Why does rape get special status?

[iamnotbatman]

@Carmady

I think the stigma surrounding masturbation is decreasing.

I think our view of sex is actually getting healthier. We have room to improve, but making sex less special is not the direction I think we need to go.

Good. Our view of sex and masturbation and sexual activities has indeed been getting better over the last century, as I thoroughly endorse. The stigmas need to keep decreasing.

@Carmady

Ideally to who? I don’t share those ideals, and would not want to live in the world of Brave New World.

To me. I don’t want to live in the world of Brave New World, but the sexual aspect of it was no traumatic nightmare; it was depicted as rather harmless.

@Carmady

You seem to be contradicting your previous points here. You are now talking about the disadvantages of the way we treat other assaults, but these disadvantages could apply to rape as well if we treat it the same.

I don’t understand how you come to that conclusion. I have pointed out that there is an irrational stigma associated with sexual activities in general (and that does not inherently imply that sex is not in some ways “special”, btw, see below). This irrationality is the reason why some assaults, which can result in just as much trauma and often more physical harm, are treated with less enthusiasm by both the news media and the justice system.

@Carmady

They are only out of balance if you assume your conclusion, which is:

1. There is no inherent reason for sex to be special in general

2. There is no rational reason to make it special

You fail basic logic, and you misrepresent my conclusion. Let me treat these two maladies separately.

Firstly, you misrepresent my position: I have not said that there is “no rational reason to make it special.” I have described specifically some aspects of sex that make them different (“special” if you will) from other activities. Every activity is “special” – every assault unique. But singling out one very specific form of assault, substituting a sort of blind jingoism and an emotionally charged word in place of rationally considering the facts of the case on their own terms, does not justice make. Surely sex is “special”, but everything exists on a continuum. Black and white thinking is to nobodies benefit. This leads me to the next point.

The logic. In order for the assessment of rape to be out of balance, you claim the two things must be true (from your wording I suppose necessary but not sufficient, but that is not important):

1. There is no inherent reason for sex to be special in general
2. There is no rational reason to make it special
   (bolding mine)

And yet, in the actual universe, there is a continuous spectrum of differences, of “specialness” (blech, I’d rather use the former word). Thing A can be slightly more “special” than thing B, when the facts alone are considered, though perhaps society views thing B more “special” than thing A. This would be a situation that is out of balance. It does not require thing A or thing B to not be special at all.

[Freudian_Slit]

@iamnotbatman

Suppose in the near future, scientists figure out how to activate cells in the palm of your hand, so that contact with other hands can render you pregnant or give you an orgasm. Well, perhaps the first thing that would happen is that people would start wearing gloves! Now, suppose a stranger rips off one of your gloves, and without your permission (with his gloved hand, so you can’t get pregnant) gives you a handshake. What happens? You are angry – you did not give this person permission to do this. You accept that you experienced some pleasure at the same time, similarly to how one must accept being tickled against their will – they may laugh as a physical reaction, but they also are being tickled against their will. In any case they shrug the matter off as another dickish thing a stranger can do. No long term trauma associated with shame, guilt, repression, PTSD due to the drama of the event built up through countless societal mental reenactments and enforcements. Just another shitty thing a stranger can do to you.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if that happened, over time being grabbed by your hand might just trigger the same feelings as rape or sexual assault. And who knows, society might start to sexualize hands. Perhaps not overnight, but in time…

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

@iamnotbatman

Well, I have to keep repeating myself with you, so I don’t think my previous use of bold font was unwarranted: I am not dismissing the emotional trauma. I have repeated this over and over again. Using bold font would be an under-reaction given the amount of frustration on this end…

I don’t mean any offense. The reason you ‘have to keep repeating’ yourself is because what you keep saying isn’t true, and I’m trying to see whether you’re going to address that.

You are dismissing the emotional trauma; the form of your dismissal is the statement that it is irrational and thus should be disregarded in your “ideal world” scenario. You’re not saying it doesn’t exist; you’re saying it doesn’t really count. You are discounting the notion that rape’s primary significance is in its emotional violence, and that that’s a normal way for things to work. You keep saying that you aren’t, and then doing it again. Having just said that you aren’t doing this, you are now going to.

