Kill the Criminals

I've been posting about sex and rape (not that the two are related) for the past two months. Perhaps it is time to switch things up. It's not like my life is dominated by sex, now, is it? But where to go from here? There are a couple of issues that have made the news in the past week. For example: the Governor General eating seal, which brings us to animal rights; the rugby murder conviction, which brings us to violence in sports; and the upgrade of the charge to first degree murder in the Tori Stafford case. It is this last one that I will talk about. 

But not directly. I heard some discussion over whether murder / assault of children should automatically warrant a higher charge. This is what I think I will go with  today. 

People are People, and a victim is a victim: To hold some people as more worthy of upgraded charges places excess value on some individuals over others. While certainly some people may have more relative worth than others, the standard 

for this is virtually impossible to apply arbitrarily. Whose standards of value should apply? Is one person more valuable because they have more to contribute to society, because they are more innocent (IE, children) or because they had a big family and more people loved them? 

The only exception to this rule is in the case of police officers. Because we ask them to place themselves directly in harms way for the purposes of protecting society at large, we do place more  value on them. This is an economic argument: society benefits by having police protection, and therefore they are worth more to society, and therefore crimes against police warrant a higher charge and higher punishment. As distasteful as it is to people who have lost children, there is explicit extra value to society in children - there is more explicit value in the owner a company that employs several hundred people.

Another basis for extra punishment for people who harm children is that children are unable to defend themselves. However, this is a revenge argument, not a deterrent argument. People who are intent on injuring children will not be deterred by a stronger penalty - instead they will just try harder not to get caught. The argument also implies that if you are able to defend yourself then any injuries you suffer from are less relevant. 

Children Deserve a greater protection under the law: Children do have a greater value to society than any other type of person - because children will be the ones that will determine the future in all things for society. Every time a child is injured or killed some part of the future is lost or 

changed.  If a child is injured seriously it will affect their lives and the lives of many others for a long time. To compensate society for that, offenders should be punished more than if an attack was on a grown person. 

Society already does arbitrarily assign more value to some people in the eyes of the law. Police is just one example. And if it can be done for one group of people, there is no good reason why it cannot be done for others. Criminal charges are routinely upgraded in the event of sexual assaults; so why not in the event of children victims? 

Defense is an essential element of the argument for upgrading the charges. Because children are unable to defend themselves in the same way that an adult, then the law must provide an additional layer of protection. While this may not be ideal, it is one of the few methods that society has of providing protection to those least able to provide it for themselves. Whether it is a deterrent or an punishment is moot; society has agreed that laws are deterrent and so the increased charges would serve as such. 

What I think: Tough one here. Both sides have good points. But I tend to think that a crime is a crime, and the victim's status shouldn't matter. That extends to age, gender, race, and everything else. An elderly person may be just as unable to defend themselves as a 10 year old; and a 10 year old may be carrying a gun (although unlikely; but I put that in there for illustration sake). It also leaves the entire system up for interpretation about the seriousness of the crime, and makes it necessary to put in arbitrary cut off points - so assaulting a 12 year old might get you an upgraded charge while assaulting a 16 year old may not - even the injury to the 16 year old was more severe. The law should be blind. Best way for it to function - even if it is not blind, always, in practice. There is also the question of mental capacity in this equation, and punishment for minors attacking minors. 

How I relate: I would really hate to think of anything ever happening to my niece or nephew, and if anything did, I would want the maximum punishment possible. But an equal possibility is that they could injure someone else, in which case I would want the least punishment possible. The point is, that if you can relate, you would have a very clear opinion on it depending on which side of the victim/attacked coin you are on. As such, 

can't really relate. So I'll leave it at that. 

Well, at least I can still compose a good argument. I was worried that I killed far too many brain cells last week. It did get me thinking about alcohol, drinking ages, and that type of thing. But I have a few others things on the back burner right now, so I'm not sure where this will go.  

