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Rape vs Rejection

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17:42 / 08.10.03

In discussing the emotional needs for monogamy with a friend recently, he brought up an interesting point I've never though of before, taken from a female friend of his who has been raped repeatedly. That is, that it may be more painful to be abandoned by a partner than raped.

The emotional attachment we can have to a partner can be overwhelmingly intense. When that partner leaves, it is as if the world has collapsed. I can relate to this mostly from when I was younger and more sensitive, before years of scar tissue toughened me to it. But at the core of this is the realization that you were rejected by someone, that you were not wanted. Its a blow to your self worth, and the value you have as a person. You are made lessened in every way.

But in rape, it is clear that you are wanted. Desire is implicit. For someone with serious self-worth issues, it may even be preferable to being rejected by someone who has become close enough to see you for who you are, and find you lacking. So the choice becomes one of finding the loss of will and choice less painful than the feeling of loss of self worth, for even though you are taken against your will, you are still taken, and self worth is actually increased for having been desired.

Anyway, I found the perspective suitably shocking to my world view, and worthy of discussion. Its an interesting inversion to how rape is normally viewed, and one originating from a repeated rape victim who actually went so far as to put herself into dangerous situations over it. I mean, the knee-jerk reaction to rape is mighty, but it seems sometimes the needs of the heart can be greater still.

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

18:29 / 08.10.03

Interesting point. I don't think that rape necessarily denotes desire. It would seem more to be a function of power over someone else. I realize that is a gross over-simplification of the motivations behind rapists, but I don't know that I buy that the rapee feels desired.

I would think that the woman in question has severe emotional issues that should be dealt with. It would seem that she is suffering from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, where the rapist (generic) becomes a mental captor.

There are some people out there who can only feel desired if they are degraded to the point that they feel themselves to be the possesion of someone else, less than human. While this does exist, I don't think I woud hold it out as a case that degradation could be substituted for respect.

Do you really feel that this is a need of the heart, or the need of an extremely damaged psyche? It would seem that the heart, in this case, is searching for the same thing that we all are, love and acceptance. I believe that the psyche is damaged to the point to mistake an act of violence and degredation for an act of romantic desire.

19:05 / 08.10.03

Well see, your reaction is exactly why I brought this up, Steelwelder. You are focusing on the aspects of domination and violence, which are inherent in it being rape. But the desire part was the interesting one, as for someone to want to do that to her, they would have to desire her. Therefore, she is wanted. The violence and violation are bad, but offset enough by being desired to be considered by her less painful overall that being rejected. Hence, a pattern of behavior emerged where she put herself into dangerous situations.

And yea, damaged psyche is definitely the case here. That much should be a given. But the root is in emotional needs, which makes it complicated in an entierly new screwed up way.

20:35 / 08.10.03

...for someone to want to do that to her, they would have to desire her.

...no.

Just... no.

"Desire"? Desire her perhaps in the way you could be said to desire a thing. Or in the way that a fist desires a face.

You've got the equation backwards. Rape is not a sex act that entails violence and violation, it is an act of violence undertaken using the tools of sex. The penis as weapon.

Men rape to make themselves feel powerful. They rape ugly girls, pretty girls, old women, weaker men—or do you think that prison rape is so prevalent because prisons are hotbeds of previously closeted homosexual desire?—not because they are "turned on" or feel "desire," but out of opportunity.

Your friend does, indeed, have self-esteem issues: she'd prefer to think she was raped because she was desired. But in sad fact, she's wrong: by and large, a stranger rapes a woman not because he thinks she's beautiful but because he thinks she's weak.

22:04 / 08.10.03

Jeez, thank god for Jack F - I had just been reading this in a state of horror.

Your friend needs help, cusm, if she can interpret rape as any sort of a good thing at all. She is being abused, and doubly so if she's being made to think that it's a positive thing.

22:58 / 08.10.03

how are you defining rape?

is the main point that the victim is unwilling?

