“Rape is about power, not sex” is an oversimplification (and only Sith deal in absolutes). On the other hand, it’s equally oversimplified, and probably less accurate on the whole, to characterize rape as due to sexual attraction – that is, as being about sex and not power. Rape is not merely another seduction technique.
I agree with you on the first point, simplifying criminal motives to a single word, particularly for all cases of a crime doesn’t work.
However equally it seems bizarre to discount the most obvious motivation, i.e. sexual gratification, as not being one of the primary motivations without putting forward any evidence to support that position.
If I’m honest I’m scratching my head as to why people have a problem with the idea of sexual motivations lying behind sexual offences.
My own anecdotal offering from having dealt with far too many rapists is that they raped because they were horny and wanted sex. Actual or perceived power imbalance might have motivated them to go through with the deed but the reason for rape was wanting sex.
As an aside, as a good rule of the thumb (!) if there is a feminist trope on sex from the 1970’s, then its probably bullshit.
There must generally be some element of power/dominance/anger/hostility when a male forcibly rapes a female.
Totally unmentioned so far in this and all similar discussions I’ve seen: If a male just absolutely needs to get laid because he’s so horny and sex-starved he can’t stand it any more, he can always buy it. There are plenty of willing commercial providers around. (Assuming said horny male can afford it.) So why do rapes still happen when it’s readily commercially available?
Well, imagine a man who’s had a couple of drinks is partway through having consensual sex with a woman; he’s enjoying it; she isn’t; she tells him to stop; he doesn’t.
Would he have started raping her? No. Will he finish? Yeah, maybe.
I would speculate that it’s opportunistic. The perp is really aroused, he has the opportunity to get just what he wants right now, as long as he doesn’t care about how his victim feels and thinks he can get away with it (and maybe even doesn’t care about that).
Also I think it can be overstated a little how available prostitution is. It’s like when people say you can buy any drug in any town. I couldn’t. And it’s still an illegal act with risks of its own in most places.
In the hypothetical mentioned earlier about the college guy and the drunk girl, if we assume he doesn’t care about the girl’s well-being, then rape may be the more desirable option in terms of chance of being arrested, and attractiveness of the girl.
:dubious::smack:
Seriously? You think most criminals think that far when they commit their crimes?
Lets put your post to other crimes
Why kill, when there can divorce/resign/sue/ settle the matter at hand? Must be about power
Why steal, when you can buy. Must be about power
Why injure when you can (add the bit for murder here)? Must be about power.
Most criminals don’t think much more forward then immediate desires. A guy is not going to weigh the pros and cons of his crimes vis-via options. Most rapists think… “I am horny right now… you will do”.
If people actually put that much thought to their crimes…well you would have less crime.
In a lot of countries including America, prostitution is illegal, so no, he can’t. (Rape is obviously illegal too, for good reasons). There is some evidence that when prostitution was ‘accidentally’ legalized in Rhode Island between 2003 and 2009, rape rates went down, as you would expect. Of course you can’t conclude much from the experience of one locality, but still, it’s quite possible that legalizing prostitution might decrease rape incidence a bit, which is one reason I’d favour it. (Pornography by contrast seems to increase rape, at least that’s the conclusion of a new study from Norway).
I do think you have a good point, and I think power is often a big motivation, just not always.
It also doesn’t (how could it) include marital rape, since that wasn’t a crime in America at that point, though it certainly should be.
One other thing to throw in to the sex vs power dynamic on college is that often the perpetrator will be drunk, too (which diminishes the crime by absolutely zero percent). So, in terms of what’s going on inside their head, I think it’s much more likely their just horny assholes with diminished inhibitions (for at least some significant subset).
I remember a friend telling me in college that he went home with a girl from the bar, they were both really drunk and they started making out. At some point he notices that she passed out and he’s like ‘what the fuck am I doing?’ So he carries her back to her dorm, tosses her into her bed, and then goes back to his dorm and goes to sleep. I can imagine with the wrong person, that could easily turn into a rape - but I would say in that scenario it would almost certainly be about sex and not power.
Fwiw, he told her the next day and they ended up dating for about a year.
The amount of porn now trivially available to men and women of all ages is several orders of magnitude what is was a generation ago. Thankfully it does not appear to have resulted in a rape epidemic.
