal response that make rape different from a wet willie. All perfectly good reasons to treat rape as a far more serious charge than giving a wet willie. And the argument does not depend on social custom for its validity. It just factors it in.
Surreal, you JUST DON’T GET IT.
If this were another forum, I would say other things.
But this is GD and I’m going to try.
Imagine if a person breaks into a house and walks around in the owner’s clothes, rifles through their personal possessions and then puts everything back where they found it. The owner never discovered that they were in the house at all, and no damage was done.
We would still consider that owner to be a victim of a B&E, and the person would be prosecuted for home invasion and tresspass. Even without theft, even without violence.
That’s a different situation from Mormons standing on your doorstep, or the neighbour’s kids running into your garden to get back their ball, even though they too are on your property without your consent.
I never got the idea that Surreal is trying to say that rape isn’t really a crime. I’m taking this as an exploration into WHY we consider rape a crime, and not just any crime but a major, heavy duty crime.
Marley, the reason I specifically excluded the physical violence part of many rapes was to focus on the fact that non consentual sex (without violence) is still rape. With violence, just about any act becomes traumatizing and a crime, so why focus on violent rape?
Without violence, rape is nothing more than a penis entering a vagina. That act, in and of itself, is not especially violent or traumatizing, in fact, my GF and I engage in it willingly, if you can imagine. Even without consent, the act can look strikingly similar to consentual sex.
What makes rape so terrible is that sex is incredibly personal to us, and rape strips us of our ability to control our own sexuality. It has very little to do with the actual act, proven by the fact that you need do nothing more than put penis in vagina to rape. Societal values are one of the things that separate us from the animals, so I wouldn’t say they are unimportant or just all in our heads.
Which would have been a much better way to phrase the question.
I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone was asking that very question. It was in relation to women’s rights in a male dominated society, especially before the days of women’s suffrage. Why, if women were basically treated and looked upon as property, would raping a woman have such harsh penalties attached to it?