23:03 / 08.10.03

Hmmm. Everyone's response to this has made me slightly uneasy. Not because I dont agree with it, because I do, but because at one time, Im sure I wouldnt have.

It was when the rejection was overwhelming; he left without a word of goodbye, he pretended I had never existed; and I just couldnt switch it off like he could. And yes, my self-worth was probably down to the minuses. For all the time I'd waited for this guy, he'd been "in" my life so many years, it seemed to me like we were just about at the marriage stage by now, and now I finally had him; for some reason I didnt expect him just to hang around for a month or so and then peg it off again.

I think the point is, I think it's more to do with the woman's state of mind, and the particulars of the relationship, in terms of length, quality, and presumably any children would vastly change her perspective on the whole matter.

01:03 / 09.10.03

gingerbop: I think I may agree with your POV.

I can see the point this girl was trying to make, although I think it may have gotten lost in the translation, but my interpretation is: rejection is a lot like rape because of the similar state they leave the "victim/survivor" in.

In rape there is desire, but not for the target of the violence, but for the violence itself - or even moreso, the power and control. Sometimes even involving a bit of seduction to lure the target.

In a relationship, the desire may not be for love and respect, but to control and impose your will on another and using seduction and deception, even violence. A raping of another in a different fashion....and still a form of control. Lure them in, make them feel comfortable and give a false sense of security, then take out the carpet from underneath them with rejection.

Really, the MO is nearly the same.

08:24 / 09.10.03

I'm not sure how relevant the comparison to being abandoned by a partner is, except perhaps for the link of the question of self-worth.

But anyway, I'd say the same as Jack Fear, but more so: not only is the act of rape devoid of desire for the victim, but surely it actually indicates that the attacker considers zir victim to be of such insignificance as to be worth less than zir own desire (for sexual release, exertion of power or whatever). Though it's easy to see how someone could be damaged mentally in such a way as to make them feel love or desire can be derived from rape (or any sex; it might be worth noting that many rape victims become nymphomaniacs in its true definition i.e. "one who is compelled to seek to engage in sexual acts, but is unable to derive pleasure from them", in the hope of some form of comfort or validation), the actual value of the victim implied by such an act is insignificant.

Gaining self-worth from being raped would, basically, be about the same as gaining self-worth from a game in which the participants enjoy themselves by hitting someone. "Wow, they want me to hit in the face for their kicks!"

Tryphena Absent

08:31 / 09.10.03

The important form of desire does not exist in the rapist's mind. It exists in the mind of the victim because she is assuming that the rapist desires her and is deliberately placing herself in the power of another. So yes, it's more to do with the woman's state of mind.

So I think perhaps the question becomes, leading on from Jack Fear's comment that Men rape to make themselves feel powerful, why did this woman react in such a way?

Matthew Fluxington

11:52 / 09.10.03

This thread makes me want to cry.

And vomit.

12:01 / 09.10.03

Flux: It's an intensely disturbing set of notions we're working through, yes, but I think it's important to confront this stuff. Or is there more to your visceral reaction than that? Do you think me mistaken, or cruel? I'm interested in your perspective.

De Logardiere: ...the question becomes, leading on from Jack Fear's comment that Men rape to make themselves feel powerful, why did this woman react in such a way?

Well, which would you rather be—fucked, or destroyed?

Seems to me it'd be less humiliating to think of oneself as being on the receiving end of clumsily-expresed sexual desire than to think of oneself as a target for annihilation. Couching the experience as "bad sex" rather than as a violent crime (rape is essentially murder without death) might be a way for the victim to reclaim some of hir power, perversely/paradoxically by assuming some of the responsibility for the act. S/he might not go so far as to say, "It's my fault, I led him on," but saying "His desire for me led him to this violent act" amounts to nearly the same thing.

