Differing degrees of rape?

[Mystical]

I just jumped in on this page, to this party. Don't accredit prior arguments to me, please. Also? It's rather dumb to think that a woman can't be apathetic towards a man accurately just because they're not the same sex as a man. All human beings have the same realm of emotions, and so do some more intelligent mammals as well.

[Losty]

Also, I don't know if I said anything like "ALL male rape victims are traumatized", but I don't feel that way.

I would say that all rape victims are not traumatized. I think the circumstances of the rape and the individual personality of the victim has a lot more to do with a persons response to rape than their gender. I think gender and social expectations of genders mostly only affect how a person claims to have been affected and not how they're truly affected. That's just my opinion though.

Hugs and love and rape threats suck. I am a glutton for misery that's why I posted in here. There can be no other reasoning.

[Brakeman]

If you didn't feel violated good for you. Doesn't mean that men don't feel violated by rape. Had I never been through the things I've been through, I probably wouldn't have felt violated in your situation either. ..

Ignoring the surely unintended implication that I am not a "real" man or a "normal" man because I didn't feel violated, I wanted to correct it, that, even I felt violated. I just wasn't traumatized. I wasn't scarred or damaged. Waking up to a BJ when your girlfriend didn't stay over is jarring like hitting a wall.

This rape talk is emotionally exhausting to me so, I'd like to call a truce. I started out just trying to simply answer your questions and then I let my emotions get the best of me. Sorry.

I appreciate your participation and your insights. I also apologize for getting touchy about what I interpreted as "woman-'splaining."

I am very compassionate to anyone getting hurt. I feel that society is supposed to protect it's members from unjust injury and pain. It is my compassion that brings me to the point that there are instances where some may get caught in the sharp jaws of sexual laws that were written for more serious crimes. I think intent does play a part. I'm glad that I lived in a time where the college girl that jumped me didn't get destroyed for her attack. She did something wrong, and I hope she never did that again, but I have compassion on her as an individual. I care what happened to her and I care what might happen to a girl like her in the future.

I am also a fervent gender equality believer. I would think that I would feel the same if the gender roles reversed but I'm having a real problem imagining I would because I don't think there are many women that would just "shake off" a sexual attack even if they thought it was probably just a mistake of identity or a chemically altered brain.

That's where I think I must ask a woman if she could fathom such instances to be gender equal or not. If a man in a college dorm party setting woke up a woman by licking her, and assuming he was drunk and maybe thinking it was someone else, is it plausible that a girl would react as I did or implausible?

[Jenny A]

I don't think it much matters what a particular victim of rape feels when determining what the law should be. The fact that it's traumatizing to many is sufficient. Most crimes work that way.

For example if you threaten to punch someone in the face and act like you mean it , it's assault. Actually hit him and you have a battery.* Now, there are people, most of them men, who like a good bar fight or a street brawl or simply think responding to threats with violence is part of being a man. Generally they don't ask each other permission first. It's still battery. The only question is whether they'll press charges. So you want to get into bar fights, you take your chances on the battery charges.

Similarly, proprietors of stores react differently to petty theft, though I'm sure none of them actually like it. So you shop lift and you take your chances on the results.

You rape a woman or a man and they don't much mind, or as Brakemen says, just find it icky, they can decide not to press charges. But if you rape someone you take your chances on their reaction.

*Assuming of course that you don't have permission as in a boxing match, etc.

[Anomalocaris]

It does matter if the emotional effect upon the victim has an impact on the decision to press charges or support the pressing of charges.

If the victim was unwilling at the time of the act, but subsequently thought it wasn't bad and wouldn't mind repeating the experience, it was most definitely still rape, because ex post consent is no consent at all, and the perpetrator still deserves the same punishment as any other acts of rape. but pragmatically it would be difficult to make rape charge stick if ex post the victim declined the press charges.

The reverse is if the victim is unwilling at the time of the act, but subsequently thought pressing charges would be too ambarassing, or would open the credible possibility of serious retaliation, it would also be difficult to make the rape charge stick, regardless of what the law says.

[Jenny A]

It does matter if the emotional effect upon the victim has an impact on the decision to press charges or support the pressing of charges.

If the victim was unwilling at the time of the act, but subsequently thought it wasn't bad and wouldn't mind repeating the experience, it was most definitely still rape, because ex post consent is no consent at all, and the perpetrator still deserves the same punishment as any other acts of rape. but pragmatically it would be difficult to make rape charge stick if ex post the victim declined the press charges.

The reverse is if the victim is unwilling at the time of the act, but subsequently thought pressing charges would be too ambarassing, or would open the credible possibility of serious retaliation, it would also be difficult to make the rape charge stick, regardless of what the law says.

If rape is an awful enough crime to deserve a lengthy prison sentence (and I think it is), then the law should (and is most places does) provide a lengthy sentence. You may think all rapes should be prosecuted to the fullest, but that will never happen because, whatever the law is, victims will to some extent determine how it is enforced. That is my point. And it's true of most crimes because the victim is usually necessary to prosecution.

Where we differ is in how we feel about the victim's decision not to prosecute. I think, as long as that decision is not made out of fear, that it's a good thing be it a fist fight, rape, stealing a package of gum, or embezzlement. If a man has sex with a woman before getting permission and she decides it a good thing, the law has no business between them unless she's a child or not able to give consent for some other reason. I don't believe in victimless crimes, and a person who does not feel victimized, is not a victim in my view.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think there's a biological function at play here. A woman might ovulate 450 times in her life (12 times a year times 37 years, perhaps long but trying to be fair). A man produces tens of millions of sperm per day.

Further, a woman has to carry the results of a rape pregnancy at least a short time, and in the days before modern health care, she either carried to term, or had an unsupervised abortion. Both options carried serious risks for the woman, and even surviving childbirth, the woman then had a massive drain on her resources without the concomitant of a mate helping to procure food, clothing, and shelter.

I think men write off being sexually used, or violated, because biologically, the penalty is not nearly so heavy for us.

That may well be. But the evolutionary response is visceral whether there is a realistic fear of pregnancy or not.

Indeed, and sorry I was unclear on that point. The actual possibility of pregnancy is not the driving force behind the violational feelings women have about the matter; simply that such feelings perhaps have genetic roots which can be very hard to escape.

Also, I should point out that I have zero evidence for this train of thought, and suggest it only as a discussion point, not a fact.

I used to denigrate EP, thinking it a pseudoscience of just-so stories, but there are certain instances where it seems reasonable to consider the possibility of natural selection occurring in a psychological context as well. I mean, we're fairly sure sexual selection (a la peacocks or other strongly dimorphic species) exists, and it seems to me that sexual selection has a psychological aspect to it as well.

So I'm not so dead-set against evolutionary psychology as I was, say, fifteen years ago.

[Jenny A]

Nothing to be sorry for Thump.

It is a visceral reaction. And it probably does have evolutionary roots. And in general women are pickier about sex partners than men. I'm sure our lower possible fertility rate has much to do with that.

[TheGulegon]

Whether married or not if either party doesn't want it, and gets it forced on them anyway, it's rape! That's it! Jail time!

No bearing on the discussion...
You ladies that get all dressed up sexy only to find out your man is too damn tired, need to stop giving looks that imply there's something utterly horribly wrong with him No means no

[The Valkyrie]

Whether married or not if either party doesn't want it, and gets it forced on them anyway, it's rape! That's it! Jail time!

No bearing on the discussion...
You ladies that get all dressed up sexy only to find out your man is too damn tired, need to stop giving looks that imply there's something utterly horribly wrong with him No means no

That's why we need a BOB.

Battery
Operated
Boyfriend