In Interviews With 122 Rapists, Student Pursues Not-So-Simple Question: Why?

[El]

I honestly wonder what Al's reaction to this article would be if someone he hadn't shitlisted as too liberal/SJW/feminist/whatevs had posted it, or if I'd posted it without stating my opinion about the importance of researching this.

The weird thing to me is I feel like he's falling more on the angry-hysterical-feminist side of this than I am, which isn't what I'd have predicted.

[Lestat]

Rape is a highly emotionally charged topic, for pretty much anybody except the unrepentent stone cold rapist type, I presume, not being one I cannot comment upon what goes on inside my head when I rape someone, because I don't and never will, of course, but it is the type of thing which easily arouses both a righteous anger and a visceral disgust in decent, normally functioning human beings, especially an example of a violent,  brutal gang-rape. I do not pretend to be able to speak for women regarding their inner emotional processes, (I can guess, in the case of those who have been raped, but only approximate, without being told firsthand, of course) but of those who have not, but read the article, there is perhaps one factor which I could forsee differing in the case of men, and women.

We have to deal (on being a third party hearing of an attack in either a man or woman's case, without directly being involved) with the revulsion that something that at least looked, walked, dressed and talked like an example of the species, so to speak, as us, did such a thing. Perhaps an added amount of emotional response could be stimulated via the 'uncanny valley' effect. Something that looks just like a man, at all other times, but which is not, and which is as close to pure evil as your going to get. (I'll say right now about cultural conditioning and my stance on it-yes it exists, and where resistance to change occurs it must simultaneously have those outside the culture attempt to educate it out, and where this is met with frank refusal to change then force should, IMO be used to bring about an end to it. It might not be possible to drag a group with the morals of a Homo Erectus out of the lithic era, but in such a case, if they go around raping women, then nevertheless, cultural values can go to hell, beat it out of them if you have to)

Which is exactly an example of what I was trying to speak of, regarding the uncanny valley effect. Similar to, perhaps the androcentric witch-burnings of the middle ages. Women being (in this case falsely, due to religiose superstition) regarded as being not-woman, that which walks in the skin of a woman, and speaks, eats, drinks, breathes like a woman, but which in their 'reality' when seen in a cultural milleau as being a possible entity, in those times, as a living embodiment of the devil and hellfire, wrapped in a female-shaped package, it triggered off a shitstorm, a presumably equally visceral loathing and hatred, with consequent violent effects.

(no part of this, btw, is intended to imply that a woman would or should feel less revulsion about a rapist, rather, its my hypothesis that there may be some manner of a qualitative difference in the nature of it, for a woman, the hostile, evil piece of shit rapist is just that, a noxious piece of evil shit, but the difference I hypothesize between a male and female perception of the same thing (the rapist/rapists) is that for a female, the actor (rapist/s) are 'other' but are known 'other', a knowable quantity (male, in the context of un-female, distinct, and at least identifiable as POTENTIAL threats, whereas a man sees a 'man', who is a rapist, and there is also that element of a viper in one's own nest (the nest, being an analogy for maleness, being a member of the same group as has such filth sneaking  and skulking around within, looking like real men, like man, but not man and unidentifiable as not-man), having all the same body parts and physical makeup as real, male people, whereas for a female, the difference is quite obvious, of course, and with female rapists being much less likely, there is the fellow female segment of the populace at large who is largely safe to assign the category of non-rapist. You  at least KNOW someone has a  dick and a Y chromosome.

(and no, to both the men and women here, I am not in any way trying to portray all men as in actuality, potential rapists, most, hopefully, don't have it in them. Rather, I am attempting to dissect qualitative differences in the motivations for, and type of hate that such trash so rightfully receive.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

[Pyraxis]

Actually, that's an interesting point to compare it to witch trials in that way. Both are movements of intense cultural hatred that provoke(d) a visceral reaction of disgust in the people calling them out - but the modern conclusions strikingly different.  The witches' accusation now being judged as obviously false due to superstition. It's hard to imagine that two hundred years from now, people would be exonerating rapists in the same way as they do witches now. Still possible, maybe. Also makes me wonder whether any of those witches had committed crimes - maybe not of the spellcasting and cursing sort, but if the community dislike was ever justified or whether it was all mob nonsense.

[Calandale]

What MIGHT be possible is to stop differentiating rape from other violent assaults.


Taking the sexual weight out of the equation.

[Al Swearegen]

I honestly wonder what Al's reaction to this article would be if someone he hadn't shitlisted as too liberal/SJW/feminist/whatevs had posted it, or if I'd posted it without stating my opinion about the importance of researching this.

The weird thing to me is I feel like he's falling more on the angry-hysterical-feminist side of this than I am, which isn't what I'd have predicted.

