A close female friend of mine was telling me gore and cannibalism and other terrible things don’t really bother her when they are portrayed fictionally but that rape disgusts her. I asked her if she thought rape was actually worse than murder and she told me it depends on whether it’s an innocent person being killed in a brutal fashion or if it’s just bad guys killing other bad guys. We agreed that killing an innocent person is way worse than raping an innocent person.
It seems a common sentiment these days to say rape is worse than or at least nearly as bad as murder. If you imply it’s not, people will accuse you of trivializing rape. I hate rape and I hate how nobody cares about rape in prison and how there is that frat boy mentality among some people. But I think it’s insulting to say a rape victim is better off dead. Nor do I see rape or even murder as being completely unforgivable - people can change and honestly I think a very large percentage of the human race could commit either crime given a certain material or social condition when you look at history. We’re a savage and violent species.
I’ve haven’t been raped, but I have been both molested and physically abused and I would take the touching over the hitting any day. The only rape I think is about as bad as murder is when there is severe physical injury or the victim dies of their injuries, like the gang rape of India.
I couldn’t imagine someone’s daughter being kidnapped by thugs and she is murdered and her parents remark, “Well at least she was only murdered and wasn’t raped.” I don’t even think raping a child is as bad as killing an adult, though I do think it’s somewhat worse than raping an adult since there’s more potential for physical and psychological injury.
I know being raped can ruin a person’s life, but is this really because it’s so uniquely horrific that it’s impossible to get over? Or is it rather because our society is constantly telling rape victims they are ruined? I see this attitude they are better off dead as being more patriarchal and judgmental than sympathetic or feminist.
I also find it interesting how people say that “murder is sometimes acceptable, but rape never is.” What? When is murder ever acceptable? I understand that killing someone in self defense can happen if you’re being attacked but I see that as being similar to killing somebody by accident. Neither are murder. And yeah thugs killing other thugs admittedly probably isn’t as tragic as an innocent 15 year old girl being brutally raped, but certainly a 15 year old girl being brutally murdered is more tragic?
Because we can all conceive of situations where taking of a life might be seen as forgivable, even praiseworthy. Not the case with rape, even accounting for different culpability levels.
What about raping a rapist? I think a lot of people (not me) would feel like that was justified. Or what if the rapist was mentally retarded and couldn’t understand the idea of consent, or they were a 12 year old boy re-enacting their own abuse at the hands of adults? I think there’s just as many shades of grey if not more than there is for killing somebody.
A mentally retarded individual would not be a rapist in the case you cite, he does not have the requisite mens rea. As for the boy, many rapists and abusers have been victims themselves and in anycase we are talking about different culpability levels not rape being seen as justifiable, which murder sometimes is seen as and what you seem to ask about in the OP.
I will agree that, while I don’t often subject myself to fictionalized portrayals of rape and brutal beatings/murder, rape is infinitely more difficult to watch. That french film “Irreversible” had a rape scene that lasted a few minutes, but seemed to go on for hours and hours, and I think I had to look away it was so disturbing. I don’t watch much “torture porn” type horror movies, but nothing in Saw 1-3 disturbed me the way that rape scene did.
I think humans at some level are wired to kill and it’s just more normal for us than rape. I don’t know though, because rape is so common and lots of animals basically are just rapists.
I wonder if it’s also the way murder and rape are portrayed in films. Rape scenes usually involve torture and abuse while murder in movies tends to be a clean shot to the head or even if it’s gory you don’t get much of a visual depiction of their agony. Granted in Saw this isn’t so much the case, but then again in horror films the characters tend to be unlikable anyway.
Murders of innocent people like the stabbing premonition at the beginning of Minority Report bother me a lot more than say a murder in a Tarantino movie.
Edited: Do you think it’s also because you’re far more likely to actually be raped than be murdered statistically? I disagree that murder is more inherent to human nature than rape since rape is a far more common crime and rape fantasies are apparently extremely common. I think most people are actually capable of both given a dire enough circumstance but our cultural context glorifies killing people who are bad while sexual matters in general, not just rape are seen as unspeakable and taboo.
Playing devil’s advocate, I’d argue that murder can be seen as a less serious crime because it causes less suffering. The victim of a murder is dead. But the victim of a rape can continue to suffer from the effects of the crime for years afterwards.
By that logic is killing someone painlessly and swiftly a less serious crime than non-fatally beating them up? I think you have to factor the pain that it causes their loved ones and familiars as well. Not only that but as an atheist I feel like depriving someone of their life may very well be taking literally everything away from them. Most rape victims recover after a few years even if they’re never quite the same as they were before.
The difference is you can murder someone as a side effect of what you really wanted to do, like commit armed robbery (which is still obviously not okay but I’d say it’s possible for an armed robber to reform). If you kill someone because you just enjoy killing people then you’re certainly at least as unredeemable as a rapist.
Good point. Of course, if it was their loved one who was shot, I think it would inspire more anger than if they were “simply” beaten.
Hmmm, what about rapists whose primary motivation is merely to have sex? I think this would generally be more the case with rapists who use drugs or attack girls who are extremely inebriated. In that sense the hurt they cause the girl, like an armed robber who kills their victim is more of a “side effect” of them taking what they wanted rather than the crime being inspired by sadism.
People are also infinitely more disturbed by the killing of an animal–especially a cat or dog, and most especially, a pet cat or dog–than they are to the killing of a person.
I don’t understand this at all! I love my cat but I’d save a homeless crackhead over him anyday if it really came down to it. I think people are really sentimental about sexuality and things that are cute and tug at the heart strings. We just evolved to be fierce defenders of the longevity and integrity of our selfish genes.
The explanation for animal abuse being worse than human murder is basically the same as the idea that rape is worse than murder - ie the common sentiment that some people just need killin’, so murder in comparison is actually pretty forgivable compared to these other crimes. Which of course isn’t really true since there are a lot of cases where responsibility for rape can be diminished as well and unfortunately cruelty to animals is necessary for medical research and production of meat. Of course it’s just ugly rats, cows and mice and not cute puppies that are sacrificed so most people don’t really care.
I see rape as a form of torture that can burden the victim with a lifetime of trauma, disease, and pregnancy. The victim would always have a shadow of a doubt as to whether she really asked for it. And it would be a special kind of hell to bear the burden of raising the child of your assailant, which deprives you the right to make a child under your own terms.
That being said I’m not convinced murder is considered less serious than rape. But if it were, the above reasons would be why.
Rape used to be called the “fate worse than death” because it was held in some cultures that rape somehow ruined the woman and no decent man would want her any more. It was also held that rape was a crime that somehow the woman’s fault - that if a woman was raped she must have been asking for it, and no decent woman would do such a thing. There are still cultures in the world where this is true and many other places where old habits die hard. Lingering negativity is part of why women are reluctant to report rapes. In some places, reporting a rape opens up the victim to charges of adultery which carries the possibility of a death sentence.
The fact that all of this is mostly just kind of background noise is part of what people are talking about when they use the phrase, “culture of rape”.