Rape

Rape is an instrument with which man has subjugated woman over the ages. The actual act is not necessary, the possibility of it has created a sort of fear psychosis in the mind of women. This fear has been used to create the male dominant society though out history. The male uses this fear to dominate women in all sorts of relationships, wife, daughter, sister, mother....

To ensure equality the concept of rape has to be erased both in theory and practice.

Women think themselves to be the weaker sex because in her mind, in the genes, is ingrained the fear psychosis mentioned above. It is a vicious circle. A rape happens because man thinks he is stronger than woman. The rape instills a fear, a sense of inferiority in the mind of women. And another rape happens again... It goes on....

We have heard the story since childhood about a caveman hitting a woman on the head with a wooden club and drags her into the cave. We have laughed.

It is not funny.

It is rape happening in the pre-historic age.

In the United States, a rape is reported about once every five minutes.

FBI Uniform Crime Report, 2000

"I prefer to characterize rape simply as a form of torture. Like the torturer, the rapist is motivated by the urge to dominate, humiliate, and destroy his victim. Like a torturer, he does so by using the most intimate acts available to humans -- sexual ones."

Helen Benedict, Virgin or Vamp, 1992

The definition of rape.

• the unlawful compelling of a woman through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.
• any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.

Rape fattens on the fantasies of the normal male
like a maggot in garbage.

Marge Piercy

It is little wonder that rape is one of the least-reported crimes. Perhaps it is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused and, in reality, it is she who must prove her good reputation, her mental soundness, and her impeccable propriety

Freda Adler

Rape is a culturally fostered means of suppressing women. Legally we say we deplore it, but mythically we romanticize and perpetuate it, and privately we excuse and overlook it

Victoria Billings

Rape is not just pushy lovemaking.

Mason Cooley

As long as there is rape ... there is not going to be any peace or justice or equality or freedom. You are not going to become what you want to become or who you want to become. You are not going to live in the world you want to live in.

Andreas Dworkin

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.

Andreas Dworkin

Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.

Andreas Dworkin

Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, their codes.

Marilyn French

Nature allows all, by its murderous laws;
Incest and rape, all theft and parricide,
All sodom's pleasures, Sappho's lesbian games,
All that destroys and sends men to their graves

Marquis de Sade

And many of us sing hymns about the beauty and kindness of nature! Nature is brutal. 

"I survived this torture which left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability."

Tori Amos

African proverb: "The ax forgets, the tree remembers."

SOME STATISTICS OF RAPE

In a study conducted by the Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers interviewed 8,000 women and 8,000 men. Using a definition of rape that includes forced vaginal, oral, and anal intercourse, the survey found that 1 in 6 women had experienced an attempted rape or a completed rape.

At the time they were raped:

22% were under the age of twelve
54% were under the age of eighteen
83% were under the age of twenty-five

Acquaintance rape is much more prevalent than stranger rape. In a study published by the Department of Justice, 82% of the victims were raped by someone they knew (acquaintance/friend, intimate, relative) and 18% were raped by a stranger.
From a report on Violence Against Women based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995

Source

It is all very nice that we say man should try to be 'good' and not commit rape but rape has occurred throughout recorded human history. What then?

Let us see if there is rape amongst animals. There is.

I quote the following passage from Wikipedia.

Controversial interpretations and implications aside (see Sociobiological theories of rape), sex in a forceful or apparently coercive context has also been documented in a variety of species. A notable example is bottlenose dolphins, where at times, a pod of bachelor males will 'corner' a female. Furthermore, in a zoo where it is common practice to put newly captured dolphins in with dolphins who are established in their enclosures, other species of dolphin are never put in together with bottlenoses because the bottlenose in some arachnids (spiders), notably those whose females eat the males during sex if not tricked with food and/or tied down with threads, and in some herbivorous herd species or species where males and females are very different in size, where the male dominates sexually by sheer force and size.

Some species of birds appear to combine sexual intercourse with apparent violent assault; these include ducks, geese, and white-fronted bee-eaters. According to Emlen and Wrege (1986) forced copulations occur in this socially nesting species, and females must avoid the unwelcome attention of males as they emerge from their nest burrows or they are forced to the ground and mated with. Apparently, such attacks are made preferentially on females who are laying and who may thus mother their offspring as a result.

In 2007, research suggested that in the Acilius genus of water beetles (also known as "diving beetles"), an "evolutionary arms race" between the genders means that there is no courtship system for these beetles. "It's a system of rape. But the females don't take things quietly. They evolve counter-weapons." Cited mating behaviours include males suffocating females underwater till exhausted, and allowing only occasional access to the surface to breathe for up to six hours (to prevent them breeding with other males), and females which have a variety of body shapings (to prevent males from gaining a grip). Foreplay is "limited to the female desperately trying to dislodge the male by swimming frantically around."

A depressing picture. But one point stands out. The female strikes back. The arachnids spider female eats the male. The water beetle female does all sorts of things to avoid the male grip.

Perhaps the human female should do so too. May be they do. Witness the guile and mind games and deceit that women practise.

They can hardly be blamed for doing so.

One thing is clear. Rape and male-dominated society goes hand-in-hand. It is a racket that the human male has practised over the centuries. It is time the female fought back hard.

And stop watching the so-called 'nature-animal' TV channels. They insidiously advise us that being like animals is OK as we are animals too. We are like animals, agreed but we are far different from other animals. An animal female rape victim does not get traumatised for life. We remember pain more because we have a long long memory. We have a bigger brain. It is time to use it. Instead of acting like animals.

[A good discussion on "do animals rape?" in Yahoo Answers]

Come to think of it. We see rape occurring all the time. Not only women but men. Cheating someone. Bullying someone. A overbearing boss in the office. An overprotective parent. A friend who really is not your friend. A spouse who really does not love you. There is a element of domination in every relationship, that smothers you, kills your growth. That is rape.

Useful Link

Curing A Rape Victim's Trauma With Homeopathy

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A FILM WORTH SEEING....

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO BUY DVD)

Jodie Foster won her first Oscar for her role in this drama, based on an actual incident. She plays a girl out for a night of fun at a poolroom. Before she knows what's happening, the men she's been flirting with have pinned her down for a gang rape. The story centers on the efforts of a district attorney (Kelly McGillis) to press her case, in spite of a wall of silence by the participants--and then to take the unusual step of going after the witnesses as accomplices. Foster is outstanding as a tough, blue-collar woman who persists in what seems like an unwinnable case, despite the prospect of character assassination for standing up for herself. 
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