See, we want the world to make sense: as random and chaotic and inexplicably cruel as the world sometimes is, we as a species try to find patterns and explanations. I heard a radio piece about schizophrenia the other day, and what struck me was how often a schizophrenic's delusions will be that s/he is hirself evil, or is the Devil, or is the cause of suffering in the world. The schizophrenic looks at this horrible world, so full of human misery, and is driven to find someone to blame. Three hundred years ago, s/he would have undoubtedly blamed the Devil, or "witches": but because of the way our culture has evolved, those options are no longer available to hir, so s/he must blame hirself.

Same with this. It's a comforting illusion, an ego-saving construction to protect the victim from the idea of a disinterested, malevolent annihilating force at play in the universe.

Or I could be talking out of my ass, here.

12:15 / 09.10.03

Hear hear, Jack Fear.
That girl's perception that desire for the victim is implicit is just wrong. Desire to rape maybe, not desire for the person as a person.

Spyder Todd 2008

12:42 / 09.10.03

Ok, so going on what Jack said....
I agree with the ego construct bit. And, although I really think rape is about the shittiest thing on this planet, I wonder; should we try to destroy this ego structure? I think we should try to get someone in this situation out of it, yes, but would it be more harmful to leave this feeling that you were desired than it would be to rip it away? Because I really believe we should be trying to help a victim out as best as they need. If a bit of self-delusion helps them get over a situation, is it really worse then knowing the truth.

And on the whole "penis as the weapon" thing, what does that say about women who rape?

Matthew Fluxington

12:54 / 09.10.03

No, I think you're right on, Jack. I agree with everything you've said on this matter. It's more the premise of the first post that I find disturbing than anything else - I don't think it's not worth being discussed, but I'm sort of amazed that it is. I know I'm not alone in just being totally creeped out by this thread.

12:59 / 09.10.03

Well, that's the most important question, isn't it. And a very Henrik Ibsen-esque sort of question it is.

It's very much a two-edged sword: admitting innocence is also admitting impotence. Absolution equals an admitting of powerlessness. And in a way it's completing the rapist's crime for him—he wishes to make his victim small and powerless.

I think the key (therapeutically speaking) is in the follow-up: It's nothing that you did, there's nothing you could have done—but that's not to say there's nothing you can do now. Rebuild. Grow strong.

It's no accident that we speak of rpe survivors—"survival" being a word associated with disease or disaster, with catastrophic, impersonal acts of nature. You survive a hurricane: you survive cancer: you survive rape. You brought none of these things on yourself, and they neither hate nor desire you—yousimply have to deal with their aftermath.

There's power in language. "Survivor," not "victim."

13:06 / 09.10.03

Flux: I figured that's what you were getting at, yeah. But it's hard, so hard to really believe what you know to be true intellectually, when it looks so much like something else.

I mean, I know intellectually that a dolphin is a mammal. But it's so hard to get pat the obvious surface of things, and to stop perceiving it as a fish.

It's just as hard to stop thinking of rape as a primarily sexual act. It's even more difficult when there are sanity-saving ego-constructs in the way of doing so.

.

13:35 / 09.10.03

Obviously this is a highly emotive topic, and rightly so. And the idea of rape in any form is equally disgusting. That said, there are different kinds of rape. In terms of a non-consensual sexual act, while the stereotypical "rapist grabbing someone in a dark alley" situation may stem from a violent urge for power, I think there may well be other forms of rape that are acted out of sexual desire. Take so-called "date rape", where in many instances the rapist may not even equate what they are doing with rape (after all, they're not that violent stranger in an alley). Or a partner who assumes that sexual desire is reciprocated and acts on it when it is not.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that rape is non-consensual sex, period. If someone forces sex on someone-else, whether motivated by violence or sexual desire, it's rape, and abhorrent. In my experience the dark alley scenario is fairly rare, but the "date rape" scenario isn't. And the rapist involved in the "date rape" scenario may well be acting out of sexual desire taken too far. Let's not make it any easier for people like that to justify their actions by associating all rape with primarily violence and power.