My arguments is that there would be less emotional trauma if there wasn’t an irrational double standard. Again, when I say “double standard”, I mean “all else being equal.” If someone forces a phallus into my armpit or ear with the same level of resultant physical trauma as a rape under consideration, I don’t think it is a giant leap to conclude that on a rational basis, the levels of emotional trauma should be the same in an ideal world. We don’t live in an ideal world, but nonetheless we could strive toward one…

Do you see? “Things would be better if we could just be reasonable about this.” That is, in practical terms, a dismissal of the emotional trauma inflicted in the real world. It’s the old “I’m sorry that you think I offended you” apology – you’re saying that to the extent a rape victim suffers more trauma than a finger-in-your-ear victim (yes, yes, provided that the finger is penis-girth and the earhole is anal-diameter), that rape victim is suffering from an irrational perspective on the act. That is what I’m calling a dismissal, and that is why I have suggested that you aren’t privileged to tell people what the right way to feel about it is.

Unless you think the world would be improved in equal measure if we all started acting rationally and stopped feeling happy about music. That’s a societal delusion in operation by your definition, too. Music and sunshine good, rape and racial slurs bad. All irrational to more or less the same extent, if you’d like to apply the same rationale. Do you? Do you think language is irrational because good and bad could mean the opposite thing? Or do you simply credit that ideas have power, and that there’s a level of significance beyond the literal and material conclusions you can make about the components that go into them?

Incidentally - and here the discussion gets even more confusing on my end - the thing you’re talking about where a penis is forced into some other place than your anus is a rape. I mean, how about your mouth? The levels of emotional disturbance aren’t precisely the same, I don’t imagine, but would you be shocked to learn that the victims of such acts are, in fact, traumatized in a similar way?

What you’re saying boils down to this: if things were different, they’d be different. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but you seem to be holding that up as evidence that things aren’t the way they are. And I don’t understand why you’re doing that.

[iamnotbatman]

@Jimmy_Chitwood

You are dismissing the emotional trauma; the form of your dismissal is the statement that it is irrational and thus should be disregarded in your “ideal world” scenario. You’re not saying it doesn’t exist; you’re saying it doesn’t really count. You are discounting the notion that rape’s primary significance is in its emotional violence, and that that’s a normal way for things to work. You keep saying that you aren’t, and then doing it again.

Actually, I am not. The reason you think that I am dismissing the emotional trauma is because you haven’t been a good listener. Either that or you somehow blind to the simple fact that saying something is irrational is not tantamount to a dismissal of an emotional experience. Let me once again provide an example that proves my point:

1. The stigma associated with masturbation in the privacy of one’s own home is irrational.
2. The emotional trauma experienced by being “found out” is irrational.
3. I am not dismissing the emotional trauma experienced. In fact I am empathizing with the traumatized (a boy, for instance). I think the trauma would be absent if the boy’s parents (and friends, society, etc) were more rational. The fact that the boy is irrational is not his fault. It is society’s fault. All I am doing is emphasizing with the boy and offering a solution for reducing, on average, the emotional trauma experienced in the world.

More to come.

[iamnotbatman]

@Jimmy_Chitwood

Do you see? “Things would be better if we could just be reasonable about this.” That is, in practical terms, a dismissal of the emotional trauma inflicted in the real world.

This is your projection onto me of what I can only presume is your stereotype of what a “rape-defender” thinks.

@Jimmy_Chitwood

It’s the old “I’m sorry that you think I offended you” apology – you’re saying that to the extent a rape victim suffers more trauma than a finger-in-your-ear victim (yes, yes, provided that the finger is penis-girth and the earhole is anal-diameter), that rape victim is suffering from an irrational perspective on the act. That is what I’m calling a dismissal, and that is why I have suggested that you aren’t privileged to tell people what the right way to feel about it is.

As I argued in my last post, the fact that the rape victim is “suffering from an irrational perspective on the act” (I might rather put it: “placing an irrational emotional investment in the act”), is not the same thing as dismissing the emotional trauma experienced by the victim. The emotional trauma exists, and was experienced by the victim. Full stop. The question is why, and in answering that question one is not compelled to blame the victim. I blame three things. 1) The perpetrator first and foremost, 2) what is essentially a meme, and 3) those who protect that meme (like you). I do not put any blame whatsoever on the victim, nor do I dismiss, even indirectly as you suggest, the trauma that they have endured.

@Jimmy_Chitwood

Unless you think the world would be improved in equal measure if we all started acting rationally and stopped feeling happy about music. That’s a societal delusion in operation by your definition, too.

False equivalence (I will ignore your other examples for now because they are making the same point). There is no rational reason why we should stop listening to music. There is a rational reason why we should think rationally about assaults – they can destroy lives. Provide me with a reasonable equivalence and I think it would be interesting to discuss it. I can’t think of one.

