Rape. Is it worse than murder?

Kuonji · 2009-04-29T22:59:54+00:00

Is rape worse than murder? If you were to interview survivors of forced rape, how many would say that they would have rather been killed at that time? How many would say they are glad to be alive?

Picture a video game. A gritty, realistic battle simulation where you infiltrate the enemy, kill their agents as necessary and risk getting captured if you should fail. Your avatar is a female spy who is highly trained and deadly. If you should fail in your mission or be captured, a cutscene appears where you are brutally killed. It's graphic. Perhaps you are gutted with a knife and bleed to death. Perhaps you are shot in the head, it doesn't really matter. Point is, it's pretty brutal.

Anything out of the ordinary here? Pretty standard fare for a violent video game, although more often than not it's a male avatar who is the hero and who gets killed if you fail, but otherwise well within the realm of possibility.

Now change up the situation a bit. If you fail, you are not brutally killed. In fact, there are no cutscenes of what happens to you. There is only a brief glimpse of a man who corners you and starts to rip off your clothing as the scene fades out. The inference is obvious. Sex will be forced upon you. The next scene is you being dumped onto the side of the road well outside the enemy's compound; alive. The assumption is that you have failed and the game is now over.

Could you imagine a game where the second scenario happened? Has there been a game like that, ever, that didn't have huge outcries for suggesting rape?

I post this because I am honestly curious as to what, as a society, we feel is the worse crime? Why is it (mostly) acceptable to have video games with all manner of violent death heaped upon you for failure but if the enemy were to rape you, it is suddenly utterly unacceptable?

Whenever I hear that we live in a 'rape culture' by feminists, I think about examples like this and can't help but disagree. In fact, whatever culture is the opposite of a 'rape culture' is what we live in.

etherspirit · 2009-04-29T23:35:35+00:00

This is an awful debate to be having.

kanuk876 · 2009-04-30T04:25:16+00:00

As a trauma survivor (various child abuses), I don't necessarily see trauma and murder as being separate.

Susan Brison in "Aftermath" writes about her trauma resulting from her attempted murder and rape:

pp.38:

Survivors of trauma frequently remark that they are not the same people they were before they were traumatized. As a survivor of the Nazi death camps observes, "One can be alive after Sobibor without having survived Sobibor." Jonathan Shay, a therapist who works with Vietnam veterans, has often heard his patients say, "I died in Vietnam." Migael Scherer expresses a loss commonly experienced by rape survivors when she writes, "I will always miss myself as I was."

pp.40:

When the trauma is of human origin and is intentionally inflicted, the kind I discuss in this book, it not only shatters one's fundamental assumptions about the world and one's safety in it, but it also severs the sustaining connection between the self and the rest of humanity. Victims of human-inflicted trauma are reduced to mere objects by their tormentors: their subjectivity is rendered useless and viewed as worthless. As Herman observes, "The traumatic event thus destroys the belief that one can be oneself in relation to others" (Herman 1992, 53).

pp.46:

It is as if the tormentor says with his blows, "You are nothing but a body, a mere object for my will -- here, I'll prove it!"

pp.56:

[a holocaust survivor writes] "Part of our existence lies in the feelings of those near to us. This is why the experience of someone who has lived for days during which man was merely a thing in the eyes of man is non-human" (1993, 172).

pp.61:

the main reason all of us have to fear violent intrusions by others is that they severely impair our ability to be connected to humanity in ways we value.

pp.65:

But many trauma survivors who endured much worse than I did, and for much longer, found, often years later, that it was impossible to go on. It is not a moral failing to leave a world that has become morally unacceptable. I wonder how some can ask, of battered women, "Why didn't they leave?" while saying, of those driven to suicide by the brutal and inescapable aftermath of trauma, "Why didn't they stay?" Amery wrote, "Whoever was tortured, stays tortured" (1995, 131) and this may explain why he, Levi, Celan, and other Holocaust survivors took their own lives decades after their (physical) torture ended, as if such an explanation were needed.

Speaking of the commonality of trauma on pp 95:

at times, I seem to have more in common with some male victims of racist, or of homophobic, violence than I have with some women who have been raped. So much for identity politics.

Now, having typed all this out, I'm going to inject a note on another source of trauma. From Boyle et al regarding circumcision trauma:

It is therefore not surprising that PTSD may result from childhood circumcision, just as it does from childhood sexual abuse and rape. Several researchers have concluded that PTSD may result from circumcision and/or from circumcision-related sequelae in later life. For example, Rhinehart (1999) reported finding PTSD in middle-aged men who had been subjected to infant circumcision. Circumcision involves an imbalance of power between perpetrator and victim, contains both aggressive and libidinal elements, and threatens a child's sexual integrity by amputating part of the genitalia. Some men circumcised in infancy or childhood without their consent have described their present feelings in the language of violation, torture, mutilation, and sexual assault (Bigelow, 1995; Hammond, 1997, 1999).

Susan J. Brison writes regarding rape on pp. 93:

Rape is sexual violence. By this I don't mean that it is necessarily arousing (even to the perpetrator) and I don't mean that it is experienced as sex by the victim, but it is violence committed (typically) on the basis of sex (or because of the sex of the victim). It is different from other forms of violence in that respect.

Now watch this video of a very young man being circumcised against his will (flash) or another video (downloadable).

... "You are nothing but a body, a mere object for my will -- here, I'll prove it!"

Back to Boyle et al:

The outcome of painful childhood trauma includes long-lasting neurophysiological and neurochemical brain changes. Richards, Bernal, and Brackbill (1976) found that circumcision may impact adversely on the developing brain, and that reported "gender differences" [between men and women in North America] may actually arise from behavioural changes induced by infant or childhood circumcision.

Remember, too, that men commit 86% of all suicide in North America, and the disparity between male and female suicide is not universal; in China, slightly more women than men commit suicide, for example. Male suicide is 6-times higher in North America compared to non-circumcising western countries (reference).

2009-04-30T01:36:12+00:00

Title	Rape. Is it worse than murder?
Author	Kuonji
Upvotes	0
Comments	12
Date	April 29, 2009 10:59 PM UTC (17 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/8gl5u/rape_is_it_worse_than_murder/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/rape-is-it-worse-than-murder.1054082 https://theredarchive.com/post/1054082

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