Why would you imagine that? No, honestly El? Do you imagine my stance on rapists or a particular rapist would be softer if told by someone else? Really? On what basis? How would it change? How shy hae I ever ben on expressing an unpopular opinion?

Are you being honest, or are you being completely full of shit, for some reason?

I am falling more on the angry Feminist side of this? How so?
Getting men and women responsible for their own agency is a very traditional response and not at all Feminist.
So again, are you full of shit again, or.....are you full of shit?

Curious what your own assessment is?

[Jack]

What MIGHT be possible is to stop differentiating rape from other violent assaults.


Taking the sexual weight out of the equation.

Reflex was to disagree, but unable to come up with a decent argument. The reflex could be because it suggests challenging the long established laws and mindset of my own society, rather than critiquing some other culture; or a natural reflex to disagree. Either way, good call.

[El]

What MIGHT be possible is to stop differentiating rape from other violent assaults.


Taking the sexual weight out of the equation.

In examining the psychology of sexual vs. nonsexual assaults, or in prosecuting them?  Because I wouldn't assume the psychology was the same (though, I suppose, that's something to research, if it hasn't been yet).

[Jack]

What MIGHT be possible is to stop differentiating rape from other violent assaults.


Taking the sexual weight out of the equation.

In examining the psychology of sexual vs. nonsexual assaults, or in prosecuting them?  Because I wouldn't assume the psychology was the same (though, I suppose, that's something to research, if it hasn't been yet).

Have understood the accepted psychology of sexual assault isn't about sex, but rather power and dominance.

[Lestat]

Indeed, jack. And one would assume in some cases of extreme misogyny, in sleazebags like those socalled 'men' who just look at it as 'pussy is just fucking property', could be born out of their contempt for women. Fucking disgusting trash types that look at women as little more than conveniently shaped, moving pieces of meat.

In prosecuting them, certainly, just lock the bastards up,and I've really no sympathy should a rapist get some inside justice meted out to them, so to speak. But in attempting to prevent future rapes by as-yet-free people with the potential to rape, but who have not done so, IMO it is important to understand the psychology as efficiently as possible. It is worth it if even one rape is prevented by such efforts.

[Calandale]

What MIGHT be possible is to stop differentiating rape from other violent assaults.


Taking the sexual weight out of the equation.

In examining the psychology of sexual vs. nonsexual assaults, or in prosecuting them?  Because I wouldn't assume the psychology was the same (though, I suppose, that's something to research, if it hasn't been yet).

The former, for the most part - though obviously, without all the pitchfork waving and emotional trauma to the victim
(compared to other forms of assault), the law would likely change too.


I remember a story about a female pilot (might even be Tammy Duckworth) who was shot down, badly
injured, and then proceeded to be gang raped. She recalled thinking something along the lines of, "and
this is supposed to injure me more somehow," so I think we're progressing to a more rational view - one
which incidentally should help reduce the amount of rape, if it no longer has a special connotation.

In prosecuting them, certainly, just lock the bastards up,and I've really no sympathy should a rapist get some inside justice meted out to them, so to speak. But in attempting to prevent future rapes by as-yet-free people with the potential to rape, but who have not done so, IMO it is important to understand the psychology as efficiently as possible. It is worth it if even one rape is prevented by such efforts.

Of course, there are probably more regressives than rationalists out there....

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

What MIGHT be possible is to stop differentiating rape from other violent assaults.


Taking the sexual weight out of the equation.

In examining the psychology of sexual vs. nonsexual assaults, or in prosecuting them?  Because I wouldn't assume the psychology was the same (though, I suppose, that's something to research, if it hasn't been yet).

The former, for the most part - though obviously, without all the pitchfork waving and emotional trauma to the victim
(compared to other forms of assault), the law would likely change too.


I remember a story about a female pilot (might even be Tammy Duckworth) who was shot down, badly
injured, and then proceeded to be gang raped. She recalled thinking something along the lines of, "and
this is supposed to injure me more somehow," so I think we're progressing to a more rational view - one
which incidentally should help reduce the amount of rape, if it no longer has a special connotation.

In prosecuting them, certainly, just lock the bastards up,and I've really no sympathy should a rapist get some inside justice meted out to them, so to speak. But in attempting to prevent future rapes by as-yet-free people with the potential to rape, but who have not done so, IMO it is important to understand the psychology as efficiently as possible. It is worth it if even one rape is prevented by such efforts.

Of course, there are probably more regressives than rationalists out there....

There are a lot of differences between rape and other forms of assault.

Generally with assault the severity of assault is determined by the extent of physical injury. A woman who has been raped may not be physically injured.

Sexual intercourse is an act that takes place between consenting adults on a fairly regular basis (unless you're me). What makes it rape is lack of consent. This is very different from assault, where if someone is beaten and physically injured the issue of consent is effectively irrelevant except in edge cases.