Again, Rape me.

The title of this post and the one before it are obviously a reference to the Nirvana song. This was deliberate - first because I like Nirvana and if I can put a reference in, I will; also because it helps to illustrate the point about men being raped by women and also the point that it is often made fun of. The song itself is about a woman who is held captive and repeatedly raped, and finally she numbs herself and just tells her attacker "fine, rape me again, get it over with". By doing this, she regains a bit of control over the situation and eventually her attacker leaves. I recall reading an interview with Kurt Cobain, in Rolling Stone I believe, where he intimated that he was generally not happy with the success of that song for the wrong reasons. He would look out at the crowd and see people he wouldn't have liked (i.e. jocks) singing "rape Me" and not getting it - but rather making a joke of the intent if the song. They wanted to be raped. (It's been a while since I actually read the interview. I may have some details fuzzy). But this as well I think illustrates the view about men being raped by women. 

That was one of my longer preambles. Curious. The same definition of rape as in the previous post applies here. You would also have to look back for previous definitions of sex, as well.

Men can't be raped by women: There is no way that women can rape men. It is physically impossible. For a man to have sex, he has to be hard; and if he's doesn't want to have sex, he won't get excited and he won't get hard. It may be possible for men to be in sexually uncomfortable situations with women, but not raped. 

The point about the song just furthers the point that men want to have sex with pretty much any woman. The jocks were singing along because they didn't care who they had sex with, they just wanted to have sex. It is pretty much accepted, whether biological, social, or genetic, that men want to have sex with as many people as they can; and since it is an innate need, it can't be forced. It would be like forcing a person to drink water. 

From a feminist point of view, there is also no way a woman can rape a man. This is because rape is about power, and in our current patriarchal society, women do not have power. Men use their power over women in many ways, including by forcing them to have sex against their will. Since women do not have power in our society, they cannot force men to have sex. It would be comparable to a peasant forcing the king to provide free land. 

If men can do it, women can do it too: Having a physical reaction -  getting hard - is not the same wanting to have sex. Look at all the people who had hard-ons when they were wearing sweat pants and had to do a problem at the chalkboard. But adolescence aside, a physical reaction to stimulation does not mean consent; to seriously use that argument would be saying that if a woman's nipples were hard or her vagina became lubricated during an unwanted sexual experience, she was then consenting to sex. 

Contrary to the myth of the constantly seeking sex male, sometime men don't want to have sex. Just like women, men get tired; they may be in committed relationships; they may just not want to have sex with a particular individual. Even if an individual is a nympho and wants to have sex all the time, there still has to be consent involved. 

The feminist argument is relevant in many situations - but not in all. There is more than just the male / female power dynamic that exists in the current social world. In many situations, a woman may have economic power over men, she may be part of a privileged class or race, she may just be a strong woman who forces herself on a weak man.

What I think: I think that it is kind of obvious what I think. I think that there are many many situations that would be considered rape if the situations were reversed. I read an article about other situations where sex is forced on men by women , but men really don't have any way of expressing any feelings about it - either than to pretend they liked it. If they don't, people will assume that there is something wrong with them, or that they were the instigator in the attack. I also think that men are far less likely to be physically injured than women in a sexual attack, but this is where the societal training helps men: if a man is attacked by a woman, he is told he should just lie back and enjoy it; a woman is told that her "virtue" is important and thus should risk all to defend it. 

How I relate: Never been raped, been in a couple of situations I probably wished I wasn't. And I have a ton of friends who have slept with people they never wanted to, but were inebriated. They would never admit to being raped - a rose by any other name - . There are also a lot of situations that would appear to be consensual but on examination probably weren't. An example: A woman could very easily say to man "sleep with me or I'll tell your spouse that we did". 

That was a quicker post I've written, probably because I had a pretty strong opinion on this. That, and it was about sex. Not sure where I'll go from here, but I'm sure something will come up. Maybe I'll switch gears completely and go with something on animal rights.  

