Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1996 13:22:42 -0600
From: jlnich1-AT-service1.uky.edu (jln)
Subject: Re: Rape



>I'm tired of hearing straight feminists speak as if rape committed against
>people like themselves were somehow special, in a class all by itself.  Why
>can't we see all these things as sexually motivated hate crimes and punish
>them because of the harm they do to individuals and communities?
>
>--L. McWhorter, U. of Richmond


I think part of the problem here, as evidenced by the recent discussion, is
that it is not clear that rape is a sexually motivated crime.  Rape
involves sexual organs and sometimes penetration.  But the psychological
community, the last I heard anyway, copnsiders rape to be "power"
motivated.
Of course, part of the problem here is the recent "confusions" concerning
what counts as rape: what should we label as rape.  The defining of
"dAte-rape" as an instance of rape seems to confuse the issue.  Is date
rape, "rape" in the sense that someone is primiarily motivated to exercise
power over someone else, or is it the impositions of one's sexual desires
onto another in which power comes into play, but not necessarily as the end
of the activity.  That is, IMHO, date-rape seems to have as its end sexual
satisfaction, whereas "rape" per se has as its end the assertion of power
over others.  This is evidenced in the fact that any woman(person) no
matter how old or young is subject to rape:  I find it hard to beleive that
people who break into a 90 yr old woman's home to rape her are sexually
motivated.  Or the fact that rape occurs often with victory in battle.
Of course, there are similarities between "sexually motivated crimes" which
you list and rape.  Rape attacks, generally, one class of people: women.
But then, bashing homo-sexuals is not motivated by sexual desire either.
SO I gues maybe I have a problem with you wanting to label these crimes as
sexually motivated.  It is not clear that there is a distinction between
gay-bashing and, say, what the Nazis did to the Jews.  Nor is it clear that
what (some) men have done to women throughout the ages is any different
>from what (some) peoples have done to various other groups of people
througout the ages: balcks, jews, indians, etc. What has been done to women
is more pervasive through all societies.  One might wonder if race crimes
are more predomnant coming from "white" people because of the relative
strength in terms of power that white people have had throughout history.
If Asians had had the technology of whites and whites not, would we see a
reverse trend?
Anway, my point simply is that it is not clear that these crimes should be
labeled as sexually motivated unless one is using that term in a very broad
way.

Jeff

JLN                             "The architectonic structure of the Kantian
jlnich1-AT-pop.uky.edu                system, like the gymnastic pyramids of

                                   Sade's orgies and the schematized
                                   principles of the early bourgeois

                                   freemasonry reveals an organization of
                                   life as a whole which is deprived of
                                   any substantial goal."
                                     from  _The Dialectic of Enlightenment_