# Is rape any less or more traumatic in cultures that don't effectively police it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 14, 2014, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-rape-any-less-or-more-traumatic-in-cultures-that-dont-effectively-police-it/688466 "2014-05-14T20:50:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-rape-any-less-or-more-traumatic-in-cultures-that-dont-effectively-police-it/688466/41 "2014-05-20T15:20:57Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > No. > Just because some men are beyond asshole does not mean all are. Which means just because most marriages were arranged does not mean women universally disliked or did not enjoy conjugal relations. However… > > Even stories from 50 to 75 years ago are replete with stories that even modern marriages in the days before premarital sex was common would lead to unhappy situations, unwanted sex, and marital violence. Even today when divorce is an easy choice there is still spousal abuse. > > So not every marriage was an abuse or a rape, even “way back when”, but when you partner was not your choice and divorce or the law was not an option - odds are the incidence was higher. Women “put up with it” just as minorities have put up with NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy, simply because they had no choice. > > So you have to ask yourself - based on human nature, how many people/men are instinctively abusive and would take advantage of their better position and better strength? Whatever proportion you come up with - that’s the answer as to how prevalent. > > “Things were different then” is just a way of saying the people who were hurt then had no option other than to suffer in silence. I seriously don’t understand what you’re driving at, here. I don’t think anyone has stated that that every man was a rapist or an asshole. Certainly not the two posters you quoted. I understood them to be saying, generally, that people are more tolerant of that which they’re accustomed to dealing with. I can’t tell if you’re even disagreeing with that. > [@](#): > > Abuse due to racial discrimination is a good analogy. Do you think the insult and hurt to blacks under Jim Crow and its unspoken offshoots was any less traumatic because it happened to every black person? It think things are more outspoken today about such problems simply because the option of speaking out, and the likelihood someone will listen, is greater. The overall trauma to blacks under Jim Crow laws was unquestionably magnitudes greater than anything I’ve experienced in my lifetime. On the other hand, I remember quite vividly and unpleasantly the two times in my life that someone has called me a nigger to my face. I suspect that a black from the Jim Crow era encountering the same situations I did would not find those particular incidents very noteworthy. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-rape-any-less-or-more-traumatic-in-cultures-that-dont-effectively-police-it/688466/42 "2014-05-20T17:21:23Z")
> [@Asimovian](#): > > The overall trauma to blacks under Jim Crow laws was unquestionably magnitudes greater than anything I’ve experienced in my lifetime. On the other hand, I remember quite vividly and unpleasantly the two times in my life that someone has called me a nigger to my face. I suspect that a black from the Jim Crow era encountering the same situations I did would not find those particular incidents very noteworthy. Right. The very specific incidents might recede in magnitude. The entire cultural impact might still be much much MUCH greater and more demoralizing. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-rape-any-less-or-more-traumatic-in-cultures-that-dont-effectively-police-it/688466/43 "2014-05-20T18:12:35Z")
> [@Asimovian](#): > > I seriously don’t understand what you’re driving at, here. I don’t think anyone has stated that that every man was a rapist or an asshole. Certainly not the two posters you quoted. I understood them to be saying, generally, that people are more tolerant of that which they’re accustomed to dealing with. I can’t tell if you’re even disagreeing with that. > > The overall trauma to blacks under Jim Crow laws was unquestionably magnitudes greater than anything I’ve experienced in my lifetime. On the other hand, I remember quite vividly and unpleasantly the two times in my life that someone has called me a nigger to my face. I suspect that a black from the Jim Crow era encountering the same situations I did would not find those particular incidents very noteworthy. Oops, this is what I get for bouncing back and forth up and down the thread. I meant to include #38. > [@](#): > > I agree. There was a thread weeks/months ago about what people would think if they got transported back in time and a bunch of women, including me, commented how awful it would be. This isn’t because we think that there were never any happy women, but when you know things could be better, it’s pretty hard to settle for worse. If you don’t know? Well, it might make you accept it, or it might make you hopeless. This is what I was getting at. Just because it happened all the time back then - rapes, serious racial insults - does not mean it hurt any less to the people involved. I think I said earlier in this thread that individual victims will become numbed to it after a while from excessive exposure; but I doubt it’s any less traumatic because it’s “accepted behaviour”, whether it’s racial suppression or permitted rape. ---
**Author:** ![fuchsiagroan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9de0a6/32.png) [@fuchsiagroan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuchsiagroan)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-rape-any-less-or-more-traumatic-in-cultures-that-dont-effectively-police-it/688466/44 "2014-05-20T19:29:39Z")
I’ve seen it in films of experienced women offering themselves to spare the young virgin from pillages and army rapists. I doubt the non virgin escapes unscathed, but I guess their thinking was it was saving the other… Society could make it a lot worse, as others have said. I think not only legal repercussions matters there. Normal direct mean people admit it happens. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-rape-any-less-or-more-traumatic-in-cultures-that-dont-effectively-police-it/688466/45 "2014-05-20T19:35:36Z")
In Australia the aborigines, if a neighboring tribe wanted to make war and a tribe didnt want to fight, they would send their women to have sex with the other warriors as a kind of peace offering. If the women’s “gift” was considered good enough the attacking tribe would often leave. Some Native American tribes did the same. I doubt the women had much choice in it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-rape-any-less-or-more-traumatic-in-cultures-that-dont-effectively-police-it/688466.md?page=2)