Some thoughts on rape...
You'll often hear people talking about "lust at first sight", jokingly claiming that they fancied someone rather than connected with them.
The late pope John-Paul II said that a man should not lust, not even for his wife.
People talk about lust for money, power or just for that hottie at the office.
This is what Gilbert Ryle calls a "category mistake". It means a semantic error. You're putting something in a word box where it doesn't belong, thus all of the results of X being in box Y are incorrect.
Lust is not the same as sexual desire. There is nothing wrong with "you're gorgeous, come here" - which is born of desire. Lust is about power, control ownership. People who lust after money don't want to spend it on shoes, or to go on an amazing holiday. They want to be rich. People who lust after power don't want to ban traffic wardens or institute a nationwide free-milk-for-school-kids policy. They want to be powerful. And people who lust after people do not want to have sex with that person - they don't want to arouse and be aroused, pleasure and be pleasured. They want to control.
So what if the way that the person who lusts after money spends it on shoes and holidays? So what if the person who lusts after power abolishes traffic wardens and gives out free milk? So what if the person who lusts after a person has sex with them? Does it matter that the way that control or ownership is demonstrated looks the same as generosity, kindness or love?
Put it this way.
We're in a packed library chatting rather nastily about another girl. This girl overhears us and is upset and slams out of the library crying. We all burst into hysterical laughter (hypothetically, we're not very nice) but then I suddenly leap up and storm out of the room making sobbing and wailing noises. Naturally, this is even funnier and everyone laughs raucously. Am I experiencing the same thing as the girl in tears? Of course not. Am I demonstrating the same behaviour? Yes. So are appearances, methods and demonstrations synonymous with experience? No.
Thus, just because rape LOOKS like sex - it uses the same physical mechanics - does that mean it IS sex? Again, category mistake: sex is not the in-and-out biological process, it is a collection of thoughts, desires, feelings and emotions - some of which are expressed through the biological process. If Christ Church College is knocked down in a terrorist attack, will Oxford university have been destroyed? Of course not - because the university is an institution. Christ Church college is one small way in which the processes, procedures, research and learning are expressed.
I say again: Lust is not desire. It's darker than that. And rape is not sex - rape just uses some of the same physical mechanics as sex.
Your toilet and your bath are different, right? I mean, you don't BATHE in your toilet (I hope). But they both channel water away through the same pipes. Same route, same method, same mechanics - DIFFERENT starting point.
You know what's been really pissing me off lately? Read this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-l-pozner/damn-it-again-children-ra_b_55805.html
I've seen the same thing - acts of rape being described as sex in the headlines:
"Women who had sex with 12-year-old-boy faces jail" (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253999/Woman-sex-12-year-old-boy-191-times-faces-jail.html) She didn't have sex with him, she raped him. He is not old enough to acquiesce to sex, thusfore it is rape. Not to mention that the first time she raped him, he was unconscious. That is not sex, that is rape.
"Jealous husband 'went to church after battering wife and having sex with her body'" http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-518718/Jealous-husband-went-church-battering-wife-having-sex-body.html). This woman was not only unconscious, but was DYING. That's not sex, that's RAPE.
Not to mention a host of other stories - at least three in the last six weeks - of girls aged eleven or twelve lying about their age, posting provocative photos on the internet, then meeting up and having sex with older men... Which leads to a statutory rape case, and a very embarrassed man. It's actually horrifying how predatory these girls are. When I was eleven I was still wearing frilly dresses with embroidery on (I blame my mother) and playing with dolls. OK, so I wasn't a cool eleven year old, but I wasn't a total 'tard. But eleven year old acting like (particularly slutty) students during freshers week? Horrifying. It's easy to say "I blame the parents" (and we should, to an extent. What idiot lets their preteen have unsupervised access to the internet for God's sake? Who could they possibly be emailing? Send them out to play in the field, for fucks sake.)
