Yeah. While I think that rape is about sex, I think it’s also got to be about some hang up or issue with the rapist. Lots of men see attractive women who they’d love to get with, but most men don’t think, “Wow, I’d love to RAPE her.” I think the fantasy isn’t “I can make her” but more, “I’d love the idea of her getting so turned on by me and wanting to do it.”
That was such a pungent offering to the God of the Dunderhead that it’s left me gobsmacked till just now.
Several posters have already made the useful analogy to thievery (and how it’s part of “money.”)
But how about applying her logic to Power? If rape is just a display of power, why doesn’t the OP go around raping people? Or killing people?
Is she against “power?” Does she think police should have no authority, or that parents should never discipline their children?
Anyway. The OP is nominated for Dumbest Non-troll Argument of 2009.
Here is what he said and I said
The “something else” I was referencing above was the question around which this entire thread revolves (and I grant your point that I should have been more precise in defining this) re the desire to dominate, and the the question of whether a desire to dominate must by necessity, be coupled with the desire to have sex as the primary motivating impulse to rape. However, I stand by the general point in the above statement that extreme sexual desire and opportunity (ie chaotic conditions, lack of consequences etc.) are sufficient by themselves to cause men to rape women.
With respect to the assertion below -
The notion that extreme lust as a motivating impulse is not ever going to be enough (by itself) for a man in opportunistic conditions (social chaos, no consequences etc) to engage in rape is, I think, quite wrong. If a man is driven by extreme lust to desire a woman, and thinks he can get away with forcing her to have sex with no consequences there are IMO a good number of non-hateful, non-angry, non-vengeful, non-misogynistic, non-sociopathic, but extremely horny men who would take that chance.
Because of the extreme power of men’s sexual desire securing female safety and sexual integrity and controlling men’s sexual impulses is a core function of any human society from tribe to nation-state. In this context, assuming a reasonably well functioning non-chaotic society, the men who do rape IRL are quite probably going to be deficient in impulse control, the ability to rationally evaluate consequences, and quite possibly they may have any number of mental or social pathologies. The question posed in the OP addressed the core motivating impulse to rape by men (specifically dopers) not how stupid or dysfunctional actual rapists were to think they would get away with it. Was it power or was it sex? Do you need more than extreme sexual lust or desire to have the impulse to ravish a woman you desire. The answer is no, the impulse to take a woman you sexually desire by force or seduction is sufficiently strong that it does not need additional buttressing by a desire to dominate or humiliate a woman. To desire to *have *that woman is more than strong enough all by itself, but rational men in human societies control that impulse through self control, fear of consequences, and ethical frameworks.
How fragile these leashes actually are is sometimes seem in the chaotic conditions of war where otherwise rational soldiers will rape women opportunistically. Interestingly, on the flip side re the sex vs dominance question war is one of the scenarios where you can see forced rape being used as a dominance tool. Although uncommon in modern war as a deliberate strategyit still exists in the Congo.
The analogous analogy that hasn’t been made (I think?) is that men often exchange money for sex but much less frequently exchange money for the opportunity to beat up or dominate someone. And when they do, it’s much more frequently that they pay money to beat up on another dude via martial arts training (there being no evolutionary advantage to beating up on women, given that that hardly differentiates you from any other man, but there being significant evolutionary advantage to being able to dominate competing men). Occam and all that would tell me that “the thing that men are willing to pay money for to have sex” (in this case, having sex) is what really motivates them, in general, to have sex under whatever circumstance, felonies included.
By the way, in perusing Siam Sam’s post a few weeks ago about the (seemingly awful train wreck of a) Bangkok bar world, the site he linked to contained far, far more posts about Western dudes flying thousands of miles to pay good money for a “Girlfriend Experience” than it did about guys coming over to throttle and dominate the hookers. That tells me (again) that guys who want to have sex are mostly interested in the least-difficult mode of sex having. For some that’s an IRL girlfriend, for some the porn simulation, for some seedy sex tourism, and for some, not bothering with the wooing her part.
Depends on whether what setting you have the dildo on.
