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Path: utzoo!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Rape (anywhere, not just Ontario)
Message-ID: <1537@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Dec-83 08:40:14 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1537
Posted: Fri Dec  9 08:40:14 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Dec-83 09:23:45 EST
References: <1157@ittvax.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 145

reply to Scott Anderson:


	Certainly, rape is not a crime of passion or sex, but merely
	violence.

You would be surprised how many people do not believe this..

	However, I think that most people feel that sex is very
	special, that is associated only with feelings of love and
	caring.

I have my doubts about this. This definitely is the *ideal* of sex as
it comes across in certain books or magazines, but I know a fair number
of women who think that sex is a "duty" that they have to bear. It is
interesting that these are not the "wives living up to the duty of
servicing their husbands" (at least that I know -- there are probably
still lots of those around) but women who are now "liberated" and feel
that they *ought* to enjoy sex but don't. Somehow I don't think that
that is quite liberation.

On the other hand, you will find people who think that sex is a lot of
fun, but that is all. And loving and caring are wonderful things but
they are not necessarily connected with sex. I do not know whether
these people are in the majority -- for this thing is terribly hard to
measure.  For one thing, it is hardly ever talked about and for another
there are a good many people walking around who think that sex and love
are not necessarily connected, but who would be loathe to admit this.

	Rape shreds all those associations, which then has profound
	psychological implications.

I think that this is rather strong stuff. After all, if the
associations are a good thing then they need not be shredded. On the
other hand, if these  associations are a commonly-held delusions, then
separating them may be a very good thing in the long run. The better
thing would be to disassociate the two so that such psychological
damage will not occur.  And if you do not have these associations then
I do not think that you should be penalised if you are raped. For
instance, in recent literature I read about women who are not believed
when they claim to be raped because they are not suffering from this
damage (at least yet). Somehow i do not think that this is what you
want to encourage.

	The physical damage in a rape may be less than in an assault
	and battery (then again, maybe not; I've read about some pretty
	awful rapes), but it is far less important that the mental
	torment the woman goes through.  One can be reminded of an
	assault everytime one walks down a dark alley, but a rape
	victim may be reminded of a rape every time she makes love.
	What a rotten time to remember such abuse!  To take something
	beautiful and positive, and to make it ugly and negative:
	that's how rape is different from assault.

I have some news for you -- you remember getting beat up everywhere as
well.

The other thing to consider is that taking walks is something
beautiful, and assault is real good at uglification.

It may be that some people will connect raping with making love, but
this is a bad thing. And how are we going to stop this bad thing? I do
not know, but I suggest that by not differentiating between rape and
assault people can discover that rape *is* assault. This would be, in
my opinion, a good thing, since the alternative is to consider rape
something different *because* it is connected with sex, which is likely
to perpetuate the condition you are trying to avoid.

	Furthermore, people can UNDERSTAND a beating.  We grow up with
	being hit, whether by parents or the bully down the street.
	We've also hit other people, in rage or in fear or simply to
	take away a toy.  It's no fun to be hit, but the action is
	familiar and understandable to some extent.  Rape is not; it's
	totally incomprehensible, I think, to anyone but a rapist.  I
	can imagine myself hitting someone; I can even imagine myself
	killing someone; rape, never.

Aha, but if the world were full of people like you then there would be
no problem. Saying that "Rape is totally incomprhensible" is not doing
anything to consider the problem. I know at least one person who finds
the idea of rape entirely comprehensible -- but he is a nice guy and
does not rape people. I know more people who find the idea of any
violence incomprehensible. Thus there is considerable variation. Saying
"it is incomprehensible" only sets a standard which forces those who
disagree with it underground or into a great confusion, neither of
which is useful.


	Laura also mentioned some boys/men she has corresponded with.
	A further excerpt from her article:

		They were shy male virgins who wanted to stop being shy
		male virgins.  . . .  So I wrote to them. But it
		occurred to me at the time that had I been so inclined
		I could have driven to wherever they were and offered
		to take away the virginity. I bet that I would have
		been accepted every time. . . .  I'm 5'4", after all --
		it would be hard to conceive of me raping anyone. But
		suppose I was 6'5" and male... the thought makes me
		shudder.

	Luv that first line!  Anyhow, unless Laura contradicts me, I'll
	confess to having been one of her shy mail virgins, and I'll
	tell you right now that I would NOT have accepted you Laura;
	sorry.

Don't bother apologising, you weren't on the list. For one thing, you
are not shy. All the people on that list expressly sent me mail saying
that the express purpose of the correspondance was to see if they could
actually *talk* to women.

	There's a BIG difference between making love and having sex.  I
	was much more concerned with finding someone to love who loves
	me in return than I was with losing my virginity.  (For $100, I
	could have lost the virginity anytime; I also know a number of
	loose women.) The difference is quite relevant to this rape
	discussion:  There is a lot more to sex (and hence, rape) than
	the physiology, while a beating is just a beating.

	My last sentence doesn't deal with either rape or assault by a
	husband or other loved one.  Those issues are very sticky and I
	don't know how to deal with them.

Now here we have someing interesting: the old "loose women". And there
is the problem of rape or assault by a loved one. This fits in very
nicely with a scheme where there are only "good women" and "loose
women".  If you adopt this scheme it is relatively easy to know whether
a rape occurred, since any sex is either 'respectable' (historically
between married people, which can be extended to between people who
love each other) or 'with a loose woman' or 'rape'. There are a lot of
rape laws which seem phrased to preserve this scheme, and indeed a lot
of rape trials centre around how 'respectable' the victim was.

To my mind this is undesirable. No matter how 'loose' you are, you
should not be still be able to choose your lovers. Thus trials which
centre around 'well she had her top 3 buttons undone, therefore she was
not respectable, therefore it was not rape' strike me as only
reflections of this  ancient attitude. I should think that ideally I
should be able to walk around on the streets topless without getting
raped -- though I am not going to try it. But if this is unreasonable,
then it means that rape is not assault -- but it is primarily concerned
with sex. Awful sex, but still sex.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura