Rape is not about sex? (points, humans, nature, biological)

[soUlwounD]

Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof

In this case, we have a totally uninteresting quibble about the meaning of the verb form of the word 'sex'. If you simply define 'sex' as consensual then, of course, rape is not about sex. But then, by that standard, a great deal of reproduction happens throughout the animal kingdom that is not about sex - offspring generated even though the animals did not "have sex". We quickly get bogged down in pointless wordplay. Pinker and I are using the word 'sex' in the biological sense, which is to say, activity that is functionally rooted in the potential union of a sperm and an egg. For this potential to exist, the male must be aroused enough to contribute sperm (at least potentially, or "in principle"). This does not mean that masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, heavy petting, etc, are not sex. True, these activities have no immediate potential for generating offspring, but they are still instance of sexual activity because these behaviors only exist in the wider context of an essentially sexual species. The same basic drive (the drive to release sexual tension) that leads to reproduction in many circumstances, is the drive that leads to masturbation, etc. The same parts of the nervous system that light up during the pursuit of, or during the act of, reproductive intercourse also light up during these non-reproductive forms of sexual activity.

If we want to solve a problem, it is best if we correctly understand the problem, and concepts based on scientifically verified data are generally the best route to understanding. If we want to minimize rape, we need to correctly understand rape. Saying that rape "is not about sex" is simply incorrect, from a scientific point of view. In the animal kingdom, there is consensual sex (female chooses the male) and there is non-consensual sex (female fights back, but is overcome by the male). Humans are basically the same, except for one huge, major, gigantic, enormous, deeply profound difference: Humans are conscious, highly intelligent abstract thinkers who create cultures/societies based on empathy-based moral rules. We recognize the evil of abuse. We recognized the need for compassion and the utility of following rules. Thus, what is merely non-consensual sex in the animal kingdom is rape in human culture. The concepts of non-consensual sex in the animal kingdom and rape in human culture are not mutually exclusive. The fact that we apply the moral concept of rape to the biological concept of non-consensual sex does not change the underlying biological fact that most rape is non-consensual sex. (This is not to deny that some rapes truly are purely about the sheer thrill of abuse, exerting power, etc.)

Actually rapists just need therapy.

They have different type of problems which leads into committing rape and they should go and solve their real problems and learn to live without committing things that are not righteous. Those problems cannot be generalized but with professional they could be found and solved.

Only problem is that a criminal rarely wants to stop.. Rapist is criminal, there is no explanations, there is no excuses. Rape is against law in all circumstances and only thing what people have to do is to NOT commit it. Very easy.

I don't appreciate attempts of twisting simple things. Rapist, just go and fix your problems what ever they are. And fyi, many people lives as a loner without ever getting sex and never raping anyone so that is not a reason either.

Criminals and wrongdoers have often a habit that they think that "normal folks" has no problems therefore because they have, it is righteous to commit crimes. But "normal folks" often has even more problems in their lives and still they don't think they have rights to attack on others. "Normal folks" try to solve their problems and live forward as fine as possible.

There is NO excuses.

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by cb2008

If only the rapist has orgasm is it still sex? sex without consent is violence. to see it any other way is not to consider the victim.

It is certainly true that "sex without consent is violence," but the fact that it is violence does not change the fact that it is also a form of sex (specifically, it is non-consensual sex). I think this quote from Pinker is about as clear as it gets:

"But the fact that rape has something to do with violence does not mean it has nothing to do with sex, any more than the fact that armed robbery has something to do with violence means it has nothing to do with greed. Evil men may use violence to get sex, just as they use violence to get other things they want." (p. 362)

And I would reiterate what I said in an earlier post:

Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof

...Saying that rape "is not about sex" is simply incorrect, from a scientific point of view. In the animal kingdom, there is consensual sex (female chooses the male) and there is non-consensual sex (female fights back, but is overcome by the male).

If a male dogs mounts a female and impregnates her, does it not count as sex if the female doesn't have an orgasm?

If you want to help women who are victims of rape, you focus on the psychology, support structure, etc. of rape victims. But the victims are not to blame for what happened to them, so if you want to prevent future rapes, you need to understand as much as you can about the psychology of the people who are to blame (i.e., the rapists) along with the social factors, etc., that increase the likelihood of rape. If a scientific study focuses on the psychology of rapists, this does not count as "failing to consider the victim." Rape is non-consensual sex, which is an example of violence. You will not help victims, or prevent future rapes, by pretending that "rape is not sex" from the rapist's perspective. The question we need to address is: How can we decrease the likilhood that men will use violence as a means of satisfying their sexual urges. Both sex and violence are rooted in human nature, so scientific (biological/neurological/sociological/psychological) studies that help us to understand human nature could be potentially helpful in minimizing the number of rapes.