At a banal level, yes.
Wow.
In the Dick and Jane readers we had, Dick and Jane went to the farm. And they only looked at the animals.
This enters d&r territory so I will just state the data point and then run while ducking.
Number of women I’ve dated who have volunteered/confessed to a fantasy involving rape: four.
N.B. that when I pressed them for details, it was more like pirate ship fantasy foricble seduction (???) than (to quote Whoopi) rape rape . . . and N.B. that I staunchly declined in the two out of those four occasions when it was hinted that maybe it would be cool to re-enact that.
Data – that’s all.
Rape fantasies do NOT equal women WANTING to be raped – if that’s what you seem to be implying.
I don’t, as I tried to hint by noting that the follow-up questions elicited details that added up to something other than “rape rape” but the women used the word rape in characterizing them.
I don’t know, frankly, what rape fantasies do mean, they seem very complicated and f’d up to me, and more common than the innocent young Huerta would have thought.
The goal of theft is to gain money. What makes it wrong is that it involves abuse of power.
The goal of rape is to gain sex. What makes it wrong is that it involves abuse of power.
(I don’t mean to speak to every instance of rape. Some of them probably do have the exercise of power as their main goal. But to say “rape is about power, not sex” is to illegitimately claim all rapes are like this.)
It’s not clear because I am not making that mistake. You are actually making the mistake you accuse me of.
The rapist isn’t seeking sex.
The rapist is seeking sex WITH AN UNWILLING PARTICIPANT. The entire point of acquiring power is so that you can exert your will upon a proceeding against the objections of the other party. This can be true whether you are trying to buy something with your money or whether you are trying to get sex from someone who doesn’t want to. You are minimizing the possibility that you will not get what you want. The rape is fundamentally and intrinsically about power. The power to make someone have sex with you willing or not.
So you are arguing that if she had been sufficiently wooed by the candles and the bottle of Chardonnay, then there wouldn’t have been a rape? You think that the power dynamic is absent there? If rape is a possibility then it’s about power for the rapist regardless. That woman is GOING to have sex with him, and he won’t take no for an answer.
We fulfill our vices through the exercise of power. It’s pretty simple at the end of the day.
With this I don’t even know who you are talking to. I said that sex/power are two irreducible factors in a rape. You are trying to reduce one in favor of the other. I am saying they are both equal and distinct parts of the motivation.
This is a very queer subject. From a biological point of view rape (in a generic sense of forced copulation, which seems at least roughly distinguishable in the animal world) is not uncommon, indeed fairly universal among species (more common in some than others, but to my knowledge not non-existant in any sexual species where one can reasonably distinguish choice). It’s a reproduction strategy, among many.
As humans are basically chimps with big brains, one should not expect that rape has not been among the human reproduction strategies since the earliest stages of humanity’s evolution. And likely from a reproductive point of view, even the female side of the equation might have a mitigated interest in rape.
As such, the point of view that divorces human rape from sex and biology is either non-scientific (really anti science) or wishful thinking. Power is a social concept, and without any doubt secondary to the biological. It strikes me as pretty damned precious to imagine (unless one thinks humans were created by God from mud), that the biological drive to reproduction is not a strong factor, indeed the base factor.
But in complex human societies, clearly it is maladaptive (or perhaps generally maladaptive, if not perhaps always - although that’s probably deeply uncomfortable to consider [divorcing this from the question of moral - clearly rape is immoral under any reasonable circumstance]). So there is an anti-rational argument that men rape for Patriarchy (and in the last thousand years as some idiot wrote above), or whatnot. At the same time one can probably only understand women’s widespread rape fantasies relative to some limited female biological interest in powerful mates in pre-modern circumstances.
All that is hard to disentangle from what is appropriate and useful in a complex modern society, where all this baggage from the biological imperatives of pre-advanced civilisation is not useful, indeed harmful and embarrassing given modern moral values (and with good reason!). It would seem to me that the proper course is not to deny the reality of the biology, but label it as maladaptive to current circumstances.