How would treating rape like any other form of assault reduce the incidence of rape? I can see how it might reduce the incidence of provable rape. Can you expand? I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm actually very interested in your point of view.

The motivations and effects of rape are very different from other forms of assault.

If you meet a woman and put your hand around her arm without consent, it's usually not a big deal. If you put your hand on her shoulder without consent, similar. If you put your hand on her butt or her breast or her upper thigh without consent, she would have every right to feel violated, and you're at serious risk of being charged with sexual assault, even though no injury has occurred. There is an element of very personal violation involved with sexual assault.

[El]

What MIGHT be possible is to stop differentiating rape from other violent assaults.


Taking the sexual weight out of the equation.

In examining the psychology of sexual vs. nonsexual assaults, or in prosecuting them?  Because I wouldn't assume the psychology was the same (though, I suppose, that's something to research, if it hasn't been yet).

Have understood the accepted psychology of sexual assault isn't about sex, but rather power and dominance.

I think it's still also about sex, at least in a lot of cases.

[Walkie]

Can't quote chapter and verse (and no time to look this up at present) but I recall (from past study) that aggression and sex  are closely related, neurologically , in males; therefore you can't draw a clear line between rape and violent assault; and motivationally speaking rape and other violent assaults are often identical, as pointed out.   However, it also follows that you can't draw a clear line betweeen normal sex and aggression; and certainly the  aspect  of domination  is present, and enjoyable to both sexes; witness the enormous popularity of BDSM!

This all makes rape uniquely tricky to define and differentiate.  As was pointed out, the issue of consent is crucial, wheras it just doesn't come into other violent assaults; it's assumed that the victim did not consent...oh! unless they get a sexual; kick out of being assalted  , of course. (We surely all know that quote  a lot of people do? i'm pretty sure some of em have posted on this site)

So, no, you can't just lump rape in with other violent assaults , neither psychologically nor legally.   That issue of consent is way too important.

What's more, as Silly Walks pointed out , the rape victim might not be physically injured, just psychologically traumatised.  Indeed, the kind of detachment displayed by that pilot Cal cited is unusual (and interesting! Was that detachment due to ingrainedl factors like  personality and sexual mores? or was it more the result of the situation she was in? I suspect the latter. I suspect she was so taumatised already that she slipped into a state of dissociation )  And let's not forget the other possible serious  repercussions of rape that don't occur with other violent attacks: unwanted pregnancy; veneral disease; social stigma. Somebody can quite literally have their life ruined by rape, even disregarding any physical and psychological injury.

So, from the victim's POV, rape is usually much more than merely  a physical assault.  And rapists often do understand that. eg in rape associated with acts of war,  the intention to infect the victim with HIV has sometimes beena major  part of the rapist's motivation.

It's altogether likely that that some rapists don't understand the psychological effects of what they've done.  Some obviously wouldn't care, even if they did. Others might, if only  the prevailing culture taught them to regard women as human beings... and taught them something about female sexuality!

It's said that , for a man, sex is a meaningless act  on a par with blowing his nose; wheras for a woman it's a deeply intimate act. Well, I don't like to proapagate sexual steotypes ( I know people of both sexes who would disagree vehemently with that sterotype as applied to themselves)  but there is a lot of trurth in that one.  And it's not  hard to see that if the man happened to fit that stereotype, he woulld not understand that the woman felt violated by that act, not even if he empathised with her as an equal  human being. His remorse (if he felt any ) would focus instead on any damage he night have done to the woman's reputation and prosp[ects of marriage (like the child-rapist in that study) . and if the victim was an adult, and no physical damage  was done, it might be genuinely hard for hiim to see the harm in i.

Let's resurrect Cal's obnoxious phrase "stealing pussy" . Yeah, some men real;y do see rape in such simplistic terms,; they've simply  taken something without consent, and that's  no worse than any other acrt of petty theft. Indeed it's less of a crime because the victim still gets to keep the thing that was stolen, don't they? Then, consider the case of a prostitute who has her pussy up for barter anyway (or some girl who dresses like a prositute) and...yeah I can surely see the harm in it, but I can also quite easily imagine how some men  might fail to see the harm in it , especially given that sexual desire tends to interfere with people's judgement . doesn't it? (to put it mildly) .

Those would the men who might benefit from education.  But I don't just mean "Telling him it's wrong" (Al) . I mean making him understand the harm in it; giving him the wherewithal to be able to see it from the victim's point-of-view. To do that, you might even  have to go so far as to challenge societal norms.  Not an easy task at all.

[Al Swearegen]

Except, of course, that only women see sex as a meaningless at. Not all women but just in general. Women generally just throw sex around like party favours, with no thought to consequence. Throwing booty around left and right.

Sounds pretty bad doesn't it? But honestly no more right nor honest than what you just said about guys, right?

I guess the thrust of the argument is that men do not see sex in non-violent terms and/or they are too blinded by their own primal lust to see much less care for how women they are having sex with have done so willingly and consensually. Much in the way that when they torture animals or rip arms off babies they are blinded by any pain or distress they inflict. Stupid men need education so they can say "Oh....I guet it now, torturing puppies is bad, ripping arms off babies is bad and raping women is bad. Silly me, how did these things evade my conscience for so long. Thank God for education"

I just do not agree with your assessment.

[Walkie]

Sounds pretty bad doesn't it? But honestly no more right nor honest than what you just said about guys, right?

That's actually been said to me by several guys. Nearly all my friends have been guys, so I get to hear the male perspective more often than the female perspective

Now, it seemed to me, first time I heard it.  to me that if a guy believes that , then it must be true of that particular guy at the very least.  Eventually, after hearing several guys say the same (as well as several other guys making it clear that they were an exception to that rule) I concluded that it must be true of rather  a lot of guys.  Hence my declaration that there's a lot of truth in that stereotype-- to my own annoyance , because  I don't like sterotypes, and I surely don't want to tar all men with the same brush (if it is tarring).  But having finally accepted that, I've thought about it further, and read further, bearing that in mind all the time, and it does help to make sense of several  things.

I should think there's some reserach to back that up. Why don't you check that, Al?. (It might back you up instead),

But I don't see that  you've put anything like the lkind of effort I've put into trying to understand these thingss. You just have a knee-jerk judgmental reaction , call it an "opinion" and project  ugly motivations  people with different opinions -again without putting any effort into understanding where they're really coming from.  Just skim-read and judge.

Who is supposed to be being dishonest here, btw? Me, or the guys who said that? And what the heck would they gain by misrepresenting themelves like that? None of them were rapists.  They weren't making excuses for anything, just discussing their attitudes.   And it doesn't exactly cast them in a positive light.

Oh! you must mean that it's me being dishonest. But that still doesn't make any sense to me.

FYI, my opinions are not static , because I'm always adjusting them in the light of further information, but thise that continue to make sense, no matter how much i turn them around and look at the question from different angles, in different lights, those ones tend to stick.

Also, FYI, I'm intersted enough in the male perspective and sympathetic enough towards men, in genearal, to have read psychology books with tites like like "Healing the Male Psyche" . That particular  one made a big impression on me, because , until I read that specific book m  thought about what the author was saying, and also thought about how rthat might apply to my friends, I didn't really believe there were any significant differences between male psyche and the and female psyche. Nnor did I believethat my own psyche was especially female in any case. I didn't want to believe it, because I so much wish we all drop this male-female shit and just be people, FFS.  (Oh !and also I had a Negative Mother Complex, as a  result of a shit relationship with my Mum. As might easily be guessed  from my preceding statements) )

That book deepened my understanding of human beings, because it confronted me with some significant factors I was missing, when I was looking at other people. Things I was missing because it didn't suit me  to grasp  them

That's not where you think I'm coming from at all is it? And I feel pretty damned offended when somebody like you comes along and puts down my POV  with some emotionally -driven, off-the-cuff opinion which isn't open to change in the least (so far as I can see)  whilst judging me as "dishonest" or whatever,  just because it doesn't suit you to believe that an intelligent and kindly motivately person could honestly hold a different opinion from yours.

Well, I also find it hard to understand how an intelligent guy can hold some of the opinions you do. But I do actually stuggle to understand that. I don't just dismiss you as a "liar" . My favourite theories on that front  are  that you can't be arsed with applying your intelligence to these matters; and/or it's all about ego-defence, really.  In this instance, if you put a rapist down as a Monster , and won;'t admit to any kind of point  of commonality , that proves to the world and -more importantly- to yourself that you're not a monster, doesn't it?

That proves nothing to me, though, because I personally believe that the monsters within us are more relevant than the monsters on the outside, and we've no hope of taming them, and preventing them from going on the rampage  if we pretend to ourselves that they don't exist. So, personally,  I'm all for looking closely at what I have in common with people who do monstrous things, amd asking myself what kind of thing could tip me into behaving monstrously? I call that "being responsible" .

Look into  Stanley Milgram's obedience experiment  sometime. That guy  demonstrated  that ordinary people are capable of behaving monstrously, under certain (quite common)  conditions.   We might hope and believe that we're the exception. But even if we are, we don't  have the power, nor the resources to be able to to jail all the others when push comes to shove.   So we'd better , for everybody's sake, find some better approach to monstrous behaviour , hadn't we?  Trying to inderstand it is a start.