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Yesterday we discussed the responsibility of the person raped in the situation in which she finds herself. We talked about how it is up to the woman to realize where she will be, the dangers involved and what kind of attention she attracts.
This time I’d like to switch gears and focus on the attacker– what are some things that cause a man to rape and murder a woman, and how does a person get there? Certainly rape was around long before porn. A Biblical example is as easy to find as the time when one of David’s sons forced himself on one of David’s daughters which was what caused part of Absolom’s rage against the brother and eventually David himself.
But what gets a man– and men are supposed to be trained to treat women as the fairer sex regardless of what the feminists claim– to go from passive to aggressive? The only logical progression I can see is one of which emotion, loss of inhibition and objectification dominate the male’s mind.
I don’t have statistics, but I’m sure that a majority of rapists do not know their target. I’m sure that the rapist we mentioned yesterday did not– it was opportunity. That being said, this man had a prostitute with him. He had already objectified women to the point that they were something to buy a service from and then be done with. In this case, he had to kill her.
Emotion certainly must play a part. A man has to get to the point where he acts out irrationally without thinking something through. Whether guided by his lust, anger, or whatever, a man has to get emotionally going to make a decision to go after and violate another human being.
But the last one is probably the most disconcerting– the wearing down of inhibitions. America has allowed porn and obscenity to become a big money maker under the guise of free speech. They have permitted that which was private to dominate daily life. They have perverted the beautiful act of marriage, and have trumpted the “virtues” of watching sex acts take place on whatever medium you can find.
This glorification and absorption in looking at people’s bodies allows for mental images and inhibitions to lower, causing men to fall more and more into objectification. As all sin, the more you see the more you need to fill the craving– for sin leaves a hole. Pretty soon it’s not enough to see the pictures or watch the video– you have to have it real life. Because sin is a progression, it’s easy to see where porn can make you think less of your spouse and how they are sexually and then focus on others. Then, depending on which way you turn, you’re doing things more and more risky until you need the rush that raping someone might bring you.
from everything i personally have read, this is incorrect.
i have to disagree with you on this, though i find much of porn misogynistic and gross. i don’t think men commit rape because of porn any more than kids shoot up their schools because of nintendo or violent movies. in my opinion, any cultural expression, whether it’s a pornographic movie, first-person shooter video game, or action movie, is a *reflection* of society rather than a true influence on it. there is nothing, in my opinion, about showing people having sex on video that is fundamentally, by definition, misogynist or related to rape fantasy–it’s the way pornography has been made that makes it reflect those things. rape and murder existed long before multimedia entertainment did, and so did the sicknesses that cause them.
just my $0.02.
Perhaps I should have clarified it by saying “violent rape”. Upon reading the post and the comment again, I realized that the “date rape” statistics out there skew the results so that a majority of rape happens at the hands of someone you know. So, in the case of violent rape, either they chose a target– which they may or may not know– or they took advantage of the opportunity.
As far as whether porn is a reflection of society or is something that is an influence on society, I believe that I would have to say (unfortunately) that it’s both. I think that it is a reflection of society in that if the stuff wasn’t profitable, it wouldn’t exist since there’d be no money in it. But I also think that it impacts society because people tend to get ideas from these mediums (porn, shooting games, etc) that they may not have had before.
Before the internet and other technology, people with certain sexual perversions may have believed that they were the only ones with those perversions and would have been isolated to themselves or a small group of friends. Also, society was exerting more pressure to keep those kinds of things in check. With technology, these people can now share their thoughts, create more people like them, organize, and practice their perversion. Now something that may have been repressed is expressed, and excited.
Whereas before a person with a child porn perversion would have to be content with whatever pictures he could get possession of in terms of photos, etc., now that same person can visit webcam girls to his heart’s content– interact with them, etc.
Since this behavior is one that continues to want more and more to get the same high– and since there is more to be had in this digital age– I believe that it is easier for it to result in rape, incest and other perverse actions towards others.
I think that if we did the study, we’d find porn in all of the backgrounds of violent rapists.
i absolutely think that porn has to do with rape. if men are getting so used to seeing women as objects in porn, then they definately will see them as sexual objects in their everyday life. and all rapists see women as objects.