[TamaraSavannah]

Originally Posted by soUlwounD

Anyone who is thinking rape is about sex has gotten wrong what sex is...

I probably should not get into this but given the way many of a society is oriented, rape can be a weapon to hurt, to destroy, perhaps even to achieve a soft kill.

Consider this situation: A family man and I are enemies and I want to hurt him really bad without killing him. If I kill him, his side will just bring in a permanent replacement. I want to make him walking wounded so he is a burden on his side. So I send someone over to rape his wife, perhaps his child.

Now he is angry perhaps to the point of blind fury so he doesn't thing straight, can't think on the matters he suppose to be thinking about. He is furious because I have taken something away from him. He is hurt and he will continue hurting because every time he sees his family, he knows that he has failed them, that he was not there to protect them.

Further, I may have obtained a secondary soft kill (assuming for moment, just running it out) because perhaps now other people in his unit, other husbands and fathers, are worried because if I could strike behind his lines against him, could not their families be struck as well? Are they focusing more on their job as they should or are they worried about their families instead?

Let's consider another scenario, say the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89...nique_massacre
École Polytechnique Massacre
but instead of a massacre, say it was a situation of a serial rapist. He hates women, doesn't like that they had advanced over them and he wants to hurt them, destroy their mental well being, take away their concept of self security. Socially, we defined rape over the centuries where we blame the victim so it is not an easy thing to walk away from. We are so trained by society that those conditions in the previous sentence, destroying mental well being, hurting people to the core, taking away their security, are really quite easy to achieve through rape. There will always be some arm chair quarterback who will say should have fought harder, should have screamed louder, that the victim really wanted it and if there are enough of the those quarterbacks, well, I think we all know about how powerful being tried by public opinion is.

Let's consider another scenario, say someone who rapes a child. What reason, other than that mentioned above, could there be for such an act? There can be at least two angles. The first is that for the immature in personalty rapist, the child is someone who is inferior to them. They are not more developed in personalty. This is a victim they believe they can have a relationship with, such as with what they can bring to the relationship (so to speak) to the fewer defenses the child has. There may be willing older women out there for the offender, perhaps even those who are obtainable, but such women would probably have the ability to easily see what a jerk (saying it nicely) the offender is.....and the offender would probably realize that as well. So instead they turn to the child, believing that the good feeling of esteem can be achieved that way.

Then again, however, there is angle two. Consider the person who is not able to achieve a good emotional feeling through creating so instead, they turn to destruction. What does a child have that someone might want to take away from them? Innocence especially since it is a quality that many of us as adults don't have. It might be such an impact when it is lost to a person and to take it from a child might be such an easy prize to such a person.

Now, A, B, and C. A: Does such an offender think in such detailed terms? To some degree, yes, such as picking the type of target and figuring out how to hurt others the most and if they don't think in those terms, then they may learn it by watching the "work" of others. I am very reluctant to point to a historical situation where indeed one could learn just how effective the situation was.

B: They might not think about other avenues in such attacks to such details, however, for it may be more of an emotional drive. What I have written above comes from my training of asking the question, "What motivated them to do so?".

C: Part of what I have written above has probably come from the research I have done over the years while other parts may be the analysis I have done, perhaps without testing, of this incident or that. I could be wrong, these scenarios are not meant to cover all situations, and there may be other devices at work.

LONG STORY SHORT.....there is so much more involved in rape than just sex.

[Led Zeppelin]

Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof

I recently came across a passage in a book, published in 2002, that made me wonder about our current views:

I believe that the rape-is-not-about-sex doctrine will go down in history as an example of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It is preposterous on the face of it, does not deserve its sanctity, is contradicted by a mass of evidence, and is getting in the way of the only morally relevant goal surrounding rape, the effort to stamp it out.
- Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (p. 362)

I think that, back in 2002, Pinker was essentially correct in this assessment. But I'm wondering: Have we, already as of 2016, reached this point of historical hindsight? Has academia and the general public pretty much gotten over this "extraordinary popular delusion"? Or are there still taboos surrounding this subject?

