Damnit. Ninja'd. We are of a mind on this, zay.
Damnit. Ninja'd. We are of a mind on this, zay.
Avoided this thread for a few days, just had a quick skim though and it's exactly I expected.
This sexism bollocks is just an ingrained issue that although technically needs addressing, is essentially unfixable for the next few thousand years. Simple placeholder solution (male of female) is just play with people who aren't twats. If all your friends are twats then go and get some more.
And I did not say rape is never about other things. Only that it's about sex the vast majority of the time. Actual evidence, not miscellaneous anecdotes, shows this to be true.Originally Posted by zay
Again, I never said "solely".As for the rest of what you said, okay, let's say rape is largely sexual. Why then does so much rape occur in prisons? Like I said earlier, I think you'd be drawing a long bow to say most of those rapes are perpetrated by homosexuals, which would be the only explanation if rape is a solely sexual matter.
Plenty of primarily heterosexual men, when imprisoned for a long time, engage in sexual activities with other men as a substitute of heterosexual sex. This can take the form of consensual acts, or rape.
You'll also note the prison population is a selected group with higher than normal aggression and lower impulse control, so the sexual activity should be expected to consist of more rape and less consensual activity than would be the case in other populations.
Finally, rape going on in prisons is a completely insignificant part of rape in the world. Even if it was solely a tool of control in prisons, this would say nothing about rape as a whole.
Oh? Then why do rapists prefer the fittest age group of women, who are the most able to physically fight back, and largely ignore children and older women as targets of rape?Also "if rape = power, then rape victims = powerful women = older women"? What? You don't always have to be looking to control stronger people for it to be domination. Look at a schoolyard - is the bully harassing the bigger, older students, or the scrawnier, weaker, younger students? People who seek to dominate others look to people who are weaker than them, who they can certainly control and humiliate.
The above is utterly illogical. When we acknowledge that a thief is motivated by acquisition of wealth, we aren't condoning their action. That acknowledgment is, however, very important if we are to decide on successful actions to prevent and stop the theft. Denying the evidence of what actually drives rape can only help rapists.Anyway, claiming that rape is mostly sexual is, to me, a pretty risky proposition. What does that mean? So if some loser who can't get laid, as b0rsuk put it, goes out and rapes someone, is he excused because it's all natural? Because he had a physical urge that he just couldn't control? Some sort of "blue balls" defense? I think this thinking also leads pretty inevitably to the thinking that women who dress provocatively are tempting men sexually, and so are at fault if they get raped. Because they contributed to the man's sexual attraction and frustration. To me that is some severely diseased thinking.
You just completely contradicted yourself on the "which victims are more powerful" front. Also, you haven't touched to issue of animal sexuality frequently involving social power, or the ideas of sex as part of a human power dynamic rather than "just sex."
Furthermore, if rape is mostly about sex why is it so skewed against women? Sex is a very important part of it, but it isn't as though women never want to have sex, or never want sex really, really badly when their intended partner doesn't. So why is it men who commit sexual assault? Why do men with frequent access to consensual sex commit rape? I don't think there are a lot of easy answers and it depends a lot on the specific people involved. Let's not overgeneralize here with the "mostly"s.
Female-Male sexual assaults do happen. But much more common is Male-Male sexual assault. On that subject:
A lot of people end up in prison for crimes utterly unrelated to violence. Most felonies are non violent, so with most felons. All kinds of theft can put you in prison. So can drug offenses. So can immigration issues. Prison isn't full of them big bad rapers and mud'rers. Sure there's a "higher concentration" simply because a significant portion of violent criminals get caught and the prison population is smaller than the general population. But there's a lot of intricate, institutionalized psychological destruction and modification at work in the prison system. These are people locked away from society for large portions of their life sometimes unfairly. It messes people up. This isn't just a case of bad people doing bad things. It's so much more dirty, complicated, and ugly than that.higher than normal aggression and lower impulse control, so the sexual activity should be expected to consist of more rape and less consensual activity than would be the case in other populations.
That is utter nonsense. Have some respect for the scientific method and for logic. So prison is a different, extreme environment from "the world as a whole." The world as a whole is not a highly homogenized place. We have a wide variety of cultures, places where life is as different from middle class America or Europe as any prison, and violent sexual crimes occur at different rates and in different contexts across these cultures and places. Looking at why it occurs in any of them can tell us a little bit about why it occurs in all of them. Utter nonsense.Finally, rape going on in prisons is a completely insignificant part of rape in the world. Even if it was solely a tool of control in prisons, this would say nothing about rape as a whole.
Last edited by gwathdring; 06-06-2012 at 07:20 PM.
Sorry, no. Both you and zay have apparently confused my initial remark about "powerful women" to mean physical power; the intended meaning was high status. If the feminist-favored theory of rape being about power, hate or control had merit, and rapists considered themselves to be Agents of The Patriarchy, motivated to "put women to their place", they would prefer to target women who have status and power. This is not the case.
I mentioned physical fitness of the most frequent rape victims to point out that rapists are also not simply looking for the easiest possible victim (which would result in children and the elderly overrepresented in rape victims).
The book I recommended earlier, "Dark Side of Man" by Ghiglieri, quotes U.S. Department of Justice statistics which in the mid-90's indicated that 77% of reported rape targeted women 16 to 24 years old. This is just 1/10 of the female population, but the most fertile 1/10. Total coincidence? Secret conspiracy by The Patriarchy? Or sexual motivation in rape?It's because men and women are wired extremely differently when it comes to sex. If you check out Ghiglieri's book, or better yet Matt Ridley's "Red Queen", you'll find a lot of detailed info on that.Furthermore, if rape is mostly about sex why is it so skewed against women? Sex is a very important part of it, but it isn't as though women never want to have sex, or never want sex really, really badly when their intended partner doesn't. So why is it men who commit sexual assault? Why do men with frequent access to consensual sex commit rape?
What is this?
You make one argument and defend another. I'm asserting that rape is not universally either primarily power-related or sex-related. It depends heavily on the circumstance. I've already made a big deal about asserting the role of sexuality in rape. Either we agree with each other, or you are inadequately addressing the points about which we disagree.
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