@Jimmy_Chitwood

Incidentally - and here the discussion gets even more confusing on my end - the thing you’re talking about where a penis is forced into some other place than your anus is a rape. I mean, how about your mouth? The levels of emotional disturbance aren’t precisely the same, I don’t imagine, but would you be shocked to learn that the victims of such acts are, in fact, traumatized in a similar way?

That’s basically my point.

@Jimmy_Chitwood

What you’re saying boils down to this: if things were different, they’d be different. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but you seem to be holding that up as evidence that things aren’t the way they are. And I don’t understand why you’re doing that.

No. I’m offering a solution for making things different. IMO better.

I’m simply trying to be intellectually honest in answering the OP’s question, to address the issue in a non-trivial way. If the OP had asked “why does the diamond get special status”, would you have me answer, “because it is beautiful and non-reactive and hard?” Perhaps, but that would be facile. The answer is a more complicated story, and involves a fair amount of irrationality on the part of human culture.

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

Your point in saying that

If someone forces a phallus into my armpit or ear with the same level of resultant physical trauma as a rape under consideration, I don’t think it is a giant leap to conclude that on a rational basis, the levels of emotional trauma should be the same in an ideal world. We don’t live in an ideal world, but nonetheless we could strive toward one…

is that

the victims of such acts are, in fact, traumatized in a similar way?

I think, rather, your point was fairly obviously that they would be traumatized significantly less than “rape victims,” because they would be much more rational about it.

And my response is that you don’t know how they feel about it, because you don’t actually know that much about the actual experiences of rape victims (and most people do not). Which makes your commitment to intellectual honesty pretty well beside the point. You’re mistaken about the reality of the experience.

[iamnotbatman]

@Jimmy_Chitwood

I think, rather, your point was fairly obviously that they would be traumatized significantly less than “rape victims,” because they would be much more rational about it.

That was my point indeed.

@Jimmy_Chitwood

And my response is that you don’t know how they feel about it, because you don’t actually know that much about the actual experiences of rape victims (and most people do not). Which makes your commitment to intellectual honesty pretty well beside the point. You’re mistaken about the reality of the experience.

First of all, I am not denying the experiences as reported by rape victims. Nor am I contradicting them. Second of all, this is a cop-out. I don’t have to experience rape in order to observe that, within certain parameters, there is a physical equivalence between friction upon one part of the body and friction upon another. That therefore there must be some mental asymmetry in the assessment and experience of friction upon different body parts. What is the source of this asymmetry? Is it entirely nature? Is it entirely nurture? As, usual, it is probably some combination. Is the nurture component rational, or partly irrational? This is the question.

[wonky]

@Jimmy_Chitwood

And my response is that you don’t know how they feel about it, because you don’t actually know that much about the actual experiences of rape victims (and most people do not). Which makes your commitment to intellectual honesty pretty well beside the point. You’re mistaken about the reality of the experience.

It’s rather like people who claim big things if someone were to break into their houses. “Oh, I’d wrestle them to the ground!” “I’d shoot them with a perfect series of shots right to the chest!” “I’d stay calm and cool and never waver!” But the reality is so much more than that. Some people fall apart, and some people don’t.

That’s why I mentioned grief upthread. No one knows how they will cope with some traumatic grief like the loss of a parent, spouse, or child. You can’t know. You can guess or try to make it sound really good, but grief is weird and surprising. We have what we think we should be feeling and what we’re actually feeling and what we want to be feeling and what we want to look like we’re feeling. That’s because we’re human and individuals and we don’t have psychic powers. We see other people dealing with X and maybe we project how we’d like to look and how much better we’d be handling it, and by doing so, we add to their burden because we are saying they are worse at it than we would be.

[iamnotbatman]

@jsgoddess

It’s rather like people who claim big things if someone were to break into their houses. “Oh, I’d wrestle them to the ground!” “I’d shoot them with a perfect series of shots right to the chest!” “I’d stay calm and cool and never waver!” But the reality is so much more than that. Some people fall apart, and some people don’t.

That’s why I mentioned grief upthread. No one knows how they will cope with some traumatic grief like the loss of a parent, spouse, or child. You can’t know. You can guess or try to make it sound really good, but grief is weird and surprising. We have what we think we should be feeling and what we’re actually feeling and what we want to be feeling and what we want to look like we’re feeling. That’s because we’re human and individuals and we don’t have psychic powers. We see other people dealing with X and maybe we project how we’d like to look and how much better we’d be handling it, and by doing so, we add to their burden because we are saying they are worse at it than we would be.

