A culture that breeds sexual violence
I meant to write about the book that I am reading. It is Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted Rapists by Diana Scully and published in 1990.
This book is a fuckin amazing read. I have read a few books in the past that dealt with sexual violence and understanding it. This book is very different as it presents various case studies in full detail and gives the authors professional and personal take on the studies.
What I appreciate most, is that the author frequently quotes from the convicted rapists that she was working with.
I am completely in awe of the study that she conducted. She interviwed 114 convicted rapists in prisons across the United States. To compare the results generated by the rapists, she also conducted the same interviews with 75 convicted felons, to see the difference in personalities. Each of her interview sessions lasted 8 hours and were insanely comphrensive.
I want to do what this woman did. I want to do my own research on sexual "deviance" including rapists and child molesters. My goal will be to cleary distinguis the factors that lead a man into raping.
In my mind, rape traces back to two sources: culture and emotional sickness. Emotional sickness is the rare source though. By emotional sickness I mean insanity, servere depression, and genuine inability to understand cause and effect of violent actions.
I think child molesters fall under something else. I view pedophilia as different than normal rape. It is one thing to rape a legal female adult but entirely different to rape a 10 year old child. There are different factors that come into play and some pedophiles view themselves as a child or completly unable to relate to adult woman and honestly do find undeveloped bodies to be sexually exciting. It is complex.
In reference to the most common type of rape: male aganist female, I believe that traces back to culture. I firmly believe that our culture breeds men to rape women.
Just look at the double standards for male and female sexuality. We put so much emphasis on male agression and male sexual power being ok why would it not make sense for some men to feel justified in forcing a woman into sex?
And it is so ridiculously easy for a woman to be a victim. Rape is always wrong and it is never the individuals fault but our culture has made it far too easy for women to become victims and even worse to remain silent about it.
The origional cultural origin of rape was the emphasis on women taking submissive roles and needing a male to dominate them. The earliest justification of rape was that it was natural, women weren't supposed to have a say in sexual relations and a strong ideal man should be allowed to get sex when and where he wants it.
Our modern cultural source of rape is the objectifying as women as sex objects. While modern culture certainly places woman more closely equal to a man, the sexual allure of woman is exaggerated in such a way that sexual agression and frustration are bound to come out in men.
Overall, female sexuality is presented in a submissive manner. There are more dominant images coming into focus though. But still typical images of female sexuality are just fuckin everywhere. How was the glorifying of women as sexually appealing and responsive, purely on the basis of their bodies and willingness to allure a man, not bound to create a society where degrading and raping women was "normal"?
And that's the thing, rape is normal for our culture. Society has accepted that rape is going to happen and this has made women even more into wiling victims. Sure, we seemingly fight back aganist rape, we put convicted rapists behind bars and we stress that rape is a sad devasting attack but we have so simply accepted that it is bound to happen.
What I believe needs to be done to heal our culture that rapes is we need to teach healthy sexuality. Sex and women sells, the objectifying of women is not going to go away in the media but we can change the way men and women look at. How about if we dicussed pornography in sexual education in the high schools? How about if we pointed out to young teenage males how fake 99% of pornography is and how difficult it can be for a real woman to try and live up to female sexual steretypes. How about if every high school offered a young female defense class where besides learning basic physical defense moves, it would be emphasizesd to young teenage women that sex by force was never ok and that no man can ever justify forcing a woman. How about if we had real victims of sexual violence talk to students about the effects of being raped. Men need to start feeling empathy for female victims of sexual violence at a young age and they need to become utterly disgusted by the crime of a woman being forced into sex.
And most importantly, it has to be emphasized that women are sexual beings to the same degree as men. Stupid sterotypes of sexuality and gender differences need to be torn down because that only contributes to general inequality and to justification of men degrading women.
Alright. I'm going to be late for my next damn class I went off on such a tangent here.
This book is a fuckin amazing read. I have read a few books in the past that dealt with sexual violence and understanding it. This book is very different as it presents various case studies in full detail and gives the authors professional and personal take on the studies.
What I appreciate most, is that the author frequently quotes from the convicted rapists that she was working with.
I am completely in awe of the study that she conducted. She interviwed 114 convicted rapists in prisons across the United States. To compare the results generated by the rapists, she also conducted the same interviews with 75 convicted felons, to see the difference in personalities. Each of her interview sessions lasted 8 hours and were insanely comphrensive.
I want to do what this woman did. I want to do my own research on sexual "deviance" including rapists and child molesters. My goal will be to cleary distinguis the factors that lead a man into raping.
In my mind, rape traces back to two sources: culture and emotional sickness. Emotional sickness is the rare source though. By emotional sickness I mean insanity, servere depression, and genuine inability to understand cause and effect of violent actions.
I think child molesters fall under something else. I view pedophilia as different than normal rape. It is one thing to rape a legal female adult but entirely different to rape a 10 year old child. There are different factors that come into play and some pedophiles view themselves as a child or completly unable to relate to adult woman and honestly do find undeveloped bodies to be sexually exciting. It is complex.
In reference to the most common type of rape: male aganist female, I believe that traces back to culture. I firmly believe that our culture breeds men to rape women.
Just look at the double standards for male and female sexuality. We put so much emphasis on male agression and male sexual power being ok why would it not make sense for some men to feel justified in forcing a woman into sex?
And it is so ridiculously easy for a woman to be a victim. Rape is always wrong and it is never the individuals fault but our culture has made it far too easy for women to become victims and even worse to remain silent about it.
The origional cultural origin of rape was the emphasis on women taking submissive roles and needing a male to dominate them. The earliest justification of rape was that it was natural, women weren't supposed to have a say in sexual relations and a strong ideal man should be allowed to get sex when and where he wants it.
Our modern cultural source of rape is the objectifying as women as sex objects. While modern culture certainly places woman more closely equal to a man, the sexual allure of woman is exaggerated in such a way that sexual agression and frustration are bound to come out in men.
Overall, female sexuality is presented in a submissive manner. There are more dominant images coming into focus though. But still typical images of female sexuality are just fuckin everywhere. How was the glorifying of women as sexually appealing and responsive, purely on the basis of their bodies and willingness to allure a man, not bound to create a society where degrading and raping women was "normal"?
And that's the thing, rape is normal for our culture. Society has accepted that rape is going to happen and this has made women even more into wiling victims. Sure, we seemingly fight back aganist rape, we put convicted rapists behind bars and we stress that rape is a sad devasting attack but we have so simply accepted that it is bound to happen.
What I believe needs to be done to heal our culture that rapes is we need to teach healthy sexuality. Sex and women sells, the objectifying of women is not going to go away in the media but we can change the way men and women look at. How about if we dicussed pornography in sexual education in the high schools? How about if we pointed out to young teenage males how fake 99% of pornography is and how difficult it can be for a real woman to try and live up to female sexual steretypes. How about if every high school offered a young female defense class where besides learning basic physical defense moves, it would be emphasizesd to young teenage women that sex by force was never ok and that no man can ever justify forcing a woman. How about if we had real victims of sexual violence talk to students about the effects of being raped. Men need to start feeling empathy for female victims of sexual violence at a young age and they need to become utterly disgusted by the crime of a woman being forced into sex.
And most importantly, it has to be emphasized that women are sexual beings to the same degree as men. Stupid sterotypes of sexuality and gender differences need to be torn down because that only contributes to general inequality and to justification of men degrading women.
Alright. I'm going to be late for my next damn class I went off on such a tangent here.