I’ve been doing some thinking on this subject as of late, and I have come to the following conclusions. The first conclusion everyone on this board will completely agree with. The second conclusion will be met with the sound of one lone, slow, and never ending cricket chirp (which is indistinguishable from the beep on Ralph Macchio’s answering machine).
Fact 1: Since the dawn of humanity, women have found themselves in positions to be the victim of the sexual appetite of the male collective.
Fact 2: So have men.
Now, first of all I am not making any excuses for those who would do these kinds of things. Rape should be dealt with swiftly and brutally. It is an offense to the human soul that in many cases is worse than murder. 95% of the women that I have had relationships with throughout my life were raped or molested in some way.
95%!
I used to think that I just had some knack for picking them, that I had some subconscious attraction to women who have been victimized in that way. Now I know that this isn’t the case, but the truth is much, much worse, because the fact is that it has nothing to do with me. It is simply that most women have been raped or molested in some way during their lifetime. I wish it were just me.
I’ve spent considerable time dealing with this. And I flatter myself that I understand what a person goes through when this happens. I’m not saying I know what it is like to be raped, but I think I understand the mechanics of the event and the dynamic of the aftermath. I was raised around it.
I have to believe that most men who commit rape (MOST) would never have committed the crime if they could only see exactly what it is that they are doing to a person in performing the act. I have to believe that if a person truly understood what rape did to another person, they would not be able to pull it off (allowing for a few sociopaths that just truly do not care one way or another). The sexual drive of man is probably the most powerful emotion on the planet. A man who commits rape justifies the act any way he can to make him feel better about it. Maybe he does it simply through the belief that what transpired was merely a physical attack, similar to a bully beating the shit out of a kid on the playground. Perhaps this justification is a simple mechanic of evolution Yeah, it sucks, but you’ll get over it. No real big deal in the grand scheme of things, right? Christ it wasn’t that bad!
If only he understood that in the majority of cases his “simple physical act” caused permanent damage to the human mind akin to… let’s say upper level Vietnam flashbacks where you are talking to your friend in a fox hole about existentialism one moment and then wearing his thoughts about existentialism on your jacket like sequins on a bad blouse the next. It really is that bad. You never get over something like that, and the best that you can hope for is a day every now and then where you are distracted enough by life’s events that you don’t have much time to think about it.
My other theory has to do with why rape is so much worse than any other physical attack to the human mind. If you take away all of the symbolism behind it, all of what sexual assault represents to us (many arguments are based on the fact that it is the physical violation of our body, the forced penetration and what it represents that causes all of the pain in our minds, but I don’t buy that so much as once you strip it down to the bare metal the PHYSICAL act is not unlike being held to the ground in a school yard by a bully while he forces his finger in your mouth). So what’s left? The symbolism? I don’t know about that.
In the case of the Vietnam flashback, you are recalling a shock to the system caused by what you witnessed. There isn’t much symbolism in that. You are talking to your friend in a foxhole one moment, and you are wearing him the next. This is pretty cut and dry to me. Obviously you aren’t forgetting that.
With rape, I think there is more than meets the eye. Maybe we’ll understand it completely someday, maybe not.
Consider the following:
The sexual mechanics of the human body are parasympathetic, meaning that your body responds positively in the subconscious state regardless to your current disposition about the moment in the conscious state; although you are fighting off your attacker and are simultaneously revolted, and frightened by the event consciously, your mind is responding in a positive manner in the subconscious. Your mind is processing and performing the basic functions of your body to accept what is happening, just as it would had the sexual encounter been consensual. It seems that the subconscious brain doesn’t know one event from the other. This is another simple mechanic of evolution.
It seems to me that this sets up a scenario for the one thing that most rape victims have the most difficulty dealing with after the event and for the rest of their lives, enormous guilt. They feel guilty because they sensed this parasympathetic mechanism and incorrectly interpreted it as a kind of subconscious reciprocity, and that guilt stops them from speaking out. It stops them from calling the police. They begin to decompress and intellectualize the event. Perhaps they feel guilty because they sensed some part of them was responding positively to what transpired that ran counter to what they were feeling on the outside. Maybe my body didn’t fight as hard as it could have. Maybe subconsciously I wanted it, and indeed he must have picked up on that because he kept repeating that very thing in my ear, over and over:
“Come on baby. Don’t fight. you know you want it.”
And why did I go out that night dressed the way I was? Perhaps some part of me really did want this. Am I sick?
Do you see how this gets turned back on the victim so easily?
Now obviously this doesn’t cover the full spectrum of rape and what it leaves in its destructive wake, but I think there really is something to this line of thinking. And I know that I may not have the most precise grasp of the concept of rape (being a man and all), but I have spent many, many years in the presence of victims of rape and I know that I’m not that far off the mark.
I’d like to know what you think.
I’ve never understood what the man must think about the act before, during and afterwards. I mean, is it completely intentional? Does he feel remorse? Can a rapist be normal? Can a rapist redeem himself? Doesn’t he understand that he has done this horrible, unforgivable thing? Can a rapist ever be accepted by God? I guess these are a lot of questions. I should probably start a new thread. Feel free to email me with answers if you have the time.