This is simply irrelevant. I realize it has the vague appearance of relevance to you. But it is not relevant at all. (Unless you are bringing up again my proffered guess as to how I would feel in such a situation – which I am entitled to, and have in no way pressed upon this forum other than a one-sentence side-note).

[Carmady]

@iamnotbatman

I have pointed out that there is an irrational stigma associated with sexual activities in general

@iamnotbatman

1. The stigma associated with masturbation in the privacy of one’s own home is irrational.
2. The emotional trauma experienced by being “found out” is irrational.
3. I am not dismissing the emotional trauma experienced. In fact I am empathizing with the traumatized (a boy, for instance). I think the trauma would be absent if the boy’s parents (and friends, society, etc) were more rational. The fact that the boy is irrational is not his fault. It is society’s fault. All I am doing is emphasizing with the boy and offering a solution for reducing, on average, the emotional trauma experienced in the world.

You are conflating “specialness/importance” and “negative stigma.”

I think you would agree with me that the “virgin/whore” stereotype, for example, needs to go. That is a good comparison to the negative stigma of masturbation and may well cause extra trauma (though it would not apply to men raped by other men).

However, specialness/importance itself by no means implies anything negative.

I believe viewing sex as special/important/whatever is the rational and wise decision, even if the decision was not largely made for us by biology (which I believe it is). I believe it would be the rational and wise decision even if it did cause a certain type of trauma to some extent, because it would prevent other types of trauma.

I would be very suspicious of any society which claimed to view sex as a handshake. To start with, I would question women’s rights in that society, and guess that, rather than actually reacting to rape mildly, many victims were bullied into the appearance of a mild reaction by the negative stigma of complaining.

Since men are not subject to many of the same negative sexual sterotypes as women, we can probably look to male response to being raped as somewhat of a “lower bound” on trauma in a non-bizarro society.

If you are arguing that a less harsh response to rape (as if it is that harsh to begin with) would lower this bound, I would say that is absurd. I would also say it would be absurd to try to lower this bound by attempting to make society view sex as nothing more than a “hug”… counterproductive and absurd.

[iamnotbatman]

In the sentence you (Carmady) quoted:

@iamnotbatman

I have pointed out that there is an irrational stigma associated with sexual activities in general

You are right; excuse my sloppiness. The sentence should have read something like:

@iamnotbatman

I have pointed out that there is an irrational “specialness/importance” put upon sexual activities in general, which has in part the effect of creating an irrationally excessive “negative stigma” surrounding rape

Other than accidentally, such as the above, I do not think, in applying my analogies to this topic, that I have conflated “specialness/importance” and “negative stigma.” Masturbation has a negative stigma associated with it. Why? Because of the specialness/importance of sexuality. I have been assuming the above connection between specialness and stigma to be tacit.

[iamnotbatman]

@Carmady

I would be very suspicious of any society which claimed to view sex as a handshake. To start with, I would question women’s rights in that society, and guess that, rather than actually reacting to rape mildly, many victims were bullied into the appearance of a mild reaction by the negative stigma of complaining.

I would also be suspicious of any society claiming to view sex as a handshake. The reason is historical, and yes, it would raise some obvious red flags about women’s rights. But it would be fallacious to argue that all such societies must have nefarious motives.

@Carmady

Since men are not subject to many of the same negative sexual sterotypes as women, we can probably look to male response to being raped as somewhat of a “lower bound” on trauma in a non-bizarro society.

If you are arguing that a less harsh response to rape (as if it is that harsh to begin with) would lower this bound, I would say that is absurd. I would also say it would be absurd to try to lower this bound by attempting to make society view sex as nothing more than a “hug”… counterproductive and absurd.

I am not arguing that a less harsh response to rape would lower the bound you describe. My intuition is that the rational response to rape would fall somewhere roughly in the middle between the lower bound described by males and the upper bound described by females (in present-time western society).

[wonky]

@Carmady

Since men are not subject to many of the same negative sexual sterotypes as women, we can probably look to male response to being raped as somewhat of a “lower bound” on trauma in a non-bizarro society.

I’m confused by what you’re arguing here. I would guess that men are, on the whole, at least as traumatized by rape as women are.

[iamnotbatman]

@jsgoddess

I’m confused by what you’re arguing here. I would guess that men are, on the whole, at least as traumatized by rape as women are.

