quizzical pussy

I think it’s just a particularly poorly-thought-through way of saying “rape is really really REALLY SUPER REALLY bad.”

But if we’re playing “would you rather,” I’ll take option C (“none of the above”), thank you very much.

Two dollars!!!

There’s a lot more to it, and none of it is “victim better off dead”.

First, there’s the impact on society. The existence of murder doesn’t shape human interactions the way the existence of rape does. Everyone in society is impacted by it in ways they have to keep in front of them all the time, in almost every interaction between genders. In the case of men that impact shapes our interactions in ways I think some of us resent even more than women resent it. The reason it produces such seething hatred for rapists in some men is that men are suspected, and frequently actually blamed, as a class. All too frequently a rape victim is blamed and that’s very bad; I’ve yet to hear women as a class blamed. Men get blamed as a class, often:
Yes, there should be more “blame” placed on men. While not every man is a “potential perp”, there are a LOT of ways “non-perps” condone and encourage the offenders.
The key to preventing rape is, you know, for dudes to stop raping.
It’s not just a poorly-thought-through way of saying “rape is really really REALLY SUPER REALLY bad.”, it’s a reaction of “I’VE SPENT MY ENTIRE LIFE BEING SUSPECTED AND BLAMED BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID!”

Second, there’s a philosophy or maybe psychology of crime reason. The horror of a crime is not determined solely by the harm to the victim. If a perp kills someone, or if he kills someone then rapes the corpse, the victim is not more harmed in the second case, but there’s a lot more horror. Also motive comes into it. People find it less horrifying when someone poisons their rival to the inheritance of a fortune in an Agatha Christie mystery than when someone clubs someone over the back of the head to steal their sneakers. Some people have a particular horror of rape because so much is being taken for so little. Another reason is that in some cases the victim’s real psychological agony is stimulating to the perpetrator; some of us find that unspeakably revolting.

@quizzical pussy

I think when people say “a murder victim’s suffering is over, while a rape victim has a whole lifetime to deal with what happened.” that they are probably mostly fishing for an on-the-spot-justification for the hatred they feel; especially when they’re men suddenly having to explain the emotion they imagined as being feminist-blessed to a woman who thinks it’s inordinate. I don’t think it’s thought-out because it just doesn’t stand up to examination for an instant, as you pointed out. Maybe I’m optimistic, but I don’t really buy the idea that people are actually going around saying, in effect, victims are better off dead. Especially when there are other reasons to be horrified that aren’t that obvious to the non-introspective horrified person; most people are pretty bad at telling you why they feel a certain way.

“So yeah, I think the way these people perceive the victim’s experience actually has a lot to do with it.” I think you’re totally right there; they perceive rape as being worse than they can imagine, but they think they can imagine murder. Sometimes the hero dies, every man has thought about that.

Just stumbled across this, thought I’d chime in. Really, I could write a whole blog entry myself on this matter.

While I somewhat agree with the reasoning of “a murder victim’s suffering is over, while a rape victim has a whole lifetime to deal with what happened,” as you put it, even though it may be ill-conceived, I also have met rape victims who have made remarkable recovery and are perfectly happy. However, while the crimes may be different, I believe the punishment should be the same, for two main reasons. Firstly, that either one “destroys the potential that a life once had” (this makes me sound like I’m also against abortion, but I do not consider a lump of indistinct cells to be a living individual, people are free to do with them what they will). Even though rape victims are alive, they have been artificially deprived of happiness, hindered in their societal functionality, experience immense psychological pain, and require so much of therapy, and they did not ask for any of it. However, the second and slightly more important reason is that, in a socially developed world, the understanding that rape and murder are both terrible and unforgivable acts of destruction should be taken for granted; i.e. it is not something that has to be given particular explanation to any functioning individual, we understand we are not supposed to do it from an early age, and we have accepted this for thousands of years (At least it’s been written down, even if we weren’t good at adhering to it). We’ve only, over time, begun to enforce it more vigorously.

I think I might lose myself here. To get to the point, you have to be a remarkably fucked up person to either murder or rape. Since murderers and rapists tend to not be the most useful people in any society, I don’t agree spending money just to keep them alive in confinement. These are the only times when I feel the death penalty is worth considering. Whether or not the crimes are equally bad I cannot say, as I’ve never been a victim of either; nor can we ask a victim of both which one they thought was worse. Regardless, I feel that the punishment for either is to just remove the perpetrator altogether. Rape and murder are not things you do by accident; a rapist or a murderer is fully aware that what they’re doing is wrong unless a decent argument regarding their sanity (or lack there of) can be made.

I realize I may be applying an excessive amount of logic to something that isn’t very logical. I also realize that some would perceive hypocrisy in my position of condemning murder but supporting the death penalty, but that’s an entirely different discussion and this comment is long enough.

On the victim’s side – I definitely agree with you. I’d much rather have option b. (or option c… none of the above).

But on the perpetrators side the two are pretty much the same. It’s the same attitude that your life/right to your own body doesn’t take precedence over what I want right now. It seems similar.

I *fear* rape a lot more than I fear murder, and it took me a while to figure out that it was actually because rape seemed more likely than murder to happen to me, not because rape was the worse of the two. I’d probably rather be raped and live than get killed, but rape is the one I have nightmares about.

I find that we perpetuate the victimization a lot, with rape.
If you get smashed in the mouth, it hurts. It’s offensive. There’s bound to be some psychological connations to it, especially if you were completely without recourse, and were left bleeding and hurt.
But no one expects you to define yourself by that mouth-smacking, after that.

As a cop, I run across the overreaction to sexual assault, quite a bit. I once investigated a case where a 9 year old felt up a 5 year old playmate. He really reached into her vagina and played around there, while she protested that she would like to do something else. She didn’t want to have her genitals explored. Her mother caught them, and Lost. Her. Mind. Wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. Sobbing and hugging of the daughter went on. Calls went out to the community. She called her best friend (the boy’s mother) and told her that the little pervert was never allowed within her sight, EVAR! The grandparents came to town and bustled over the little girl, who’s beginning by this point to decide that apparently, she’s caught a terrible illness, and is Going To Die. Why else would everyone be so sad for her? The Pastor is called. Counseling is promised.

Does anyone think that maybe the reaction created more victimization than the actual act?

Now, I realize that rape of an adult is different than rape of a child, but still, the automatic expectation of life-altering trauma is similar.

You had another Tuesday Confession in which a gal wrote in about how her boyfriend, with whom she was in bed with naked, pushed his penis into her when she had just said, “No.” It’s wrong to do that, I agree. But in my black heart I can’t equate that to the rape of a stranger or non-sexual partner forcing his way into her. And I SURE AS HELL don’t find it worse than murder.

Your point is well made.

Urk. “connotations.”

And the pic is great. “He put hees testicles over ov-er me!”