The Crucible of Rape

Starting Intuitions  

When considering crimes that occur between one subject and another, I have tended to believe that rape is a worse crime than murder. I think this is significant because if you were to ask someone what they think the worst of such crimes is, they would likely say murder. There are, however, a few reasons why I believe rape is worse. 

First, the “non-inevitable” principle. A person can go their whole life (meaning, it is possible) without being raped. A person cannot, however, go their whole life without dying. Preemptively, I will respond to one objection I anticipate: while rape may not be inevitable, there are certain methods of dying (e.g., torture) that are not inevitable and thus, at the minimum, just as non-inevitable as rape. In response, the non-inevitability principle refers to the aftermath of rape and murder. To die (in this case, from murder) is inevitable. To be a survivor of rape (from having experienced rape) is not.  

Second, the “no justifiable circumstances” principle. While we can think about many circumstances in which murder is justified, it is difficult to think of even one circumstance in which rape is justified. For the former, we can think of a variety of self-defence cases or certain cases where a person is in a state of automatism, and so on. For the latter, this exercise proves to be much harder. In fact, I have only been able to think of one very obscure scenario. It is as follows. A person with a gun (A) enters a home where there are a man (B) and a woman (C). (A) points the gun at (B) and says to rape (C) or else one or both will be shot and killed. In this very particular case, I think that the rape would be considered justified. I do, however, think that if, in this same case, B had an actual desire to perform the rape, then—despite the threat of death—the act would not be justified. This leads me to believe that what is wrong with rape has something to do with the mindset in which it is committed.  

While the aim of this piece is not to convince readers that rape is worse than murder, I  thought it beneficial to lay out my starting intuitions. I think readers may still consider the main argument I make while disagreeing with my intuitions. This leads me into my inquiry about the crucible of rape. My leading question is: how can something that I find so egregious—worse than murder—happen, and some people think it is okay? My starting assumption is that rapists do not all have some kind of complex disorder in common that is causing them to be the way they are.  

Rape from Subjugation 

First, I aim to answer the question of how rape originates and becomes justified by its perpetrators. In the case of women, I believe that rape is a consequence of the construction or becoming of ‘women’ as other, object, and subordinate to ‘men’ who are Self and subject. In defining themselves as subject, men in turn rely on women for their own defining.¹

This is relevant for a few reasons. One, through the subjugation of women, men gain the ability to dominate over them. This happens in a variety of ways: occupationally, socially, economically, and even sexually. Two, by establishing women as object, men allow themselves to make use of women (as objects) which is particularly relevant when it comes to the act of rape. Here, we may also look to theories of colonisation and the domination of colonisers over the colonised from people like Frantz Fanon or Edward Said. Similarly, a pattern emerges whereby the coloniser establishes the colonised as subordinate to justify their own actions. In my recent reading, Fisk makes an analogy between rape and occupation: “Occupation […] for anyone of any race or religion—was not just humiliation. It was a form of rape.”² 

Generally, my conclusion here is that through the subjugation of women as other or object, men dominate over women in a variety of ways, including sexually, and use her to both establish himself as Self or subject and to fulfill his desires.  

Rape as Conquest  

Second, I aim to answer the question of why men are motivated to commit rape. For while men may occur in structures that convince them that something like rape is acceptable, what would motivate one to commit such an act? I believe that the motive to commit rape is one in which men aim to conquest women as a way of affirming masculinity. De Beauvoir analogises men’s conquest of virgin women to that of unoccupied lands: “nothing seems as desirable to man as what has never belonged to any other human: thus conquest is a  unique and absolute event.”³ Similarly, I am drawing on theories which view the act of hunting as a form of affirming masculinity.⁴ Women have been subjugated to almost the level of or the level of non-human animals (think also of the referral to women as “female”—confining her to her sex.)⁵ This subjugation allows men to, in the same way that they might conquest an animal, conquest women for the purpose of affirming their masculinity. This is done both through the conquest itself but also by affirming women as the dominated other. Further, through this act, men engage in the crucial performance of gender to be “real.”⁶ 

I think we see how this plays out in the colloquial language men use when referring to  their conquest of women sexually: ‘getting laid,’ ‘getting lucky,’ or ‘getting some,’ and the correlation with that and being more of a ‘man.’ The affirmation of masculinity provides an impetus to violate women (justified by women’s subjugation)—conquering them, establishing them as dominated over, and performing masculinity.  

Conclusion 

This inquiry responds to my intuitions about rape being a worse crime than murder. Crucially because rape—unlike murder—is founded on constructed ideology that subjugates women as other or object while allowing men to establish themselves as Self or subject. Through the act of rape, men gain further domination and affirm their masculinity. To address rape, then, it is essential to address the patriarchal ideologies that cause and motivate it. 

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¹ Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Vintage, 2011).

² Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (National  Geographic Books, 2007), 939. 

³ De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 173. 

⁴ Karen Wonders, “Hunting Narratives of the Age of Empire: A Gender Reading of Their  Iconography,” Environment and History 11, no. 3 (2005): 269– 

91. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734005774434511. 

⁵ De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 21. 

⁶Judith Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1999).