The rape thread

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
• Next message: Rob Quinlan: "reply to Pinsker on rape"
• Previous message: Eve Pinsker: "Re: Emerging rape thread"

To all on the list,

It is my sincere belief that the issue of rape can be simplified somewhat.
As I see it, and as it has been mentioned by others previously, rape is one
of the perverse manifestations of testosterone based male sexual control.
Add to that the similarly based perverse manifestations of sexual
aggression and one has the foundations upon which most of what we call rape
is based.

As many of us might agree, there seems to be two main elements to human
male sexuality. I hope we are agreed that human female sexuality has little
or nothing directly to do with rape. I would like to reiterate that my
intention is to simplify the discussion, nothing more. Again, the two
elements are (as in most things human):

1) primarily instinctual or innate
2) primarily rational or cognitive (more social)

Rape tends to occur primarily when the "primitive" instinctual or
unthinking side of "man" (incl.?), for one reason or another, predominates
over "his" rational or more socialized side. Rape is obviously inhuman from
our social perspective, on one level, but on another, it is unfortunately
not inhuman at all. Are we not as civilized beings constantly struggling to
find an acceptable balance between the instinctual and the rational or
social? (not to detract from instinctive social behavior) It seem that we
are all too often erroneously forgetting our more primitive natures.
Whether we like it or not, instinctual sexuality in the human male is to
some extent also aggressive, and controlling. There is little question that
those two elements are also central to our very drive to procreate and
undoubtedly have, in a sense, served us well in our evolutionary and or
historical struggle for survival.

That said, rape is an inherently anti-social behavior no matter what the
rationalizations are. Armies, as in the case of Bosnia and the WWII eastern
front, are also engaging in that anti-social behavior that is condoned or
even encouraged by the general staff or elements of the military and
political leadership. In the case of the Soviets, this kind of rape is
simply an extension of the "rape and pillage" strategy of yesteryears.
Remember, virtually the entire industrial base of the Soviet Zones, that
amounted to anything, (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.) were
carted off to Russia as the territories were "liberated." The Soviet rape
policy was seen as a sexual reward and an outlet for revenge for its battle
weary soldiers. It contributed to wholesale terror and was seen also as a
useful weapon that clogged transportation nodes with refugees thereby
rendering the enemy less effective. War in an of itself was and still is
largely an exercise that also brings our most "primitive" nature to the
surface. Recall the relatively isolated cases of rape by American forces
and even by the Germans where the perpetrators ended up being hung by wire
from telegraph poles or found themselves floating in the Desna river,
respectively. In these cases there was no actual strategic rape policy and
their own fellow soldiers simply took matters into their own hands.
Obviously Bosnia is quite different because it is first and foremost a
civil war. The Serbs and the Bosnian Serbs, that share much with the
Russians, ended up once again deriving maximum utility from the rape
strategy by again bringing out and exploiting the most base instincts of
their male combatants in this time of war. Terror flight (cleansing),
demoralization (mothers, sisters, wives, daughters violated), some kind of
ethnic or racial contamination (raped women bearing mixed offspring),
primitive sexual satisfaction, and revenge satiation ...

Whatever the specific reasons or motives for rape might seem to be on the
surface, whether they be psychologically, socially, or even irrationally
motivated, the underlying instinctual and sexual aggressions, need to
control, or dominate, on the part of the human male, lingers powerfully
just below that surface. Rape, in whatever form, happens when human reason,
social domestication, rational perspective, self-discipline and
understanding loose out to that "primitive" usually deeply suppressed other
side of ourselves.

Could it be that therein lies an explanation why the less cultured, less
disciplined, and less aware also tend to rape more?


Bjorn Fry

• Next message: Rob Quinlan: "reply to Pinsker on rape"
• Previous message: Eve Pinsker: "Re: Emerging rape thread"