Hey, I’m Dutch myself. I can say these things. 
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except that instead of the rapist, i was quoting a friend of his. what an asshole.
Eunuchs?
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I would think that system administrators are probably represented at about the same proportion as any other…
Oh, wait. I misread that, sorry.
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Disagree.
Or rather, agree in part.
You can’t do anything to fix another person; someone can only change because they want to change. So, no, there’s nothing you can do to turn a monster into a human being. However, I don’t believe that it’s ever too late for someone to come back and become a good person again, if that is what they want.
Of course, this takes a self-awareness and willingness to admit fault that few humans possess, so for any given case, it’s unlikely. And the “monster” will have to live with both the internal guilt and external shame for their actions, so it will never be behind them. However, we humans are changeable, malleable creatures. I don’t think the barrier between “evil” and “good” is insurmountable, but I will admit that it’s probably a much easier barrier to cross going the other way.
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Ha! Not the worst of my DYAC moments 
One thing that I like about this place is that it’s very rare in threads like this one to have to hear from someone who thinks it’s necessary to point out that men get raped too (and worse, that focusing on rape of women overshadows it, etc.). Things can get pretty brocentric around here sometimes, but OTOH, I can count on that kind of shit getting shut down and ridiculed out of town right quick.
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I created an account just to like this post.
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Thank you. This statement is one of the most powerful things I’ve read in a long time, and I spent much of the morning reading it and choking back tears.
It was also read aloud almost in its entirety on CNN, and on the House floor.
@xeni Would you consider doing a story linking to the statement?
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Color me ‘flattered.’
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How is forcing a foreign object inside someone’s body – against their will – a sex act?
Sex is extraordinarily intimate, and so the best way to show ultimate dominance and/or contempt is to violently harm someone in a sexual way. Drunk guys at a bar might punch each other, they might even try to kill each other (and occasionally succeed) but they don’t rape each other.
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For a less metaphysical take:
Behaviour is based in neurology, which is shaped by both genetics and environment. Environmental shaping includes things like infant diet and environmental hazards, but it also includes the entirety of personal cognitive experience.
Some people are born with brains that provide them with a lower than average ability for empathy and impulse control. Some people have brains that end up with less empathy and impulse control than they might have had otherwise due to environmental factors. Statistically speaking, people like this are much more likely to be perpetrators of violent crime. But not all violent criminals have brains like that, and not all people with brains like that are violent criminals.
Those cognitive tendencies, shaped by genetics and environment, then interact with culture. This interaction is another essential part of the chain that leads to behaviour, and probably has a strong influence on the likelihood of unfortunate neurology expressing as unfortunate behaviour.
A few important things come out of that:
- Behaviour is substantially determined by factors that are not the result of individual choice. We get the brain we get, not the brain we might have chosen. Although the choices we do make in turn influence how our brains develop, those choices are themselves neurologically based, so it’s turtles all the way down.
However, before allowing guilt to be evaded on the grounds of “my brain made me do it”, we need to remember that this is true of everyone, guilty and innocent. Free will is largely illusory, which makes a mess of traditional retributive conceptions of guilt. Consequence-based utilitarian conceptions of guilt and responsibility (i.e. “does making this person experience a consequence for their action provide a better outcome?”) fit more comfortably with this understanding of the mind.
- Brains change, especially in the first few decades of life. The brain of a twenty-five year old is substantially different to that of the same person ten years earlier. This can substantially alter the odds of reoffending, which can in turn change the equations of utilitarian-based justice (i.e. locking up a likely recidivist is easily justified, but the justification weakens with the reduction in likelihood of reoffending).
So: the brain of someone who has just committed a rape has a high probability of being the brain of someone who will attempt to rape again if given the opportunity. But if you wait a while, especially if they’re young and you don’t damage them in the interim, there is a chance that they may turn into someone without that dangerous brain.
We’re still a ways away from being able to measure this sort of thing with usable reliability, but it is the sort of neuroscience that probably isn’t too far off. And even if we did have the ability to determine these things accurately, exactly where to weight the balance between mercy to the offender and safety for the community is a separate issue.
- Societies change, too. As mentioned above: the interaction with society is a key part of the causal chain leading to behaviour. We’re probably always going to have some people with screwy heads, even if we get better at detecting and maybe even changing them. But, in the meantime, fiddling with culture so that those cognitive IEDs are less likely to blow up in ways that seriously hurt people seems like a good first step.
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Yes, that’s how it works. Now let’s draw ourselves a graph:
The x-axis is number of men you know. The y-axis is chance you know a rapist, based on 6% of people being rapists. There were about 50-ish men at my wedding and I work with at least another 50 more who I know by name.
So yeah, the odds I know a rapist are pretty damn good.
As for “rape culture” absolving rapists, let me ask you a question. Suppose you polled 100 people who said “rape culture” was a real thing and 100 who said “rape culture” was not a real thing, and asked each if 6 months was a sufficient sentence for Brock Turner. Do you think that belief in rape culture would be positively or negatively correlated with desire to see harsher sentences for a rapist?
It would be easy see that usage of the term “rape culture” correlates with expectation of more individual responsibility for rapists. The idea that “rape culture” absolves rapists is empirically false.
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Interesting - I had not known that. Thanks for taking the time to point it out.
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Is inserting a knife into another person’s body rape? Is it less bad to stab someone in the gut than her vagina?
I’m not saying violence isn’t an essential part of rape, but by definition rape is sexual. Nobody gets raped with an awl in the neck, that’s just plain old (attempted) murder. Reducing rape to the level of simple assault minimizes the crime. There’s a reason we consider sexual violations different than ordinary violence.
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Are rapists evenly distributed across the general population?
I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. The reason rape is defined as forcing someone to be engaged in what we think of as a sex act is because we have already defined sex as the most intimate, private thing one person can do with another. Plus, there are long-standing conventional norms about women’s value (especially) with regard to chastity, etc. It’s the best way to humiliate and dominate someone because as a society we’ve defined it that way. If the most personal thing you could do with someone is touch their feet, forcing someone to do THAT against their will would be rape. And including any further violence, such as a knife or gun or awl would make it aggravated rape, or in the worst case scenario rape and murder.
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Relevant.
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The reform trend toward emphasizing consent also helped recognize the actual rape survivor as the injured person instead of her father, husband or other legal guardian.
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Weapons are part of rape offense conduct frequently enough to be included as sentencing factors in probably every U.S. jurisdiction.
Rape is viewed from the perspective of the crime victim. It’s an act of violence.
A perpetrator’s perspective on the extent to which the violence was sexualized has limited relevance and is also creepy.
The relevant question is about consent.
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