Just to be clear: Pinker was not denying that some rapes are all about power/control. Certainly you can find examples of mentally deranged men raping purely out of hatred for women and/or the need to assert power or control. But common sense suggests that some (probably most?) rapes are, indeed, about men using violence because they want sex and don't see any non-coercive way to get it. Obvious rape implies many failures: failures of self-control, imagination, intelligence, compassion, etc., and probably some failures of parenting and society to instill good values, etc. - but none of these failures imply that the rape was "not about sex."

Of course the larger context of Pinker's book is the idea of "the blank slate" - which is the larger picture he is really trying to argue against. He is arguing that children are born with at least some aspects of individual nature or human nature that parenting and social engineering generally won't be able to change. This notion of human nature, too, seems to be not so controversial as it was in the 80s and 90s when "the blank slate" was all the rage and sociobiology was seen as pure evil promoting genocide, etc.

Well, that whole doctrine was about one thing: Political control of the language. It was a feminist ploy from the more radical elements. They wanted to decouple rape from sex so that they could label all sorts of things that weren't remotely rape, as rape. For instance, "All Marriage is Rape" was a popular Left Wing mantra back in the 70s and 80s. The Left hates traditional relationships. This is part of the stratagem for undermining and destroying them.

[stan4]

Originally Posted by Meyerland

You make it sound like people just decide to rape. Like...I want it...I'm gonna rape this person.

Rapists already know they are going to rape. They actively seek out vulnerable people and actively choose to rape. It's not like they get sexually excited and just choose not to control themselves.

I get that this is in a philosophy forum, but you guys really need to talk with some women and men who are actual victims. Volunteering is fairly easy through many universities.

Men are raped a lot more than you think, and it's not roaming homosexual guys who are doing the majority of male on male rape. There are older women, children, animals, etc...that are raped because the rapists want to rape someone. The very act of rape is enticing to them.

This is about male on male rape, from Ohio University. Very enlightening on describing the perpetrators and their reasoning. This comes directly from the perpetrators themselves on WHY they rape. http://www.odh.ohio.gov/~/media/ODH/...dix182011.ashx

I'm thinking more like date rape than stranger rape.

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by TamaraSavannah

A: Does such an offender think in such detailed terms? To some degree, yes, such as picking the type of target and figuring out how to hurt others the most

Thanks for noticing the complexity of the situation. I'm going to use your remarks as a stepping stone to a few ideas:

I have no doubt that some rapists gain pleasure specifically from causing pain to others, but I would caution against thinking that all rapists are motivated in this way. There are many types of rapes and many types of rapists.

Speaking generally:

(1) Some people are simply incapable (or nearly incapable) of feeling empathy or compassion for other people.

(2) Some people are incapable (or nearly incapable) of feeling empathy or compassion during psychotic episodes, but during other periods they can feel empathy.

(3) Some people specifically feel pleasure from hurting others (or go through episodes of this).

(4) Some people feel empathy, but they are driven by compulsions to do things that they, in some sense, don't really "want" to do. They experience emotional conflict and regret, but they keep doing bad things anyway.

(5) Some people feel empathy, but they are extremely good at rationalizing their behavior in such a way that they delude themselves into thinking that they are not doing any serious harm.

All five of the personality traits listed above are inheritable. In fact, if someone has any or all of these traits, there is a very good chance that they inherited them. Not every person who inherits these genes goes into a life crime, but a substantial percentage of them do. An important question to ask is this: Why do some people who inherit these genes not become criminals? How is it that, for some people, these traits do not manifest, despite being genetically predisposed to them?

Any given rapist is very likely to exhibit one or more of these traits. Anyone who thinks that all rapists are incapable of feeling empathy, or thinks that all rapists are specifically aroused by causing pain, is oversimplifying in a frightfully unhelpful way.

As a society, there might not be much that we can do about types (1), (2), and (3) aside from some sort of brain surgery or genetic manipulation (which brings up potential "sci-fi horrors" and problems of civil liberties, etc.) There is also an option called "chemical castration" that might work (although there is a frightful history behind this method). Maybe someday we will figure out some effective therapeutic approaches, but at the moment we are at a loss.

