Has anyone done studies comparing the emotional trauma of being raped by someone you know(date rape) vs a stranger (masked man in alleyway)?
What about people who don’t hold sex to be a magical and intimate act? Do they suffer far less?
Do men go through more trauma than women if they are raped? I have read prison rape accounts that the demasculanization is quite devastating.
Why is it not taboo to joke about men being raped, but female rape is the most sensitive of topics?
I find the answer to this whole question amazingly un-mysterious. And I find the OP to be a little redundant. I mean he basically answered himself:
Sexual feelings are simply hard-wired very deeply into humans’ brains, like hunger or fear. Even bad (but consensual) sex can be emotionally scarring. Hell, even good sex can be emotionally confusing later on!
I know its kind of a cop out to say, “It is because it is” but, um, that’s kinda what it comes down to. 
Maybe you think the answer is just “because”, but I guess I just like dissecting it to understand it better. I think there has been some quality conjecture here.
If you want to compare hunger or fear, the answer to those are a lot easier - it’s pretty obvious why hunger or fear would be beneficial, and it’s not hard to see how it could have evolved. A traumatic response to rape, on the other hand, seems to be a bit more complicated.
Hell, let’s dissect the situation.
Let’s take a person… generic person… could be anyone.
We will begin with violence. Let’s beat this person into submission. We will apply whatever violence seems necessary to the specific person involved – someone petite would likely take a fist upside the chops, whereas Hulk Hogan would likely take three or four guys with billy clubs, but it could be done. Even Hogan has something to lose, here.
We will now apply a death threat. Now that submission has been obtained, we need cooperation – or at least compliance of a sort. Terror, violence, and pain have been applied. We will now threaten our subject with death.
Now, we will strip our subject naked. This exacerbates the situation. We have brutalized our subject, applied pain, threatened death, applied terror. Now, we will apply a generous dose of the subject’s own helplessness in the face of all this. Humiliation. Defenselessness. Helplessness. It’s even more fun if we do it in the victim’s own house, yes?
Now, I will stick out my tongue, laugh, and say “Neener, neener,” and run away.
End of scenario.
Would you agree that we have violently traumatized our subject? That we have violated that person on an intellectual, spiritual, and emotional basis, brutalized them physically, humiliated them, and torn from them some basic ideas about their own safety, their own humanity… and their trust in others?
And I didn’t even have to jam my dick up anyone’s orifice to do it. Now consider how much worse the end result would have been if I HAD.
Admittedly, some people will be able to deal with this more easily than others. Not sure that should be a consideration, though, to anyone except the victim…
Well, in my view, sex is usually something one equates with pleasure, intimacy, and often, love.
Rape takes that expression of trust and love, and turns it into a weapon, perverting what sex is supposed to be about.
But another thing to think about is rape that’s not physically violent. From what I’ve heard on loveline (yes, I realize that this might not be a good source, so I could be wrong, but this is as I understand it), children sexually molested at a young age could be severly traumatized. Why would raping a younger child be so traumatic for the child?
I just wish there was a way to convince more women that there’s no shame in the attack for them. They’re the victim, fer crissakes.
An old friend of mine was raped once. She finally let him have his way, got through it with as little harm to herself as possible, then had the asshole put away for a long time. She followed him when he left. She’ll tell you all about it, if you’re interested. All the details. She wouldn’t even mind if I told you her name, but I won’t. A really cool person, she is. 
BTW; anyone remember that news story awhile back about the woman who finally provided lube and a condom to the rapist? Smart.
Peace,
mangeorge
Why some of you say that rape is for fun? Everyone knows it’s not about anything sexual!
Because a child in Western society is raised to believe that they, as a young person, should be protected. Many children who are victims of any sort of violence grow up with emotional trauma always hanging over them. You are told that you deserve protection; then something horrible is allowed to happen to you.
Because when you’re young, Sex is a Grown-Up Thing. People of the opposite gender still have ‘cooties’. All the sudden, this strange thing happens, something that is clearly Not Supposed to Happen.