Rape me, Again

So I guess I'm going to take a shot at this. It's a very touchy subject and I've had to think a lot about how I want to approach it. I tossed around various ideas - like, what exactly is rape; is is different for men and women; what punishment is appropriate for it; do circumstances matter. The only way that I think I can approach it, right now at any rate, is if it is different for men and women. As in my previous posts, I will not be dealing with same sex rapes, although I may in a different post. Something like "is a man raping a man the same as a woman raping a woman". 

And as an aside, I really object to the common colloquial usage of the term "rape". I liken it to the dumbing down of the term "holocaust" and that the common usage detracts from the word and makes the word and thus the action more acceptable. 

Before I even get into this, I have to define rape. So what it specifically means , in this post - feel free to disagree - is having sex with a person against their will. This is the strictest definition that I can go with. Why the definition is important will be clear throughout the post; so when I think about this, I will have to keep it within that definition. 

Rape is worse for women that for men: How can anyone think that rape is equal for men? Rape is committed by men against women; it is a violent and misogynist act. It is a violation of a woman's body; it is not a violation of a man's body. In the very rare cases when men are raped by women, the physical injuries to a man are nothing on comparison to the physical injuries to a woman. 

Emotionally, women are far more damaged by rape than men. You don't hear about men taking a 3 hour shower to wash the feelings of dirtiness from them. Throughout history, the one thing that women have always had recognized control over was their bodies - raping a woman is taking this one unequivocal control away from her. For men, if they are ever raped by a woman, they still have control over the rest of their lives, while women do not. 

The psychological damage for women is far greater as well. Men do not become afraid of women; but women become afraid of men, afraid to trust them, afraid to put themselves in any potentially threatening situations. Men go on with their lives like nothing has happened.  Men won't hide in their houses for years, afraid to get in a relationship, because the damage is no where near as painful to men. 

Rape is rape, no matter who the victim is: Just because most men are stronger than men, it doesn't mean that they aren't physically injured. In any rape, it is horrible and men can be just as physically injured by women as women can by men. There is no doubt that rape of women by men is misogynist; and rape of men by women is misandry. In either case it is effectively a hate crime against the opposite sex. 

Emotionally, men are just as affected by being raped; they just aren't allowed to show it in any way. Likely, for men the emotional impact could not even be manifest as there is no acceptable emotion for a man who has been raped by a woman. And just because you don't hear about men taking 3 hours after being raped, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The only way for men to have any reaction is keep control of their lives, because that's all they are allowed (socially and culturally) to do.

 

The psychological damage for men who were raped by a woman is equal to that of woman who has been raped by a man. It will affect everyone differently based on any number of factors, but men will become withdrawn; they may hide in their homes; they may never trust women again. Men are capable of having the same reactions to a violent personal crime that women are. 

What I think: I believe that men are just as damaged by rape as women are. I also believe that men do not have any method of actually dealing with rape if it were to happen to them, because nobody - and I mean nobody - would believe them. I also think that it happens a lot more than people think, because virtually no man would ever report it, and they would likely blame themselves - the exact things that happen when women are raped. There are many jokes about men being raped by women (example: Beer, the date rape drug being used on men) that illustrate the point that men have few options if it happens to them - and there are a whole pile of jokes that trivialize the rape of women (many of the fake "motivational posters", for example).  

How I relate: Well, I can't say I've ever been raped by a woman - but then I wouldn't say anyways, would I? Still, I have known men who have been raped by women but would never admit it, but it has really messed them up. I have also known women who have been raped by men, and it has put them in a world of shit. Both men and women have the internal capacity to recover from something horrible like rape happening to them, but capacity is only part of the recovery. Some people never do, never have. 

I think that I may make my next post just on men who have been raped by men. I think I may be able to fill that one up.  And I likely won't be able to find any non- porn pictures for that post.