I had assumed Carmady meant “male raped by female” (not anal rape). I would bet good money on that form of rape generally being less traumatizing, to the extent that it ever happens.

[Blalron]

I think it’s a matter of evolutionary psychology.

From our evolutionary past, women had to be very choosy when it comes to selecting a mate, because if they ended up pregnant they need their partner to be a reliable provider for her and her child. It’s not like they had welfare and food stamps in the Stone Age.

Rape, and the chance of being pregnant with a partner who isn’t going to stick around, had consequences far worse in our distant past than they do today. But the strong instinctual revulsion to rape has remained.

As for anal rape: It’s highly unlikely the other person is going to be courteous enough to use lube. Which means it will seriously hurt the rapee, and the tearing is going to greatly increase the chances of getting an STD.

[Peeta_Mellark]

@iamnotbatman

My intuition is that the rational response to rape would fall somewhere roughly in the middle between the lower bound described by males and the upper bound described by females (in present-time western society).

If you think men don’t have the same range of responses to rape as women do, you are wrong. In fact, the myth that men can’t be raped or aren’t traumatized by it is one of the most damaging to male rape victims. When most people think of male rape, they think of a) “federal pound me in the ass prison” or b) getting “raped” by some hot, aggressive woman.

Compared to the wealth of information on rape perpetrated against women, there unfortunately isn’t that much out there on male victims. But it is out there.

If the trauma of rape was largely caused by irrational ideas about sex as you propose, then it would be expected that gay and bisexual men who were raped by other men would not be particularly troubled by it. After all, many of us are comfortable with sex and while we don’t all have rampant amounts of casual intercourse, it’s not a foreign or offensive idea. We’re not fed the idea that we need to keep our bodies pure and that our sexual chastity is what gives us value in the same way women are. Yet, many gay and bisexual men are traumatized by male-on-male rape. Because the trauma isn’t just from being told by society you must keep sex sacred.

I’ve often seen people who haven’t been raped trying to make sense of it by making analogies. They liken it to being robbed or getting a wet willy or a forced handshake. None of those things work, though. Rape is different because bodily autonomy is violated in a way that it isn’t in those situations.

The best analogy I could come up with about rape is that it’s like war. Both rape and combat are prime causes of PTSD. Now, you might enjoy paintball wars. And you might love going out and shooting at targets. And you might really, really love guns. But when you’re in a war, it’s different. It’s not something you can control and stop at any time. It’s not safe. It’s not fun. You are being hunted and you are in danger and you are forced to make decisions that you do not want to make just so you can keep living. You are no longer an individual with a life. You are a target. Some people walk away from war without any deep psychological scars and others are ruined for life.

Is one response rational and the other not? No, because when you’re dealing with psychological trauma you can’t judge it that way. Different people have different breaking points and just as every battle is unique so is every rape.

[iamnotbatman]

Peeta Mellark – see post #134.

Peeta Mellark – also read all of the other posts. Otherwise my response would be redundant.

[Cat_Fight]

@Jimmy_Chitwood

What you’re saying boils down to this: if things were different, they’d be different. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but you seem to be holding that up as evidence that things aren’t the way they are.

There’s the sentiment I was searching for! If the OP wants to find a society where sex is, without exception, treated without taboo, ritual or any status beyond what Americans tie to a handshake, she or he is free to offer it up.

[iamnotbatman]

@Cat_Fight

There’s the sentiment I was searching for! If the OP wants to find a society where sex is, without exception, treated without taboo, ritual or any status beyond what Americans tie to a handshake, she or he is free to offer it up.

I think you are confusing me with the OP.

And I am “offering it up.” By discussing ideas. There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come and all that jazz. That is the only way society will change.

[Beltane]

Completely aside from societal norms, rape is different from other types of harm. If someone physically overpowered and tortured you by pushing an extra finger they had growing out of their thigh into the wound from a surgical sight that you had, bleeding in the process (so their is an exchange of bodily fluids) then that would be a rape equivalent. A wet wiley is certainly not. In this case, I would think that many people finding your experience unfathomable (except perhaps to view it as rape) would not help you, but be a hindrance. Accordingly, I think that reducing the stigma of raping someone will not help at all. That said, reducing the stigma of being raped- in that it is something wrong with the person who was raped, is something I am all for. Likewise, I am for listening to victims and not assuming and insisting they are more traumatized than they are willing to admit. On this last point, I think we all agree.