Tryphena Absent

13:49 / 09.10.03

It's a comforting illusion, an ego-saving construction to protect the victim from the idea of a disinterested, malevolent annihilating force at play in the universe.

I think that's an incredibly simplistic answer. The very idea that this woman would couch it in those terms in her head after the act when clearly that can't be the entire story. A history of abuse? Something else? Clearly there's more to a story like this, my question was why did she react in this way, not how did she react. I rather think your answer was geared more towards the latter question. Now clearly it's implausible to think that anyone could answer my question but I think it's rather fundamental.

I find it interesting that people find this so creepy. I know that my younger brother would because he's very freaked out by rape and I am, when confronted by the vivid reality of it (ie. a rapist), but this thread doesn't make me react in that way and possibly because it's unsurprising that a woman would have such a reaction.

would it be more harmful to leave this feeling that you were desired than it would be to rip it away?

The simple answer to that is probably yes. Just because you have a conscious pretence doesn't mean that you're not aware of what's actually happened and that can be very damaging when it finally emerges and in addition can destroy the time inbetween the act and realisation.

It's just as hard to stop thinking of rape as a primarily sexual act

But it is a sexual act though perhaps not primarily. The motive may not be sexual but the thing that makes it so terrible is the infliction of violence behind something that is not meant to be out of mutual control. Not only is it an incredibly painful violation of the body but it's a violation of privacy and many other things.

13:57 / 09.10.03

I would argue that date rape is just as much an act of violent destruction as stranger rape, Dot. It's less obvious, but it's the same motivation: validation, self-interest, power.

Violence doesn't have to be physical. He can do it with a gun, he can do it with booze, he can do it with threats or pleading or emotional blackmail—it's the same goddam thing. Anybody—stranger or acquaintance, even boyfriend or husband—anybody who'll have sex with you over your objections or protests—or who'll manipulate and hound you until you acquiesce (as opposed to actual consent)—has no interest in you as a person: he has nothing-ized you, reduced you to something with no more importance than a cum-rag.

And it's that nothing-ization—the annihilation—that is the rape, not the sex act. The sex is just the medium. Rape is no more "about" sex than War and Peace is "about" ink.

Spyder: The theories urrounding woman-as-rapist are a bit beyond me, I'm afraid—and probably fall outside the purview of this thread—so I'm going to have to punt on that one. I'll start a new thread on that topic ASAP.

Ex

15:28 / 09.10.03

...a game in which the participants enjoy themselves by hitting someone. "Wow, they want me to hit in the face for their kicks!"

This whole thread has made me think of domestic violence - if you remove (temporarily) the sexual aspect, there are a lot of people who are prepared to stay in an abusive relationship where they are getting hit in the face. Because they feel it's worth it: it's attention, or an excess of emotion, or a sign of an investment. If even a punch can be taken as a sign of an ongoing relationship, I can see how a sexual act (even a violent and unwanted one) might be seen in that light.

As to the distinction between rape as a violent act involving sex or a act of sexual desire involving violence - I think the original rethinking of rape in the 1970s lead to an emphasis on the violent and controlling aspects, so as to get away from the idea of masculinity=unstoppable sexual urges. But I feel that it's been adopted for use not wholesale, but to make a dichotomy, where the old definition endures alongside the new.

while the stereotypical "rapist grabbing someone in a dark alley" situation may stem from a violent urge for power, I think there may well be other forms of rape that are acted out of sexual desire.

I'm thus uneasy about using 'sexual desire' and 'violence' as two seperable motivations. The rapist may see themselves as acting out of sexual desire. But it's a sexual desire where they have, at root, no consideration for the consent or refusal of their partner. That makes them a callous (or deliberately unenquiring) violent person.
(Being deliberately unaware of whether your partner's consented or not is to an extent supported by US and UK law, which is one reason I feel nervous about the 'deliberate violence' vs 'just got carried away' thing - apologies for any derailing tangential threadrot).