It alters normal human psychological development. There are certain developmental milestones that children are expected to reach at a certain age. These milestones, and when people should reach them, are more or less figured by assuming certain emotional milestones. Being a victim of a physical attack, something that feels wrong even without being told it is, severely alters the normal path. It gives a child much more emotional baggage to deal with than a ‘normal’ child would have.
Just my 2 cents. Not a psychologist/sociologist/etc, YMMV.
Speaker, plainly you have never had someone walk up and start a fight with you for no other reason than that they felt like having a fight, and you’re elected.
Plainly, you have never had someone do something unpleasant to you for no other reason than that they COULD.
In such circumstances, sexuality is irrelevant, except in where it may be used to heighten the torture.
I’m also not a big believer in the idea that “rape is always a crime of violence.” I can think of several rapes of which I am aware in which it WAS all about the sex, for the perpetrator.
This is not to say that it’s always about the SEX, either. Some rapists get off on the power trip.
Dare I suggest that rape is psychologically devastating for biological reasons? There is a sound evolutionary reason why females would be programmed to find rape highly unpleasant. Women who find rape more unpleasant are more likely to avoid it.
In general, *Master, you’re right from the rapist’s pov. But to the victim, it’s pretty much always an act of violence.
Alright, I’ll bite. Why would females resisting sexual advances be supported by evolution?
Because rape is not a social act and we’re social animals. Try to get a rapist to bring home the bacon, protect the homestead, or at least change a freaking diaper once in awhile.
I think you’ve stumbled upon another subject here, Blake. Humans were quite different “back in the day” of evolution. Did rape, as we know it, even exist? Rape is almost unheard of in some cultures.
Almost by definition rape is an impregnation against the woman’s will. In other words the rapist is someone she has not accepted as a mate. Since humans, and other animals, select mates based on fitness a woman who readily accepts rape will be having offspring to less fit partners. That’s a major drawback in survival terms.
It’s hard to say what we were like. We have two closely related species, amongst one rape is common, amongst the other unheard of. However rape is unheard of amongst bonobo because of high promiscuity. The females avoid rape by putting out to all and sundry.
Perhaps it is, due I suspect to intense penalties and the unavoidability pf being caught. I’m sure you’re not suggesting that in some cultures men are less driven to commit rape.
Can you name some of these cultures where rape is unheard of.
Warning to Abuse/Assault Victims: Possible Triggers Ahead
Why is rape so emotionally devastating?
First of all, most traumatic events can be devastating, at the very least in the short term. Many men and women who are mugged and beaten are traumatzied by the experience. They become afraid of being hurt again. They look behind their shoulders as they walk on the street. Possibly avoiding going out at night, maybe even leaving their house.
Gradually things may get better, until something triggers the memory: maybe someone comes up behind them & startles them as a joke, maybe they hear running footsteps behind them as a jogger approaches. Harmless situations, but the fear is automatic, as is the awful thought: *Please, not again … *
And that’s just from common and garden variety assault.
Now add the rape factor. Not only is the victim physically tormented, or threatened, or even ‘merely’ intimidated. Her (most rape victims are female, but please know that what I’m saying is intended to include male rape victims as well) most intimate part of her body – which almost everyone is taught from childhood to keep covered, hidden, protected, private, safe – suddenly becomes “owned” by another person.
The most basic expectation we have is of being in charge of our own body. In a rape, that is now denied her. She is powerless, cannot choose to whom she will allow access to her. That simple human dignity is stripped away along with her clothes. She is reduced to nothing, not a human being, just orifices and some flesh.
Along with this helplessness comes the anger and shame of not being able to stop the assault. She feels robbed of control, of safety, of privacy, even of the memory of sex as something pleasurable between herself and someone she trusts. The act is a brutal mockery of what it should be – it has been debased. It is ugly.
