Rape: I'm Against It

Rape: I'm Against It
by Dave Munger

The media's reaction to the new book, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion by Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, is telling.

Leeza Gibbons had a rapist and a rape victim as guests on her show, and kept asking them straw man questions about the book. In effect: "How do you feel about this book saying that all men are potential rapists, rape is caused by victims wearing provocative clothing, it isn't violent and that it is just a way for men to get sex who are otherwise unable to?"

Even Rush Limbaugh represented the book as another example of scientists using evidence of biological predispositions to excuse deviant behavior. Contemporary attitudes are making it almost impossible to apply objective, apolitical theories to attempt scientific explanations of human behavior. Our society is mentally ill. This is especially evident when we consider the shibboleths, compulsive repetition of baseless fallacies and irrationally defensive attitude of the public with regard to rape.

It is apparent that, for starters, we've been brainwashed by the plague of lawyers whose permission, like that of medieval clergy, is now required before we may marry, do any sort of business, or move our bowels. We now assume that any attempt to apply the laws of cause and effect to human behavior (which must apply unless we are each uncaused causes, that is, God) is necessarily an attempt to absolve all people of any responsibility for any behavior.

Lawyers have argued so frequently, insistently, and successfully that finding a cause for a behavior somehow excuses it that science itself is now held suspect, since it assumes that all phenomena are caused, and devotes itself to finding causes for all events. The possibility that holding people personally responsible for doing things that they are predisposed to do might be one more factor in determining whether they ultimately do them or not is seldom considered. As Stephen Hawking said:

"It may be that someone is more likely to commit an antisocial act when under stress. But that does not mean that we should make it even more likely that he or she commit the act by reducing the punishment."

Two popular fallacies help to explain why so many rapes go unreported. One is that rape is only a violent act, which is implicit in the assertion that it has nothing to do with sex. I imagine some victims who are not physically injured must think "well I wasn't exactly raped, he just had sex with me without my consent". This error gives violence a bad name. The other common fallacy is that it is physically impossible for a woman to rape a man. While it is true that this is very rare, the contention that it is physically impossible is based on the assumption that a reflexive response to an external stimulus is identical with consent. It is common for rape victims to lubricate as they would during normal sexual activity, and it is not unheard of for them to have orgasms. This no more implies consent or enjoyment than the orgasms women sometimes have during labor, or men when having their pelvises crushed by falling cranes.

Thoughtless repetition of these fallacies is one reason why victims feel ashamed, often blame themselves, and don't go to the hospital or the police. It also feeds into the "she wanted it" fantasies of rapists. Stop it.

It is common for the pious to treat any refutation of the standard platitudes as trivialization of rape, an attempt to blame victims, or some other indication of sympathy with rapists. In fact, many are so eager to misinterpret any deviation from orthodox mantra chanting that they seem to think there can only be one way to indicate disapproval of rape. Thus, any other position is in effect pro-rape.

The axioms that dominate any attempt to converse on the subject of this crime include the following: Rape is entirely a crime of violence, having nothing to do with sex; rapists are motivated only by power, and essentially have no sex drive at all; there is nothing a women can do that would make her more likely to become a victim. All of these contentions are somehow proven to be true by the horrifying details of individual rape cases.

The context in which these statements are made indicates that on one level, people only mean to say that rape is a profoundly grave matter, and that perpetrators are solely responsible for it. However, if that was all that was being said, they would just say it. The irrational insistence on rigid maintenance of absolute positions, the anger directed at anyone who questions not the surface assumptions, but merely the wording or emphasis of the party line, and the eagerness to paint anyone who attempts objectivity as a rapist-sympathizer indicates that something else is meant besides this. It points to mass neurosis; an entire society with an almost psychotic attitude toward power (similar to the Victorian attitude toward sex) which links power to both violence and sex.

We all know that rape is a particularly heinous crime, somewhere in the same moral neighborhood as murder. But how is it to be put into its proper place in one's model of the world? To the depraved post-modern mind, defining it as a sexual deviation would necessarily mean trivializing it, perhaps even legalizing it, since anything remotely connected to sex is private and inconsequential (consider the response to allegations that Clinton compromised national security while being fellated. The fellatio canceled out the perjury. The later rape accusation lost its sting by being associated with a private sex life).

In order to define it as the severe offence they instinctively know it to be, they must obsessively repeat the contention that rape has nothing to do with sex. To these people, saying that rape has something to do with sex would be tantamount to saying that rape is OK. Power though, is dirty. The pursuit of power is presumed to be inherently evil (although the word "destructive" is preferred). That is why it is not enough to note that rape is violent. In order to explain, within the sick paradigm that dictates our vocabulary, why it is that rape is so much more egregious than mere sexual harassment or simple assault, it is essential to eliminate any association with sex, and ascribe any violence involved to the power motive. It's as if using force to get sex would be considered a minor faux pas, whereas using sex to express anger or one's will to power is the only thing that could ever really be considered rape.

There are still people who actually do trivialize rape and blame it on tight clothing. Save the outrage for them, and spare those who point out almost painfully obvious implications of evolutionary theory (given that natural selection does not care how you make babies). A better way of proving that you wish to prevent acts of rape from actually occurring would be to support longer sentences for rapists (old age has predictable rehabilitative effects, unlike psychotherapy), or even castration (effects similar to old age), or the death penalty (which is now applied to children conceived by rape).

For the record, I support the view that rape should be not only frowned upon, but actually treated as a crime.