16:50 / 09.10.03

Ex, I believe you are close to the situation in question, where the rape is not intended as violent. By "puts herself in dangerous situations" I mean less "wanders dark alleys late at night where only Batman can save her" so much as "gets too drunk at frat parties" and the like. I mean, the dark alley is a fantasy. The reality is the guy you met at a bar you just can't get rid of until he's had what he wants.

Its interesting to see the extreme sort of reactions people have here and the views of rape and rapists that are coming out. But lets look a minute at how most of these actually go. Put yourself into the mind of Joe the Dumb Frat Jerk. His modivation? Fuck the girl. She's drunk, and can't say no. Hell, she might even not remember it later. He surely won't. And even if she does struggle, you're strong, and can take what you want. You're not doing it to get the power, you already have the power and are using it to get what you want: your dick wet. Rape for violent or dominating reasons is the first thing to come to mind when the subject is brought up. But it is scenerios like the one above that constitute many if not most of the unreported cases. And its from that sort of situation that you can't deny that he wanted you, even if only as a conquest.

Now, is Joe a horrible monster whose cock is a weapon of domination and ego destruction? Or is he just an insensitive jerk? Only the girl in question can answer that, depending on how she perceives the situation and what it meant to her. Everything else is projection.

17:04 / 09.10.03

is Joe a horrible monster whose cock is a weapon of domination and ego destruction? Or is he just an insensitive jerk?

You say to-may-toe...

(New thread on women who rape yonder, BTW.)

17:10 / 09.10.03

I mean, the dark alley is a fantasy.
yeah, it's true that this is what people think of when they think of rape, and that the date-style rape is what's much more common. but it can hardly be called a fantasy, it *does* happen; (insert personal anecdote in 5...4...3..) my sister was attacked by a stranger who jumped from the freaking bushes. luckily she managed to escape before getting penetrated, but she *was* sexually assaulted.
anyway. i bring this up because above, people are talking about women who rape. what, both of them? ok i realize that's an overstatement, but i'd bet money that "dark alley-style" rape is more common than female rapists. tho' i don't have facts to back it up.

Tryphena Absent

19:20 / 09.10.03

And it's that nothing-ization—the annihilation—that is the rape, not the sex act. The sex is just the medium. Rape is no more "about" sex than War and Peace is "about" ink.

Oh I agree with this entirely but that doesn't detract from the fact that rape is a sexual act. The frat jerk is using violence to get sexual gratification even if that's his secondary, tertiary or final, imaginable motive but rather more particularly for the victim who finds that rape is and will remain an act of sexual violation.

12:16 / 10.10.03

Fuck the girl. She's drunk, and can't say no. Hell, she might even not remember it later. He surely won't. And even if she does struggle, you're strong, and can take what you want. You're not doing it to get the power, you already have the power and are using it to get what you want: your dick wet. Rape for violent or dominating reasons is the first thing to come to mind when the subject is brought up. But it is scenerios like the one above that constitute many if not most of the unreported cases. And its from that sort of situation that you can't deny that he wanted you, even if only as a conquest.

Given that unreported cases are, er, unreported, it's hard to make that sort of judgement, I think.

But the thing is, it's not the girl that this Joe character wants, ius it? It's the fuck, i.e. it's not that 'he wanted you' but that 'he wanted it'. If he's consciously choosing to molest someone who he knows is too drunk to say no, then my opinion is that he's not an insensitive jerk but a rapist. Using a situation in which he is already dominant to exercise that power over someone who cannot resist makes him despicable (in my opinion) and, as Ex has said, callous and violent.

I think Anna de L is right, and rape is an act of sexual violence - deliberately using an act which is usually intimate to degrade the victim. The sexual nature of the act is central to its power.