At last the rapist is finished with her. If she survives, she is likely threatened against revealing what happened. The rapist may try to shame and intimidate her into silence. He leaves. She is alone and likely in shock, her body still fouled by him.
I’ll ignore the aspect of reporting the crime, such as not being allowed to wash yourself of your rapist’s body fluids, or even to go to the bathroom; I won’t talk about having your genitals and fingernails scraped for evidence. Not everyone experiences that, since rapes are often not reported.
So, the rape is over. She can’t just shrug it off, fluff her hair, chalk it up to a bad experience and go on with life. No, as a survivor, she now goes through the same reactions as our original assault victim. But probably worse.
Because added to them could well be the degredation she now may feel within her own body. Her skin, flesh and genitals were mere parts for someone else to use, and now she may feel filthy from the inside out. Of course, she may have bruises and wounds received during the rape, but there are the added threats of pregnancy and potential lifelong sexual disease to be dealt with.
If the rape was in her home, she may no longer feel safe there. Her own bedroom may still smell of the rapist. If the rape was on the street, how can she feel safe walking alone again?
If he was someone she knew, she may blame herself for trusting the wrong person, and feel that she can no longer rely on her instincts about others. If the rapist is a stranger, every man walking on the street may seem like a potential attacker. She might turn to drugs or alcohol seeking the peace of oblivion, where perhaps the fear can temporarily subside.
Since her body has been so cruelly used, she may feel that she needs to protect it at all costs; to reclaim her boundaries, she might keep away from others, not let anyone touch her. She might even overeat to obesity or starve to wraithlike skin & bones, subconsciously trying to avoid attracting attention as a sexual object.
Which leads us to sex itself.
Remember that people who are mugged generally don’t ever have to go through the same motions, actions, sensations that occured during their attack. Rape survivors, when/if they have sex again, are almost echoing their experience like a gruesome re-enactment. Even though making love isn’t remotely the same act as a rape, it still utilizes the same body parts, maybe even the same movements and scents.
How long will it be before she can again experience sex as a safe, natural, enjoyable act? When her lover touches her breasts, will she remember how the rapist’s hands felt? Will she be tormented by memories of her attacker’s breath, his tongue, arms, legs, penis?
So the rape survivor may dread seeking out a partner, not trusting herself, much less anyone else. And if she is already in a relationship, she may feel unable to return to their sex life for a long time, repelled and/or frightened by the intimacy and the memories it evokes.
Someone brought up a friend who still feels shame after being raped, and said that he doesn’t understand how she can blame herself. As a good friend, he has very kindly and correctly assured her that she has nothing to blame herself for.
Unfortunately, though she might not logically be at fault, logic means very little to a trauma victim. Reliving the event, many fear that there was something they did wrong. A survivor might wonder, did she miss the signals? Did she ‘provoke’ the act in some way by being flirtatious or wearing something tight-fitting (an old fashioned belief that sadly still persists)? Should she have carried a gun or a knife? Should she have checked the inside of the car before entering it? Should she have screamed louder, fought back harder, not fought at all?
Rather than suffering through the violation and its aftermath, should she have let him kill her? Would death be better than this?
So … I hope this helps, even a little, explain why rape is so emotionally devastating for many victims. Because it’s not just some guy waltzing in, gently removing your clothes, inserting his penis once and skipping out of your life.
A vital part of your life may go with him.
33% of rape victims seriously contemplate suicide; 13% actually attempted suicide – four times the average rate, according to a 2000 U.S. Department of Justice report.
My apologies; a subtle combination of your choice of words and my interpretation of the reading led me to the false assumption that your question was more along the lines of “what is all the damn fuss about?” - I see now that this wasn’t the thrust of your inquiry at all. Sorry.
Tell that to someone who was raped by a family member, a husband, a boyfriend, a friend.
Oops… my comment was in jest. Sorry to have offended.
And interestingly enough, that very thing happened just this September. Luckily I have a friend with a strong arm and fierce loyalty.