But dominion is about at least some of it–it’s an act that you’re doing TO someone, not with them. Wouldn’t a normal, healthy man see a passed out woman and think that the idea of having sex with someone who would be repulsed if she knew
Excellent overview of the topic.
Assuming you were going to end the sentence as I think you would, I agree.
However, it’s because of conflicting drives.
The normal, healthy straight guy might see an attractive woman, and part of his brain says, “I’d love to have sex with her.” Another part of his brain says, “She can’t consent.” A third part of his brain says, “Since she can’t consent, if I get caught, I might get in a shitload of trouble.” A fourth part of his brain says, “Since she can’t consent, if she finds out, she might be really upset, and I don’t like to make people that upset.” A fifth part of his brain says, “I wouldn’t want some dude fucking me when I was passed out even if I never found out about it, and I can empathize with her desire not to be fucked by some dude when she’s passed out.”
Then the brain evaluates and prioritizes all those different inputs. In the decent straight male, the first part of the brain gets voted down by all the other parts of the brain: lust loses the day. In the rapist male, the first part of the brain shouts down all the other parts of the brain, or else the other parts of the brain have weak or nonexistent inputs, and the rape occurs.
Yes, there are certainly some guys who have a sixth part of the brain: “Fuck those women thinking they’re better than me, I’ll SHOW them who’s better!” And when that sixth part helps overcome the second-fifth parts, then rape is motivated by a power struggle, as the rapist (in his own mind) shows the victim who’s boss.
But I certainly don’t think that sixth part of the brain has significant input in most date rape scenarios.
This here abnormal, healthy straight guy would see an attractive woman, and part of my brain says, “I’d love to have sex with her.”
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There doesn’t seem to be a second part of my brain that says “Therefore, the plan is…”, or not in any useful fashion. Neither “Hmm, I could knock her down and pin her arms up above her head” nor “I could say ‘Hey baby didn’t we go to separate schools together?’ and when she smiles ask for her phone number”. Nothing. Clueless.
I think it is only via socialization (and practice, and habit) that the second voice comes into play. In my case, I just sort of missed the bus (or a whole Greyhound Terminal full of buses) and never incorporated that. But let’s ignore me except as an illustration.
I also think even the first part, “I’d love to have sex with her”, isn’t quite that simple. Do you remember being 15, 13, 16, 11… the age may differ from one guy to another but that age when you felt the feelings before your mind was fully wrapped around the idea that yes you did know what you wanted to do WITH those feelings — ? I do, as a matter of fact. And it wasn’t so much “I’d love to have sex with her” as “Wow… yummy…mmm…”.
I do not think “Hmm I could rape her” is a “natural” next thought with or without 4th, 3rd, 17th, or other parts of the brain adding disclaimers, warnings, self-condemnations, or anything else.
And as far as that particular fellow goes, the seventh part of the brain that thinks that she wants it despite her having passed out.
Saying rape is “about” anything is useless. The movie Ghostbusters was about ghosts, but that doesn’t say anything about the motivations of the characters.
The reason for the muddiness is that the victim’s loss and the attacker’s gain are not the same thing. From the victim’s perspective, rape absolutely is about the loss of power and control over one’s physical, psychological, and sexual self. There’s no denying that. But the attacker only gains sex. Nothing justifies an attack like that, but I think some people have trouble facing the fact that such a horrific experience can result just from a stupid callous impulse of a stupid callous person pursuing a need that is familiar to everyone.
As an illustration of a non-biological, entirely culturally bounded presentation, some applause.
For all that I bloody well doubt that there is for most impulse rapes (I have no idea how one would genuinely quantify reported rapes in the legal sense, perhaps some rough estimates but a real statistical sense…) don’t involve any choice thought (Oh I could rape her)…
In any case, without an honest evaluation of the weighting of social conditioning versus biological impulse, it’s probably hard to understand anything but really pathological rape (a loaded way to say it, as clearly all rape is morally pathological so generally culturally pathological, but also some rapes - rape murders in particular - are pathological even if we pretend acting on base mammalian instinct is not deeply socially maladaptive).