With types (4) and (5) there might be things we could do. Someone earlier suggested that easy access to prostitution is correlated with a reduced rate of rape. Maybe that is something to consider. Maybe, as a society, we should promote something like a "sexual surrogate" form of therapy. Maybe we should be training prostitutes to be sex therapists? Perhaps that's a bit far-fetched, but the point is that we should be thinking outside the box. On the theme of "sci-fi" scenarios: We are quickly approaching a time when we will be building "sexy androids." I'm not sure that androids would be helpful here, but if/when we have them, we should certainly do some scientific studies to see what effects they have.

One thing we should certainly be doing is teaching self-control, mindfulness, etc. to children, and we should be watching out for kids who show sociopathic tendencies. (Yes, even fairly young children can show signs of the five personality traits listed above. These kids might benefit from specialize help, although, at the moment, I don't think we have any therapies that are proven to be successful.)

It is not likely that one solution will stop all rapes, but given that there are many types of rapes and many types of rapists, there may be many types of solutions that may, individually, help in small ways toward lowering the crime rate. I would say "Every little bit helps." But I doubt that we will come up with very many helpful ideas so long as we remain immersed in the idea that all rapes are "not about sex".

LONG STORY SHORT.....there is so much more involved in rape than just sex.

I absolutely totally agree.

[cb2008]

The question we need to address is: How can we decrease the likilhood that men will use violence as a means of satisfying their sexual urges. Both sex and violence are rooted in human nature, so scientific (biological/neurological/sociological/psychological) studies that help us to understand human nature could be potentially helpful in minimizing the number of rapes.

I think the "rape is not about sex, it is about power and violence" makes sense in the context of a society that thinks women invite rape by dressing this way or that, in other words blaming the victim and letting men go free, "boys will be boys."
no woman invites rape. nobody invite to be mugged and robbed. we don't look at the mugger's nature, we just jail him. no matter how much we "understand" why men mug, it has not stopped muggings. why is it any different when a woman is raped?
If it only to satisfy sexual urge why do men rape old women past the age of sexual attractiveness?
by saying rape is sex you are making the women and children who are raped somehow enablers. nobody thinks a robbed person as an enabler.

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by cb2008

...we don't look at the mugger's nature, we just jail him. no matter how much we "understand" why men mug, it has not stopped muggings. why is it any different when a woman is raped?

Actually, an increased scientific understanding of human nature could potentially reveal better ways to lower the rates of many different types of crimes.

If it only to satisfy sexual urge why do men rape old women past the age of sexual attractiveness?

I answered this in a previous post. Some men are aroused by old women. Also, it certainly could be the case that, statistically, rapes of old women are more likely to be primarily motivated by something other than sex. I don't know the statistics on this.

by saying rape is sex you are making the women and children who are raped somehow enablers. nobody thinks a robbed person as an enabler.

I don't understand this at all. How is a woman who is raped any more of an "enabler" than the victim of a mugging? A person has something of value, and a mugger uses violence to take it. A woman is attractive, and a rapist uses violence to satisfy his sexual urges. There are no "enablers" in either scenario.

Also: I don't say "rape is sex." I've stated numerous times that many instances of rape are, indeed, motivated by a desire to cause pain, exert control, take vengeance on women, etc. In these instances, sex is primarily a tool to achieve other ends. I've said that there are many types of rapists. Some rapists are driven by sexual urges, and some are driven primarily by other motives. I will say, however, that if "non-consensual sex" happens, then, yes, a form of sex did happen. But it is misleading to simply say "rape is sex." That's like saying "Armed robbery is a transfer of goods." Well, yes, armed robbery is a transfer of goods, but that misses the central meaning of the term "armed robbery."

BTW: I know that my posts tend to be long, and I can't blame anyone for not reading them. But here is a hint: I try to put key points in bold type. If you don't feel like reading the whole post, you can just read the bold type and get the key ideas.

[Jukesgrrl]

Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof

... I would say that any act that involves someone having an orgasm is, to some extent, "about sex" ...

The man with a stocking over his head who broke into my house and raped me didn't achieve orgasm. He tried long enough, in several positions, but he never ejaculated. He did, however, certainly seem to enjoy holding a knife to my throat and threatening to kill me. And the speed at which he conducted his business made me think he was rather practiced at the act of home invasion and rape. He was far more interested in me than in the valuables in my home.

[JrzDefector]

If it was purely about sex and getting off, the guy would just use his hand. At the core, an orgasm is an orgasm - they're pretty much interchangeable, even if the lead-up isn't. The fact that someone is forcing the participation of another human being suggests it's about having power over another person.