A slightly different take on this
Girls and ladies from when they are born are often told again and again that many men are pigs and to be aware that they could be potential rapists (not all men but there is that fear that a man could be)
So they naturally resist any advances done by men as a built in defense screen even if they have somewhat of an attraction for them
However, there are certain percentage of woman that (I could be wrong on the numbers) that get off on this rape fantasy.
The idea being is that they lose control and in their mind and then mentally, they have has sex but in their mind they don’t think of them as a loose women but in the process it could be considered rape by the actions of the male
Again, this more of a female sexual fantasy to be dominated rather than the true brutal rape discussed here but it is not a huge difference between these scenarios.
Of course, this may be more of a role play rather than true rape but sometimes the best role play is one that is unexpected and spontaneous as opposed to planned
Which is not evidence against the ‘porn causes rape’ theory. The reason there’s less rape today is probably because of things like lower lead levels (lead is linked to all kinds of violent crime), and maybe also because we take consent and crimes against women more seriously. It might be even lower if we had less porn.
I think Pinker is wrong about the median age of rape victims being 24. From what I recall reading is much lower than that, closer to 17 or so.
Not evidence, no, just a reason that such a claim would need one hell of a lot of data to be taken seriously. Extraordinary claims yadda yadda.
Because the quantity of porn has gone up tremendously, worldwide. So we need something to have a massive counteracting effect, at just the right time, for the majority of the world’s countries.
Or porn doesn’t make rape significantly more likely.
The counteracting force would be lead removal from paint & gasoline and increasing awareness of women’s rights.
I suppose the problem is that there is no single motive for anything.
IMHO, the power thing is in the same vein as the schoolyard bully - he takes your lunch money not because he’s saving up for a X-box or wants a candy bar, but because he can and he knows by making you hand it over, he’s proving his power, dominance, and control. The candy bar he buys is just a bonus. Once puberty hits, these same bullies realize they can do the same sort of thing to a female - demonstrate dominance, and of course humiliate them, as being raped is pretty much as much humiliation as you can inflict. The orgasm is just a bonus. (Although some studies suggest failure to reach orgasms, particularly with stranger rape, is not unusual)
So in this regard, the OP’s premise is right. But not all rapes are this way … However, there are plenty of other scenarios. Taking advantage of a passed out female obviously is more about the sex than the humiliation - although sometimes there’s an element of that nowadays, especially with interesting photos of the event and the victim being passed around.
I’m not willing to call that insinuation dangerous, although I’m also not willing to call it Pinker’s insinuation. It’s been a decade since I read that book. If strict gender roles reduce rape, then we should recognize that and factor it into our decisionmaking process. If it’s true, then ignoring it is the dangerous thing to do.
I can easily see how patriarchy could, in a stable society, reduce rape. If men view their female relatives as their property, they may be willing to commit violence to protect their property, and they may do so with a far lower standard of proof than a court requires. A potential rapist might be dissuaded from the crime if he fears violent retaliation from male relatives.
Of course, it could also reduce reported rapes. A woman who fears violence from male relatives may be unwilling to report a rape, given the potential for being beaten or murdered by a man who feels betrayed and blames her for the sexual violence.
Sexist social structures can reduce rape by definition: in my state, it was impossible for a man to rape his wife as recently as 1990.
On the contrary–that post was written nine years ago, so by now the median age should be 33.
Considering that women reporting rape in very sexist countries like Pakistan are then charged with fornication, yes, a sexist society certain will have less rapes … reported.
(If their family doesn’t kill them first, out of shame.)
The pithiest accurate summary – or most accurate pithy summary – of the point I’m trying to make is “rape is not a seduction technique.” One survey found that about a third of rapists were motivated by lust, suggesting two-thirds were not.
AK84 is probably right that going through with it was an exercise of power, or a demonstration of power. I doubt many rapists feel that their victims are equally or more powerful than they are and that this state of affairs is fair and proper. The reason they responded to this situation with rape rather than screaming at them or grumbling about it on the internet or whatever may well be lust.
But look at the rape threats public feminists have gotten. They don’t usually come off as expressions of attraction; there’s little or no “you’re so hot, I wanna rape you” (in contrast with “fucking slut. If you will ever come to Europe I will rape you into oblivion” or “im gonna bust dem sugar walls leave an aids load in der”).
That too.