I think it is about sex. He uses power to get sex. I doubt a rapist sits around thinking I have to go beat up a woman and while I am at it I will have sex with her. I think sex is the motive and power the way he gets it.
I think that there are so many permutations that any blanket statement is going to fall short of the truth.
Horny college guy that doesn’t take no for an answer from his drunk girlfriend? Cops who stick a broomstick up a suspect’s ass just to humiliate him? Both are considered rape. But are the motivations anywhere near similar?
Of course, there is the third way of thinking that believes that rape is not about sex or power, but about chocolate cake
It seems you are assuming that no form of sexual expression can be off-limits. I don’t agree with this - I imagine adultery and child molesting are about sex as well, but I don’t do either.
Likewise with your questions about fantasy. I don’t fantasize about rape for the same reason I don’t fantasize about having sex with farm animals - I have no desire to.
You found me out. 
I think you are making a mistake trying to reduce the complexities of human motivation to just one factor. Even if I accept your definition of rape being about power, rape is using sex as an expression of power. Therefore it is about both sex and power even if it is about power.
I think the Susan Brownmiller idea that “Rape is a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” is kind of outmoded.
Regards,
Shodan
:eek:
Was it ever inmoded? That’s just crazy talk. Either that or I missed the newsletter.
And it was idiotic even when it was moded. 
Exactly.
Seriously, does even one man posting here have a desire to keep a lot of women in fear?
For quite some time that general attitude was pretty much the norm among feminists, as far as I could tell at the time. These days feminists say that it was only a tiny minority that talked and thought like that, but I consider that claim historical revisionism motivated by embarrassment, and how disastrous that attitude was for American feminism’s reputation. If the silent majority of feminists really was against the man-hating conspiracy theorists, then it was one of the more silent majorities in history.
Not in the slightest.
I think lust would be a more appropriate term for what we’d like to keep them in. 
I think it was intended to put men on the defensive, and to be provocative.
I actually read Against Our Will. Even as a young person, I could tell that, while she writes a lot of stuff, it doesn’t prove what she says it does. The plural of anecdote and all that.
That kind of strident feminism descends into parody pretty quickly, especially after they get tenure.
Regards,
Shodan
Can’t rape exist in that part of the Venn diagram where sex and power intersect?
I think it was like any other social movement. When you start to swing the pendulum to the other side, it tends to go all the way to the other side. I’m glad that women found a voice to speak out, but for a while there was a whole lot of crazy in that voice.
A couple of years ago I was on a date, and we spent some time walking around a college campus. We saw what looked like an art installation in one of the public areas. It was a bunch of dresses on clothes lines. When we looked closer, it was a “take back the night” display, with all sorts of messages about how all men are potential rapists and stuff. We decided that especially on a date, that was really creepy. We decided to go get pizza instead.
There is no way anyone can convince me that an act which ends in orgasm has nothing to do with sex. That does not compute.
Also, the OP doesn’t make any sense.
Most rape victims are not blindingly attractive. They tend to be younger, less educated, and from a lower socioeconomic class than the average woman, but not substantially prettier. On the other hand, people are more likely to believe an accusation of rape made by an attractive woman compared to an unattractive woman.
I heard a slightly different version of this (set in a zoo) as
Transporting young gulls across sedate lions for immoral porpoises.
It could, but I don’t think that’ll do it. I mean, imagine some guy who has sex with a consenting woman of eighteen. And imagine he later has sex with a willing girl of seventeen who “looked eighteen to me.” And imagine he later has sex with someone who’s of age but has had more to drink than you might realize. The first time, he’s just after sex instead of power – and I don’t see that he’s any different in the other two situations, though we’d start calling “RAPE!”
Well, actually, no. Men who commit date rape are also likely to link sex to power. (The abstracts don’t say so explicitly, but both papers are mainly about acquaintance/date rape)
Hey, I saw you paying your “rapist support fund” dues.
The fact that the second situation is called rape doesn’t make it a power issue. We just don’t have a good alternate word for the situation known as “statutory rape”. The third situation is a gray area, to be sure. How much alcohol are we talking, aside from it being more than I might realize? If she still expressing consent? Is she conscious?
I fail to see how your three hypotheticals illuminate much of anything.
I think The Other Waldo Pepper was using a specific made-up example to suggest what a Venn diagram would have to include. It’s informative to read reports that say most cases of x are likely y, but when we’re talking about Venn diagrams, we’re talking about all cases, not just “most” or “likely”.
Edited to clarify, and I realize I don’t speak for TOWP, but in the Venn diagram, rape doesn’t ONLY exist in the intersection of power and sex. Part of it also exists only in power, and part exists only in sex.