I picked up a few books on rape laws, and started reading a few articles. They start with the (unchallenged) statement that rape is a patriarchal crime because it is about power, the “need” (this need is very questionable in my opinion) to dominate, to humiliate. I think feminists have had a great hand in constructing this image of rape. While I agree that wife battery and domestic abuse are very much about domination and humiliation (carping), but rape? Really? Is rape a verbal process where the man shouts obscenities at a woman to degrade her? A lot of people use “bad language” that many would consider derogatory in a normal sexual context as well. And this thing about overpowering, about domination, well is that not true for every crime? A stick up involves much overpowering but why no gender politics built into that even though the perpetrators are nearly always men?
I thing rape is CONSTRUCTED as a crime against women, but my very premise is frought with such contention and problems that my conclusion would be rendered null and void before the people who read my paper even reach the end. Are there empirical studies showing rape arising out of a need to overpower and dominate women? Can someone convince me that this is true, because I don’t believe it is. I don’t think rape itself, as the act, has anything of the patriarchal in it, rather the repurcussions are characterized with misogyny.
Here is why I am so reluctant to believe the feminist propgandized view of rape.
Say Gottfredson & Hirschi of the “typical” rape: 60% of rape cases were between perfect strangers. Almost all occur at night and on weekends when the woman is alone. Men commit rape alone rather than as a “gang”. Fewer than 20% involve weapons (weapons would add to degradation and mind-play wouldn’t they). The perpetrators are young. They are not “rapists” - they are generalists who have been arrested for other crimes as well. Victims of rape are mostly young (peak age of victimization being 16-19) and minorities.
Now contrast this with domestic abuse, which IS degradation of women. There are not many parallels, yet rape is the ultimate crime against women.
According to G&H, here is why rape occurs: “First, there must be a victim who is attractive to an offender, available to the offender, unwilling to engage in sexual activity, and unable to resist the offender’s advances. Second, there must be an offender who is unsufficiently restrained”.
It is obvious from this that rape is about SEX, yet why do we believe feminists who have disseminated into mass culture that rape is about POWER? Convince me it is about power.
