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| Rape | ||||||||||
| Rape is the act of forcing penetrative sexual acts, against his or her will through violence, force, threat of injury, or other duress, or where the victim is unable to decline, due to the effects of drugs or alcohol. Rape is considered one of the most serious sex crimes in almost all jurisdictions. The related term statutory rape is where a sexual act is automatically considered rape by the law, regardless of whether it was coercive or consensual. Such laws are common. They exist in order to prevent adults from having sex with minors, who are more easily influenced and therefore are protected by being deemed automatically unable to give legally effective informed consent. Forcible or non-consensual acts that do not meet the criterion for rape in a jurisdiction (in most cases because they are not penetrative) are often called sexual assault instead. The word originates from the Latin verb rapere: to seize or take by force. The Latin term for the act of rape itself is raptus. The term is sometimes used by analogy to refer to any act of serious violation of the person, and in a non-sexual sense referring to acts of invasive destructiveness. |
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| Definitions of rape | ||||||||||
| Rape is, in most jurisdictions, a crime defined as sexual intercourse or penetration without valid consent by both parties. In some jurisdictions, rape is defined by penetration of the anus or the vagina by a penis, while in other jurisdictions, the penetration of either the vagina or the anus need not be by a penis, but can be by other objects such as a finger or a dildo. Some jurisdictions expand the definition of rape further to include other sexual acts without valid consent, including oral copulation and masturbation. The lack of valid consent does not necessarily mean that the victim explicitly refused to give consent; generally, where consent was obtained by physical force, threat of injury, or other duress, or where consent was given by a person whose age was below the age of consent, a person who was intoxicated by drugs or alcohol, or a person who was mentally impaired by illness or developmental disability, the consent is considered invalid. (When the sexual activity involved a person whose age was below the age of consent, the crime defined is often known as "statutory rape," although a number of jurisdictions use terms such as "unlawful sexual intercourse" to avoid the forcible connotation of the word "rape.") | ||||||||||
| Rape and human rights | ||||||||||
| Probably for much of human history, rape, violence, and war have often occurred in connection with one another. In the twentieth century, the use of rape as a "weapon of war" has been well documented and addressed by NGOs as well as the United Nations [1] and national governments. If the victim is under 18 the rapist may be charged with child abuse. | ||||||||||
| Sociobiological analysis of rape | ||||||||||
| Some animals appear to exhibit behaviors which resemble rape in humans, in particular combining sexual intercourse with violent assault, such as are observed in ducks, geese, and certain species of dolphins. It is difficult to determine to what extent the idea of rape can be extended to intercourse in animal species, as the defining attribute of rape in humans is the lack of informed consent, which is difficult to determine in animals. See also: Non-human animal sexuality. Some sociobiologists argue that our ability to understand rape, and thereby prevent and treat it, is severely compromised because its basis in human evolution has been ignored. They argue that rape, as a reproductive strategy, is encountered in many instances in the animal kingdom, including among the great apes, and presumably also among early humans. Some studies indicate that it is an evolutionary strategy for certain males who lack the ability to persuade the female by non-violent means to pass on their genes. (Thornhill & Thornhill, 1983). Such sociobiological theories, regarding rape as adaptive, are highly controversial, and are not accepted by all mainstream scientists. Camille Paglia and some sociobiologists have argued that victim-blaming should not be totally dismissed in all cases, since some sociological models suggest that it may be genetically-inbuilt for a certain proportion of men and women to act in ways which would tend to raise the chances of rape occurring, and that this may be a biological feature of the species. This, however, is a very controversial view. A contrasting view, given by Lewis Thomas in his "The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a biology watcher", claims that rape is not only not an evolutionary benefit to the rapist, but that it is strongly maladaptive, and therefore selected against. Others dismiss Lewis Thomas' conclusion, by pointing out that what is maladaptive in one place and time, may be adaptive in another place and time. For example, in certain animal groups females only voluntarily mate with alpha males. In such an environment, non-alpha males are able to pass on their genes by impregnating females without their consent. Clearly, in animals with this behavior, the genes of non-alpha males who don't participate in this strategy are lost forever, while the genes of non-alpha males who do participate in this strategy are passed on. |
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| The role of control and loss of privacy in rape | ||||||||||
Rape has been regarded as "a crime of violence and control" since the 1970s. According to psychological analysis literature, "control" is a key feature in most definitions of privacy:
Control is important in providing:
"The more comfortable a person is with talking about invasion of privacy and in insisting that he or she has privacy that deserves respect, the clearer that person’s understanding of rape will be…" (Mclean, D. 1995) Consequently, it is important to be aware of the approach of this subject of rape through the concept of privacy because of the historical background and the need to bypass certain stigmas. |