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Can all men rape?

Enter here to explore ethical issues and discuss the meaning and source of morality.
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Zeff
Posts: 142
Joined: August 6th, 2016, 2:13 pm

Can all men rape?

#1 Post by Zeff » July 31st, 2017, 7:25 am

Articles like this help illustrate the question...
http://freethinker.co.uk/2017/07/30/wor ... -evil-god/

We all deplore the totally dishonourable "honor" culture that leads to such criminal attacks on innocent women and girls but it also raises the question of how she was raped. That someone is brutalised as a young man by years of warfare or a violent culture and environment is understandable but, in this example, we are talking about an underdeveloped rather than war-torn or even crime-torn place. I suppose life there may be very difficult but that doesn't explain how such rapes occur.

Surely a woman's visible distress would be enough to dis-enable most men from raping her even without someone watching or any risk of 'being caught' - or would it?

Zeff
Posts: 142
Joined: August 6th, 2016, 2:13 pm

Re: Can all men rape?

#2 Post by Zeff » July 31st, 2017, 7:27 am

It should be noted that specific example is from Dawn newspaper. I haven't been able to verify with other sources. It doesn't mean rapes don't happen, or that that one didn't.

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animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: Can all men rape?

#3 Post by animist » August 1st, 2017, 1:36 pm

I am not sure I get the focus of what you are asking, Zeff. Rape is a legal concept, but I often think that, given that many or most societies in which women have little control over their own bodies and a presumed duty to produce children, it could be argued (and probably is by more militant feminists) that most sex is coercive and therefore rape.

Leaving this aside, you've mentioned societies in which individuals, especially women, don't seem to figure as bearers of rights, which instead are vested in the "family", so that dishonouring a family by raping one of its women can be punished by subjecting a female member of the "guilty" family to similar punishment. This reminds me of the Code of Hammurabi, AFAIK the first written legal code in history, in which a man who kills another man's son could see his own son killed as punishment; this is the same practice of vesting rights in the family (or at least its head member, the father) as in the punishment rape cases, and here we see it applying to males as well as females.

How genuine is the "honour" outrage that is claimed to justify the rapes might be questioned, in the same way as the "corrective" rapes of lesbians which are frequent in South Africa - is there instead a bit of convenience in these stories which covers simple lust and desire for domination?

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