Why is rape wrong?
Seriously, why? I’m not being facetious, here. Of course I know it is wrong, but at the moment I want to consider why. “Lack of consent” is insufficient as an explanation–I do not consent to a man sitting in a seat on a bus I would like to sit in, but that doesn’t make his sitting there wrong. “Violence” is also insufficient, since we can all agree that punching a man is wrong but, though it may cause more physical pain, it is on a completely different level than rape.
Indeed, we are forced to admit that there is something unusual about the nature of sex. The laws of human nature dictate that sex is supposed to happen in one way and not another. When it doesn’t, there are often devastating emotional and psychological consequences. This is why consent is so important in the first place. As professor J. Budziszewski put it in the title of his recent book, the laws governing sex and the rest of human behavior are something “we can’t not know.”
Many colleges understand that rape is wrong and admirably put a lot of effort into trying to prevent it. However, they don’t seem to have a very firm grasp on why. On the one hand–in the case of sexual assault prevention programs–they seem to understand that sex is special, with immutable rules governing how it is supposed to work. On the other hand, as in the case of Yale’s biennial Sex Week or Duke University’s Sex Workers Art Show, they send the message that sex can work in whatever way you dang well please.
In a recent post on The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s website, National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood alluded to this apparent contradiction:
Educate about “sexual harassment and sexual violence” on one hand, and promote sexual license and vulgarity on the other hand? This may not be a complete contradiction, but it is pretty close to one. License and restraint are awkward partners. Campus culture currently decrees that we should want both: It decrees that we should strive to liberate students from conventional morality in favor of free-wheeling sexual expression, while at same time we should instill an ethic of male restraint hedged by severe penalties.
Perhaps someday the larger part of American higher education will return to an understanding that the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” on which our rights, prosperity, and happiness depend, aren’t malleable but fixed.
UPDATE: Some commenters seem to think that I am somehow defending rape. I apologize for the confusion. I meant just the opposite (see “Of course, I know it is wrong” and my subsequent inquiry into why it is worse than other bad things). I’m saying it’s really, really, bad. The question I raised here is “Why is it bad?” If we are going to conclude that it is bad–and I think we’re all in agreement that it is not just bad but much more so than lots of other bad things–then there has to be some basis for why it is bad. I believe that our special abhorrence to it and its profound effects are evidence of the laws of human nature. Whereas in some cases our innate sense of right and wrong is obscured, here it is clear. If we are to say “rape is wrong” and really mean it, right and wrong must be real things, knowable at bottom to all people.
Also, the example of punching someone would also have given us an insight into the natural law. It’s also (in many cases, at least) obviously wrong. Imagine someone saying “there is no right and wrong,” then getting punched in the face. He may offer to give the attacker his lunch money or threaten to call the police, but without right and wrong the attacker is under no moral obligation to stop. However, I chose rape because it highlights higher education’s abandonment of the idea of natural law, especially when it comes to sex. We all agree that rape is worse than punching someone. Why? It seems obvious that it is because of the nature of sex. There are rules knowable to all of us governing who to have sex with, when to do so, etc. This is why rape is especially bad. Yet colleges often treat sex as if it’s just an amusement.
8 comments
I just had to register to comment on this one. Was linked to it from another site. Let me try to break this down. You think that rape is wrong, but cannot logically explain why? That’s some pretty inane philosophy right there.
Let me try to explain. You used an example of someone sitting in your seat? Why? Why not try to compare levels of something similar? For instance; if you punch someone who doesn’t want to be punched compared to if you stab someone who doesn’t want to be stabbed. Why is one worse than the other? Because one causes more damage, obviously.
It’s the same thing with rape and your chair example. Taking someone’s chair is annoying, but not that damaging. Forcing someone who doesn’t know you to have sexual intercourse is damaging, physically and mentally.
I understand that you do think rape is wrong. The problem here is your lack of mental depth to find any logic in it. I’m going posit that A) There doesn’t need to be a logical reason for it to be wrong. and B) In which A) doesn’t really matter, because there IS a logical reason that it is wrong, which I have explained.
I too was linked here and just had to register and reply to this. Specifically about the lack of consent bit.
Your example with the bus seat is weird to say the least. Is that bus seat your property? Is it a part of your person? Can you see where I’m going with this?
If you want a more fitting analogy to rape consider this; A stranger on the bus walks up to you and sits in your lap. You tell him to get off your lap but he refuses. There’s also the issue of physical and mental trauma, of course, but let’s keep it simple. Is the stranger doing anything wrong?
I think John Locke just rolled over in his grave. Are you really so unimaginative that you cannot conceive of why rape is a worse offense than punching someone, let alone taking someone’s seat on a bus?
Then you seem to imply that university policies are incoherent because they strive to extinguish rape while providing an environment where students are free to sleep with each other.
And how does that last sentence follow from what was before it?
This article is just a mess, and I advise you take it down.
I find this a very strange question to be asked on a website devoted to the ideas of John Locke, because just Locke’s philosophy alone provides a very clear answer about the wrongness of rape. Locke’s labour theory of property starts with the assumption that you own yourself, so it follows that you own your labour and the fruits of that labour. Consent comes into this because rape is a violation of your property rights, although I think most people would take rape a little harder than somebody dumping trash on your lawn without permission. Your bus seat analogy doesn’t work because the bus doesn’t belong to you, so the other man has as much right to the seat as you do, but he was there first.
University policy about sex are perfectly coherent and very simple. It can be summed up as ‘all sex is fine so long as it is between consenting adults’. To my mind that is a pretty immutable and fixed law, and certainly easier to understand than “conventional morality” with all its caveats about what and when sex is fine. And such a policy is also consistent with Locke’s philosophy.
To sum up my points:
- your body is your property
- rape is wrong because it violates your property rights
- all sex is fine if it’s consensual
I would be interested to see what your standpoint would be on this issue if someone close to you were a victim of this crime. If your mother was raped, would you still have the balls to compare it to the seat on a bus? Or a punch in the face?
No one ever got AIDS or pregnant from a bus seat or a fist to the chops. Rape carries consequences with it that are those of the victim alone to bear.
I love the “blogosphere” (though I hate the term) for giving freedom of speech a real chance. But uneducated and poorly researched pulp regarding morality and choice really never fails to give freedom of speech an ugly under belly.
If all this still has failed to make you see how willfully ignorant your poorly composed claims are, may I suggest a more base and simpler activity to help make my point to your dull mind: rent Deliverance and then tell me if you yourself could take it up the tail pipe at gunpoint and still shrug off the validity of consent.
This is, frankly, a ridiculous argument. I’d say that even if I were in favor of restriction of sexual expression which, as you might have guessed at this point, I’m not.
Why is stealing someone’s car worse than punching them? Because cars are valuable. The fact that they are valuable does not inherently impose limits on how a car owner may enjoy using their vehicle. (The safety of others does, but misused sex is unlikely to kill anybody unless it’s really, really fun sex.) Sex is valuable–the ability to have sex with the person you want to in the manner you want to is valuable. Rape takes that choice away; it dictates who you will have sex with, and the manner in which you will have sex.
Why is sexual freedom valuable? Well, not to be too pointed, but it’s valuable in large part because it’s so rare. There are all manner of folks who want to tell everyone else what they ought to be doing or not doing in the bedroom. In times past here and in not-so-distant places even now, those folks backed up their nosiness with a variety of strikingly appalling punishments. As we call know, when supply goes down, demand goes up. Supply has been down for much of human history, so demand is pretty high nowadays!
After my knee-jerk reaction of outrage, I decided to actually read the article, and I am certainly much less disgusted. When I was younger, I believed that I could not fully qualify rape as a horrible experience because it had not happened to me- I feel much differently now and am ashamed of my former beliefs, but I can see where you’re coming from. However, I do not agree.
My first point has been covered extensively above- that you compared consent to sitting next to someone on a bus. However, buses have IMPLIED consent- it’s in the social contract that when you take a bus seat to move to the far corner, and expect someone to sit next to you if more people come on. If you don’t want someone to sit next to you, you can be unwelcoming by sitting closest to the aisle, or putting your bag on the seat- in that case, people will likely ask if you can move over or move your bag, and you are free to say no.
Your example of violence, being punched, also is not usually accompanies by consent- however, there is much less experience of being violated. Even if i was punched in the genitals, I would not equate it to being felt up- There is a different meaning behind it (usually anger) than there is while being felt up (usually lust, but it can be others as I will address next).
My second point is that rape is not about sex, and therefore your examples of the incongruity between sexual harassment education and, reading between the lines of the article you linked, what seems to be a promotion of healthy sexuality. There’s nothing wrong with being in touch with your sexuality, and there’s nothing wrong (in my eyes) with women stripping or even prostituting AS LONG AS they feel empowered by it- if they feel forced into it, or uncomfortable displaying their bodies, obviously it’s a different issue. But something like stripping, or even being promiscuous- that’s a person’s choice. They are CHOOSING to be objectified- that may be the wrong word, what I mean is that in engaging in sex or dancing to cause arousal, they are adding “sexual object” on TOP of themselves, although it does not replace them, and this designator can be removed once the sex/dancing is done.
Rape is what happens when you see someone not only as just a sex object, but as just an object. Rape is about power, about controlling someone through sex. It involves an extreme violation of personal space- It’s not just sitting next to someone, it is crawling INSIDE them, and tearing out their soul while they beg you to stop. When you’re punched, you may be hurt outside, and hurt inside that a friend could do this to you- however, it’s just a punch. Being beaten nearly to death, thinking you were going to die, not being able to stop what’s happening to you, might be a better analogy for rape, but it still doesn’t take into account that violation of your insides, and the imbalance of power in rapes.
On top of this, rape is something very hard to get over- many survivors develop PTSD, and blame themselves for what happened. This is in part propelled by people with similar beliefs to yours- people who equate rape with a promotion of sex in culture. If a woman is wearing a low-cut top, OBVIOUSLY it’s her fault. Nevermind that an informal study on Jezebel found that most of the women who answered who had been sexually harassed were NOT doing/wearing anything overtly sexy. (poll here: http://jezebel.com/5608138/what-you-were-wearing-when-you-were-sexually-harassed) If a woman is walking by herself at night, OBVIOUSLY it’s her fault, nevermind that almost 80% of woman rape victims knew their attacker. (data here: http://www.pandys.org/escapinghades/statistics.html)
In conclusion, rape is wrong because it is an EXTREME violation, not only physically, but also mentally. There is no consent, not even implied. It involves one person seeing the other as an object, and isn’t that where all problems start?
I recognize this post is a few years old but I just had to comment.
Duke, I applaud you for asking the question. That you raised the question in sincerity is evidence that we are failing our sons miserably. That a woman’s body should ever be objectified to such a degree that a man thinks he can use it for his pleasure when it suits him is archaic. Turn it around for a minute. Put yourself in prison where rape is rampant. Would you care that you didn’t consent because someone drugged you or were too tired to say “yes”? I think so. If you have a daughter or a mother and someone raped them while they were sleeping, is it okay because the man didn’t get a chance to get a “yes”?
I am a woman. So I am speaking from experience. My body is mine. It belongs only to me. Rape is not taking a convenient seat on the bus, it is a violation that is felt at the deepest level. It creates a tear in a person’s psyche that changes them forever.
Remember this: a woman who is sleeping, intoxicated, or passed out from drugs will always know that was raped. Her body knows. It always remembers. I speak from experience.
Without consent means a man gets 7 minutes of pleasure in exchange for years of her psychological pain. This is something we don’t talk enough about in the media. If my post seems a bit angry, it’s because it is. My body still remembers. I hope this comment helped you to understand. In the end, you have a choice between being Prince Charming or her nightmare.
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