But the sheer NUMBERS of cases almost identical suggests that there's something bigger than a couple of crappy parents. I'm afraid, I really am.
The late pope John-Paul II said that a man should not lust, not even for his wife.
People talk about lust for money, power or just for that hottie at the office.
This is what Gilbert Ryle calls a "category mistake". It means a semantic error. You're putting something in a word box where it doesn't belong, thus all of the results of X being in box Y are incorrect.
Lust is not the same as sexual desire. There is nothing wrong with "you're gorgeous, come here" - which is born of desire. Lust is about power, control ownership. People who lust after money don't want to spend it on shoes, or to go on an amazing holiday. They want to be rich. People who lust after power don't want to ban traffic wardens or institute a nationwide free-milk-for-school-kids policy. They want to be powerful. And people who lust after people do not want to have sex with that person - they don't want to arouse and be aroused, pleasure and be pleasured. They want to control.
So what if the way that the person who lusts after money spends it on shoes and holidays? So what if the person who lusts after power abolishes traffic wardens and gives out free milk? So what if the person who lusts after a person has sex with them? Does it matter that the way that control or ownership is demonstrated looks the same as generosity, kindness or love?
Put it this way.
We're in a packed library chatting rather nastily about another girl. This girl overhears us and is upset and slams out of the library crying. We all burst into hysterical laughter (hypothetically, we're not very nice) but then I suddenly leap up and storm out of the room making sobbing and wailing noises. Naturally, this is even funnier and everyone laughs raucously. Am I experiencing the same thing as the girl in tears? Of course not. Am I demonstrating the same behaviour? Yes. So are appearances, methods and demonstrations synonymous with experience? No.
Thus, just because rape LOOKS like sex - it uses the same physical mechanics - does that mean it IS sex? Again, category mistake: sex is not the in-and-out biological process, it is a collection of thoughts, desires, feelings and emotions - some of which are expressed through the biological process. If Christ Church College is knocked down in a terrorist attack, will Oxford university have been destroyed? Of course not - because the university is an institution. Christ Church college is one small way in which the processes, procedures, research and learning are expressed.
I say again: Lust is not desire. It's darker than that. And rape is not sex - rape just uses some of the same physical mechanics as sex.
Your toilet and your bath are different, right? I mean, you don't BATHE in your toilet (I hope). But they both channel water away through the same pipes. Same route, same method, same mechanics - DIFFERENT starting point.
You know what's been really pissing me off lately? Read this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-l-pozner/damn-it-again-children-ra_b_55805.html
I've seen the same thing - acts of rape being described as sex in the headlines:
"Women who had sex with 12-year-old-boy faces jail" (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253999/Woman-sex-12-year-old-boy-191-times-faces-jail.html) She didn't have sex with him, she raped him. He is not old enough to acquiesce to sex, thusfore it is rape. Not to mention that the first time she raped him, he was unconscious. That is not sex, that is rape.
"Jealous husband 'went to church after battering wife and having sex with her body'" http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-518718/Jealous-husband-went-church-battering-wife-having-sex-body.html). This woman was not only unconscious, but was DYING. That's not sex, that's RAPE.
Not to mention a host of other stories - at least three in the last six weeks - of girls aged eleven or twelve lying about their age, posting provocative photos on the internet, then meeting up and having sex with older men... Which leads to a statutory rape case, and a very embarrassed man. It's actually horrifying how predatory these girls are. When I was eleven I was still wearing frilly dresses with embroidery on (I blame my mother) and playing with dolls. OK, so I wasn't a cool eleven year old, but I wasn't a total 'tard. But eleven year old acting like (particularly slutty) students during freshers week? Horrifying. It's easy to say "I blame the parents" (and we should, to an extent. What idiot lets their preteen have unsupervised access to the internet for God's sake? Who could they possibly be emailing? Send them out to play in the field, for fucks sake.)
But the sheer NUMBERS of cases almost identical suggests that there's something bigger than a couple of crappy parents. I'm afraid, I really am.