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From: densinge@stolaf.UUCP (Charles W. Densinger)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Rape and Violence
Message-ID: <2070@stolaf.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Oct-84 18:52:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: stolaf.2070
Posted: Fri Oct 26 18:52:36 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Oct-84 04:43:41 EDT
Organization: St. Olaf College, Northfield MN
Lines: 35




     I personally believe that the "desperation for sex" really
comes out of profound lonliness and/or fear and/or rage.  (Primarily
the first two.)  Men don't need sex to live.  Celibacy is not a
suicidal path.  Sure, it's a drive, and one that's nice to satisfy,
but is is not a need of the calibre that, say, hunger is.

     I do believe, however, that human contact and nurturing are
primary needs that we have.--*nourishment for the spirit*, one might
call it.  The problem in our culture is that we learn to channel
all sorts of funny things into the category of sex that aren't
really sex at all, like the need for nurturing.  For most of us,
it is a lot scarier to admit that we want to be held or touched
than that we want to make love.  In persons who are proufoundly
lonely and in need of human contact, violence can be resorted to.

     I do not believe, and I will be nearly impossible to convince,
that a person with enough close, intimate, loving non-sexual relation-
ships in which his/her needs are expressed and met, will resort
to violence to get sex.  Sex simply is not that important.  Also,
I will not easily be convinced that anyone ever engages in violence
merely for the sake of violence.  One violates another person out
of some sort of distress or need, in an attempt to relieve that
distress.  It doesn't work, but that is the motivation.

     Rape is a violent act.  It involves a violation of another
person's bodily sovereignty.  But violence is only the mode, not
the motivator.

           -Chuck Densinger @ St. Olaf College
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