There’s no rape among porcupines, as Cecil mentions. There’s probably other species where sex is impossible without cooperation; if it can’t possibly succeed, rape as a reproductive strategy won’t ever evolve.
I think the problem is, not every rape can be classified as being about this or that. In some cases, it might be about power. In others, it might be simply about wanting sex. Or sometimes simply to hurt and humiliate someone – using sex as a weapon to do that. (I believe plenty of women were forced to work in brothels set up at concentration camps during the Holocaust). In cases where you have say, prisoners of war, or some such, I would say rape is used simply as another form of torture.
A lost of times, in the cases of say, spousal rape, the husband simply doesn’t give a shit about what he wife wants – he wants, what HE wants, and her feelings be damned.
So I don’t think we can say “rape is about one thing or another.” I think it’s more complex than that.
I think portraying rape as being mainly about sex makes men look worse than framing the crime in terms of control and dominance. Why would making it be about power demonize men more than making it be about male horniness? At least only some men are pathologically domineering. But almost all men are horny. Not all of them are capable of rape, though.
I liken rape to theft. Some people steal because they are broke and desperate and feel that they need whatever it is that they’re stealing to survive. If these people weren’t poor, they wouldn’t be theives. — This is the kind of person who would rape if he stumbled upon a woman after being on a desert island for five years. Or, to be closer to reality, one of those statutory rapist on To Catch a Predator.
Some people steal because they are greedy; they have a closet full of shoes, but they don’t have pink suede boots and dammit, here are some that would fit in perfectly in their collection so let me take it. These people aren’t deprived in any real sense, but they lack empathy and can not defer gratification and see no point in paying for something when they can get away with taking it .–This is the kind of guy who would drug a woman and rape her. He’d see no problem doing the chick who is passed out on the floor after a wild night of partying. Like a looter, he would probably join in a gang rape if it was initiated by someone else, but he would be too lazy to initiate it himself unless the victim was incapacitated from the start.
Some people steal because they get off on stealing. The thrill of taking what doesn’t belong to them and getting away with it gives them a rush. It’s not stuff that they want so much as the adrenaline rush that comes from the act of stealing.–This is the kind of guy who jumps a woman in an alley or breaks into her house, beats her unconscious or holds her at gunpoint, and rapes her. He may kill her or he may not. It doesn’t matter what she looks like. She could be a 80 year old grandmother of nine, or she could be 14.
In this last scenario , sexual lust takes a backseat to other pathologies. And it’s this last scenario that women fear the most, as it the one that they have the least control over and is the hardest to deal with emotionally. The “rape is about not about sex, it’s about power” meme was probably never meant to apply to every case of rape, only the kind that society is most concerned about eradicating.
If the need for sex was the main driver for all rape, it seems like it would a whole lot easier to go get a prostitute than risk having an eye gauged out or face long prison time. Let’s reconsider the rapist in the last scenario. Every day a woman is raped in this fashion. Why? Prostitutes can be found rather easily in almost every major city. Porn is just a mouse click away. The costs associated with raping are so high compared to the cost of calling up a craiglist hooker. It must mean that the rapist is getting something out of raping that he couldn’t get with a consensual partner. That’s the point of saying it’s about power, not sex.
It is also about sex. Power may be a component. i am not sure of that. But I feel very sure it is about sex. Otherwise just beat the hell out of them .
There are serial women killers. For them it is about power.
I’d say if two drunk people choose to have sex and then the woman decides to call it rape the next morning, it’s still about power, but in the case of the “rapist” it was probably just about sex.
Once we sort out the cases built upon the notion that women are too feeble minded to be held responsible for their choices while consuming alcohol, it may indeed be about something other than sex a significant part of the time.
Because it implies that there’s no such thing as man who doesn’t want to subjugate women. As I said earlier; how do you fit ruthless men into this theory who have no power issues with women? If the rape-is-about-power theory is true, then even the most ruthless man wouldn’t rape unless he also had a political agenda against women, which just doesn’t fit human nature. Unless, of course all men without exception want to subjugate women, which is the idea that the rape-is-about-power people are pushing. It’s part of the old “Men are all rapists and that’s all that they are” view of the world.
Yes; free sex, NOW, with a specific woman. The costs associated with rape are only high if the rapist is caught.
If their weapon of choice is their penis rather than the fist, beating the hell out of them might not give them the thrill they are looking for. The rapist is trying to brutalize his victims the worse way imaginable. Although he may think that brutality is best manifested through forced sex, that doesn’t alter the fact that his ultimate aim to is hurt someone, not seek sexual release for himself.
I can’t help but think that soldiers who are ordered to rape and pillages are more fixated on taking a piss on the enemy by violating their women than getting their rocks knocked off.
This makes as much sense as saying that because you think “rape is about sex” that there’s no such thing as man who won’t rape if he gets horny enough. “Rape is about power” is not a statement about ALL men. Why in the hell would it, when not all men rape?
Wow, you’ve analyzed this way too much to the point where you aren’t making any sense.
This conclusion does not follow at all. If I were one to demonize men, the first thing I’d do was villify their sexuality by treating their urges as a thing to be feared. Portray rape as a crime committed because of a high male sex drive, and you immediately cast billions of normal, perfectly fine men as people who could rape under the right conditions.
But portray rape as a crime that is based on a pathology–like the need to exert power over someone else to the point of pain and humiliation–and there’s no need to fear every single heterosexual man who can sustain an erection. You only have to fear the pathological ones.
Not necessarily a specific woman. It could be a random woman. Or a specific woman who is not particularly special.
And the costs of rape are high if you don’t mind a fight with a terrified woman or possibly someone who comes to her rescue when she screams. What, you think all he has to do is say “Take off all your clothes and let me do you”, and she’ll comply?
Meant to say “And the cost of rape is high unless you don’t mind a fight…”
IRL rapists are usually not noted for their judgement, long term planning or impulse control skills. The vast majority of rape is not some kind of stranger in a dark alley style assault, but opportunistic “acquaintance rape” where the rapist knows the victim and decides in that moment to overpower the victim and rape them. The notion of a rapist scanning Craigs List and thinking “You know I’ve been feeling kind of rapey lately, better take the edge off or I might get arrested for assaulting someone” is not the way men with poor impulse control and critical reasoning skills think or operate.
Yet it is still a leap to conclude that they are motivated by sex rather than some other obsession. Acquaintance rape is probably more common than stranger rape simply because knowing someone increases a rapist’s access to the victim. I don’t see how this is evidence of motivation one way or the other.
This is one of the few topics on which men look at at women and say “You really just don’t get it do you?”. Possibly the key is that you really (per your description) think it’s an ongoing “obsession”. It’s not, it’s nothing like an “obsession” that bothers you constantly, it’s quite intermittent, it’s an extraordinarily powerful primal drive most closely akin to hunger that sweeps in like a tsunami and then recedes, and when you are under it’s influence it is often difficult to make rational decisions without considerable effort. When you say “Well it can’t be just about sex”, it can be, and it often is.
Please don’t presume to speak up on behalf of all men with that"my joint sweeps like a tsunami" shtick.
Are you speaking from the perspective of a rapist? Or are you speaking from the perspective a man who is merely speculating about the motivations of a rapist?
Why does it seem like you think they are one in the same?
Sounds like a big shaming cheap shot to me, but what do I know?
It’s a perfectly legimitate question, given what he wrote (which I’m surprised to see has been uncontested by most of the guys in this thread even though he seems largely in agreement with the OP, who has rightfully taken a beating).
I disagree with your notion of power as entirely social. Yes, it is social in the sense that we are using it, but power ultimately is just our ability to exert control over the world around us. Power comes in many forms and most of our forms are related to social goals. The act of procreation is biologically hardwired, and yet we can choose not to indulge it. Whole cultural artforms have sprung up regarding the denial of this basic impulse. Humans have for millenia been using self-abnegation as a method of being more than just an animal. This idea is central to Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and many other religious/spiritual doctrines.
The only scenario where I can see the purely biological explanation as having any merit is someone who is so all-consumed by his libido that he MUST rape when he gets horny. But that’s really not the case for most people. When you rape, it’s not just about a target of opportunity, though I am sure it often is. Raping someone is about choosing your target without giving them any choice. Why would someone rape if they can just get laid at any time? For the vast majority of people getting sex is entirely possible, not even terribly difficult. Usually we do not have sex with people for aesthetic considerations. I do not spread my seed to some girl I have deemed too ugly for me even when I am desperate. The same is true for most rapists. It is not just getting laid that is the issue. It is getting laid ON THEIR TERMS. That is what separates rape. The fact that sex is plentiful should tell us that it’s not just about procreative strategies. For the most part we have decoupled sex from procreative strategies already.
Also, at a certain point you run into a problem of trying too hard to separate the biological from the social. At the root of it all social conventions have arisen from some sort of biological necessity.
Power at its heart comes down to three things, Food, Sex, and Freedom of Movement. Why do people want to be rich? So they can eat in fine restaurants, fuck whomever they desire, and the ability to get what they want when they want. Some people make money so that women won’t say no to them. Some just don’t listen when the woman says no. Either way they are trying to control the pussy, to control the resource.
I don’t see anything in what astro’s saying that looks at all like the OP. As I read it, he’s saying nearly the opposite.
Empirically speaking, internet pornography prevents rape. During the 1990s, internet access became available at different times on a region by region basis. This provided researchers with a natural experiment: they could see what happened to the incidence of sexual assault following the introduction of internet (porn) access.
“A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that porn is more about sex than power, BDSM notwithstanding. So I think it’s fair to say that rape has something to do with sex, otherwise pornography wouldn’t have such a pronounced calming effect.
It’s still about cost, which becomes about power. You rape someone because it is cheaper than wining and dining her. There are very few people that cannot get laid if they are willing to relax their standards. Rape is about not having to expend effort, much like internet porn. I never pay for porn, I just go look at videos of whatever particular mood I am in on that day, because payment implies a greater level of power commitment than I am willing to make when I can just type in free “XXXX type of Porn” into Google and get high def thirty minute videos in 30-90 seconds of browsing. Unlike most people I know how to delete my cookies so I don’t end up getting screwed by viruses and such so the cost is very low.
Opportunistic rape still has the power component as being essential, because otherwise they would just wine and dine the woman. I think the opportunity rapes are mostly date rapes. When you fuck a passed out chick at a party, that’s an opportunity rape and most likely has little to do with power as focus.