19:43 / 11.10.03

Returning briefly to the issue of domestic violence and the question about how and why a woman (or any person) might conceive of rape as something based around desire (and almost something to be sought out), I think it's important that we acknowledge that some people do abusive and dangerous things to themselves almost as a matter of course. Self-harm is more common than is normally acknowledged (my dead-from-suicide ex flatmate was a regular self-harmer), and it's just the tip of an iceberg that includes destructive cycles like bolemia and anorexia, some drug-habits and conventional depression. It's worth bearing in mind that some people feel a desperate need for self-punishment and self-degradation and they'll engineer their lives one way or another - consciously or otherwise - to have their faces ground into the dirt. I think we have to accept that that level of self-torture is not indicative of mental health and that we can't use a person who needs that level of self torture as a reliable gauge of the quality, morality or normal perception of a violent sexual act. I think it's quite likely that any person who declares rape better than abandonment is at the very least experiencing some kind of depressive episode.

17:56 / 12.10.03

Also, she might have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), one effect of which is that the sufferer, having gone through major trauma becomes, for some reason, addicted to dangerous, life-threatening situations. If your friend feels a persistent desire to put herself in situations where rape of any kind is a high possibility, that may be a factor. I'm no expert on this, you understand; but Alice Sebold's book about her rape, Lucky, does have a section where she compares her own post-rape experiences of drug addiction etc to PTSD. Reading that might be a good idea.

No star here laces

04:38 / 26.11.03

Dunno which rape thread to put this on, but here's a hypothetical situation posted by a user on another message board:

If there was only one man left in the world, and only one woman. And she wasn't into it, but without intercourse humanity would die? Surely rape in that case would be better than murder, or genocide, which is what her continued and consistent refusal would be, possibly the extinction of all intelligent life in the universe?
-- Momus (nick@momus.demon.co.uk), April 26th, 2003.

ONLY NICE THINGS

06:12 / 26.11.03

Hoom. So we mean not just rape but forcing her to keep the baby, carry it to term against her will, and then be raped again, and again, and again? So, basically, a lifelong campaign of sexual coercion?

Soesn't make human life sound all that great a thing to want to keep going, to be honest. Failure to have sex is certainly not murder, nor is it genocide. Whatever left the world with only one breeding pair was genocide, this is a woman not wanting to have sex. Big diff.

06:36 / 26.11.03

If there was a really ugly man, the only surviving member of his family and no woman wanted to fuck him, but without intercourse his family bloodline would die? Surely rape in that case would be better than the guy's family tree being wiped away for all time. Surely.

06:38 / 26.11.03

Plus it's probably bad luck or something to have the new civilization founded on rape anyway.

No star here laces

07:13 / 26.11.03

Hey, not my example.

But technically I think incest would take over from rape after the first couple of times, depending on a) how much of a hurry they were in and b) the gender of any potential offspring.

08:32 / 26.11.03

Ah, Haus beat me to that one. But a little more:

Please, please tell me no-one actually subscribes to Momus' view. The abortion = murder argument seems horrific enough, but taking it further still, to its logical extreme? Probably only the most extreme right-wing (though not, it should be noted, necessarily the most fundamentalist, though the two often go hand in hand; the whole contraception = murder thing seems to be pretty recent, without Biblical precedent) Catholics'd tell you that use of a condom is murder. Then one further: abstinence = murder? Failure to do everything within one's power to create as many offspring as possible = murder?

And Jack: is that devil's advocate, or...? If it's not, why do you put so much importance on something so arguably meaningless as a bloodline? In fact, if a man were predisposed to rape someone just so they could propogate their genes, I'd be more than happy to see said genes die out...

08:47 / 26.11.03

I object to that sort of hypothesising (i.e. Momus' scenario) because it basically comes down to a game to find situations in which it would be justifiable to violate women (and specifically women, in this case) - a very nasty sort of fantasy dressed up in more acceptable 'what if' clothes.

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