Reply #52: Yes, it's rape; no, he's not a sick pervert

[Tansy_Gold]

If he were a sick pervert, he would be unable to control his actions.

No, folks, this guy is just, as another poster pointed out, patriarchy in action. Until he was caught and dragged into court and faced with spending a whole eight and a half years of his life in jail he considered this behavior perfectly normal. His "religion" -- patriarchy -- told him it was all right. Many, many institutions, including a popular culture that he and his church may even have denounced, promote an attitude toward women not a whole lot different from what this guy believed: that women, all women, are fair game for any man who can get 'em; that women, all women, are less than fully human; that women, all women, are responsible for their actions and for tempting men beyond their control; that women, all women, are essentially evil and can never, no matter what they do, overcome their evil nature except through a relationship with a man; that women, all women, are instruments of men's pleasure; that men, all men, are more worthy, more important, more holy than any woman.

I think, though, that it's wrong to say rape isn't sex. Rape most assuredly is sex; it may not be love or desire, but it is sexual. Because our western culture promotes romantic love as an almost essential component of marriage, sex, and procreation, we have tried to separate rape from sex because rape isn't love or romance (Bertrice Small and Rosemary Rogers notwithstanding). But rape is definitely sex, especially when used as a military or political weapon.

Most of the men who rape -- who force a partner to have sex with them against that partner's will or without her/his full consent -- are "normal" men. They are not mentally ill. What is "sick" is the culture that perpetuates the patriarchal notions of male sexual proprietorship and woman as sexual chattel.


Tansy Gold