I had a thought earlier which made me think:

Rape is an especially terrible crime because it's one which causes psychological, emotional, and social impacts on the victim. Among them: feelings of worthlessness, inadequacy, powerlessness, and low self-esteem; a victim mentality, fear of social interaction and situations, withdrawal, trouble with assertiveness, and even self-hate and thoughts of suicide.

Rejection of men by women is not a crime. Nonetheless it has been shown to cause psychological, emotional, and social impacts on the men in question. Among them: feelings of worthlessness, inadequacy, powerlessness, and low self-esteem; a victim mentality, fear of social interaction and situations, withdrawal, trouble with assertiveness, and even self-hate and thoughts of suicide.

Am I the only one seeing the pattern here?

My thoughts:

  • Why is it considered so much worse for a man to make a woman feel this way, than vice versa?

  • Given that the incidence of women rejecting men is almost certainly exponentially higher than the incidence of men raping women, should there be more attention paid to the issue of helping men become sexually successful?

  • Are the psychological, emotional, and social impacts of rape overemphasized given that the everyday (not to mention completely legal) actions of women routinely cause the same issues in men, on a much larger scale? (The physical impact IS NOT and CANNOT be overemphasized.)

  • Should there be some sort of legislation (can't think of how it would work, but maybe you can...), limiting rejection of sexual advances or at least allowing men or families of suicide victims to sue if it can be shown that rejection contributed to injury, mental anguish, or suicide?

I am in no way condoning the sexual assault, harassment, or rape of any person, male or female. I'm mostly just posting this as a devil's advocate, so please don't go thermonuclear on me if you disagree. Hypothetical thought never hurt anyone.

EDIT: For those who have got the (very, very wrong) idea, despite my disclaimer, that I am in any way a supporter of rapists, rape, or government-sanctioned rape:

In retrospect, I can see how my words could easily have been misinterpreted. By "limiting rejection of sexual advances" (sorry for the hair-brained word choice...) I was thinking of the establishment of programs to help men whose sex lives are either stagnant or non-existent identify and rectify the issues which are holding them back, and also the elimination of the "sex is dirty" culture which makes people think that consenting too much is automatically a bad thing.

The main thrust of my post is that rape and rejection both have nearly identical psychological, emotional, and social repercussions for the losing party, and that rejection is exponentially more common than rape and thus theoretically causes exponentially more cumulative social damage; since even though one rape is much, much worse than one rejection, the sheer number of rejections in comparison tips the scale.

Clearly the physical act of rape is a crime, and its perpetrators criminals. Nobody, male or female, should ever be forced to commit a sex act or have one committed upon them without their permission. Period. I believe that. Anyone who is raped has the right to be considered a victim and to seek (and hopefully find) justice.

I guess I just think it's a little hypocritical that everyone focuses on the psychological, emotional, and social damage that rape leads to, when millions more men are forced by women to feel the same way on a daily basis. Even if each rape victim feels worse than each rejection sufferer, the sheer cumulative impact of rejection and the failure of society to clue socially-challenged men into the "game", is much more systemic and too-often overlooked.