Rape is different

Why is “rape” different?

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What makes rape different from other crimes? Why is it that we seem to have a greater horror of rape than we do of murder? And is this attitude towards it even rational?

I’ve got a friened whose daughter was murdered. NO sexual activity took place and the guy was eventually caught and sent to prison. She actually said to me that would RATHER her daughter HAD been raped but NOT murdered.

I think that’s a completely RATIONAL attitude. Like me, she thinks her daughter’s murderer OUGHT to have been executed instead of sent to jaia. She also thinks that rape is NOT as serious a crime as murder.

That doesn’t mean that I think it’s a trivial matter. Nor does it mean I don’t CARE about women (or men) who get raped. Christ, I’ve BEEN raped myself so I’m not exactly coaching from the sidelines!

Anywya, let’s look at what it IS that seems to make rape a crime of particular horror to so many people. In the first place, IMO, it’s the voyeur in us. It gives a sort of prurient, salacious “edge” to the crime that you don’t get with most offences. Who gets turned on by reading about a Mafia hitman shooting dead a rival mobster? But when a girl gets raped…

Then there’s the frisson of fear. Reading about a rape gives you that shivering feeling and raises your goose pimples (goose bumps). Fear is a huge sexual turn-on for many people.

Then there’s the feeling of helplessness. The woman lost her power to resist and was forced to submit to the man. That’s a huge turn-on as well for many of us.

You’ve also got the appeal of violence. Although MOST rapes AREN’T violent (mine was) when you read a case that ISN’T like that you’re almost disappointed. Violence can also be a huge turn-on.

Now let’s look at other ways in which rape is “special.” You DON’T ask a bank manager if he WANTED to be robbed (unless you’re a cop who thinks he was in on the heist and looking for a piece of the action). You DON’T ask someone who’s been mugged in the street whether they WANTED to be mugged or they really WANTED to hand over their money. You DON’T ask a victim of a violent assault if they WANTED to be beaten up.

Why then do we ask a woman who says she’s been raped if she DID enjoy it, want it, ask for it, contribute to it by her own behaviour, or even INCITE it? Why do we ask these questions about rape and NOT about other types of crime?

The answer IMO is a complex mix of factors. In the first place (I’m quoting British figures here) only 8% of rape claims involve strangers. The other 92% involve husbands, boyfrieneds and friends. It’s more difficult to persuade people (rightly or wrongly) that it WAS rape when there were already clear bonds of mutual AFFECTION between the two parties.

Secondly, there’s IMO an understandable attitude that the woman is trying to evade and sort of responsibility for her actions. Why SHOULD she think she can dress like a slut, talk dirty, get drunk, parade about like a whore and yet NOT take any responsibility for the CONSEQUENCES of her actions if it goes pear-shaped? A girl like that ISN’T a VICTIM of rape IMO; she’s either a slapper who WAS asking for it and got what she REALLY wanted in a guilt-free way or else she was a prick-teaser who tried it on with the wrong bloke and came unstuck.

Let’s be honest here. A heterosexual man and woman are at some point BOTH going to want to have sex, even if NOT with each other. And being a prick-teaser is actually a form of BULLYING by the girl. She’s saying, I know you want me but you can’t have me and I’m gonna rub it in your face that you can’t. Most blokes just ignore that sort of thing but SOME get so mad that they decide to punish the girl for her behaviour by raping her.

What happens in those cases is very similar to what happens when a victim of bullying can’t take any more and snaps. (I speak from experience on that one; after a year of being bullied at school I snapped and nearly killed the bully. It took six kids and three teachers to pull me off of her else I’d have killed her!). Just like a victim of bullying can go over the top and be more violent than the original bully was, so a victim of prick-teasing can snap, go over the top and rape the girl.

So whose fault is it then? It’s obviously the bully’s fault if he or she gets done over by their victim.

In the same way, it’s the fault of the prick-teaser if she does get raped. Without the initial bullying, the victim would never have snapped. Without the prick-teaser, the girl would never have got raped.

If she’d acted decently and not led the bloke on nothing would have happend. Slo, whatever way you look at it, it’s her fault she got raped. She bullied the bloke and he snapped. You could almost look on it as an act of self-defence!

I know a lot of peoople are going to find what I’ve just said (at best) sad, at worst sick and disgusting.

Even as I write these words myself I can hardly believe how they sound.

I’m now going to talk about the cases where it clearly is the case that the woman dressed decently, spoke well, didn’t behave like a tart and wasn’t drunk or high on drugs.

How do we explain them? In the first place, 9 times our of 10 they will be attractive women of child-bearing age and will be far more likely to experience rape as a traumatic experience than older and less attractive women.

I remember one of the elderly victims of a rapist in London being interviewed about her experience (she was in her 80s) and she was actually giggling as she described her rape.

Those cases, though, are a minority of rapes and (for some obscure reason) almost always involve black men. It’s very unusual for a white male to rape an elderly woman. (Not that most blacks do it either, of course!)

Genuine rape cases, to judge from the fact that MOST complaints brought to the police are thrown out after further investigation or else withdrawn by the woman herself), are a tiny proportion or REPORTED rapes.

In 95%of the cases when rape claims DO come to court, the defendant is found NOT GUILTY.

DNA evidence has also exonerated hundreds of men who were WRONGLY convicted by showing that it was IMPOSSIBLE for them to have committed the rape in the first place.

Whatever way you look at it, that means that the MAJORITY of rape accusations are FALSE – either through conscious and deliberate LYING or else through misunderstanding.

Is it worth spending so much time, money, energy and resources into pursuing such a rare crime?

Just playing Devil’s Advocate again LOL!

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