But how much is that an aversion to murder, and how much is that an aversion to external consequences? As someone with an aversion to both transgressions, I don’t know. I can’t imagine that someone suddenly becomes willing to deliberately take away someone else’s very existence and then loses that willingness afterward, but I can absolutely see them losing the willingness to risk the punishments for murder.
Sorry about all the edits. I really feel like I’m doing a terrible job of framing this question. Allow me to simplify. If murder was as acceptable, tolerated and even encouraged in our culture to the same extent that rape and sexual assault are, would murder be: A) as common as rape?, or B) still less common than rape? If B, then what is the source of that greater entitlement to commit the latter crime than the former in the absence of a culture tolerating it? And in particular, and this is the question that terrifies me, is murder on average less intrinsically acceptable to the human psyche regardless of its environment? I’m not a psychologist or a sociologist so I don’t know, but I really don’t want the human psyche have any higher predilection to rape than murder, and maybe that’s wishful thinking, because it seems like it would make it less of a solvable problem.
