Do the Motivations for Sex Crimes Matter?

[Metis]

What's the difference between haters anyway? That's so silly.

Rapists treat and speak of women as some kind of lower class citizens. That's the racist narrative as well. If you think that rapists are not prejudiced against women, you obviously don't understand what prejudice is.

With the implications most pertinent to this thread being: (1) that the specific motives for rape (which I generalize here to sexual assault) are indistinguishable, and (2) that studying their differences is irrelevant.

What Experts Know About Men Who Rape - The New York Times

I know you stepped out of the conversation. I'm quoting your post because it links to a valuable article.


Do the motivations for sex crimes matter?

On the one hand, I agree that there's no "excuse" for committing sexual assault. If I were to say that I was sexually assaulted and someone were to respond by defending the assailant's motives, I would be disgusted with the person talking to me. The reactive thought would probably cross my mind, "I hope you get raped, you disgusting enabler," and I would view that person as being as repulsive, almost, as the assailant herself/himself.

On the other hand, if no one were to "excuse" the assailant/s, and if someone were to speak to me in ways that indulged my anger and self-pity, then I would respond by thinking of counter-arguments. I would speculate on what might have led to the attitudes and choices of the assailant/s. I would also categorize assailants, assigning some higher levels of contempt and some lower. One reason I would think this way would not be pity for the less-contemptible, but a desire to assign the worst a level "lower than low".

Aside from using consideration of motives to determine whether to hate one assailant more than another, there are also practical reasons to want to know the motives and their differences. If someone was raised in a crazy environment where abuse was normal, it might be possible to correct the person's thinking through exposure to other ideas, for example. If someone is indeed motivated by hate, as can happen, the information about what led to the actions can be useful in preventing the same path from being taken by another person experiencing a similar situation.

In a way, the reasons don't matter: "I don't care what your reasons are; what you did was wrong, and there's no excuse. I've had bad experiences too, but I haven't made the choices you've made." However, another reason to want to know about assailants' pasts and motivations is: What separates me from them now, and will it continue? Can I rely on fate to keep me from becoming destructive to others and myself? Or do I need to know more about the mechanisms of corruption so that I don't find myself retaliating against society?

 

[Luminous]

I think the motives can be important, as you say, in trying to figure out how to stop it from happening again.

 

[Forever]

Yeah I can’t see anything justifying rape. You could ask very extreme questions such as:

A man and a woman are the last two humans on earth. They hold the key to the future of humanity or they die alone. One wants to populate the earth, the other doesn’t? Is rape justifiable?

It’s almost one to laugh at actually lol (not that rape is funny, but the situation itself)

Or are the horrid made up moral dillemas of “if you don’t rape so and so, someone will die!”

Which is also weird, if someone doesn’t want sex and is going to die, but doesn’t want to die more than getting unwanted sex. Was that considered rape? If it’s a direct relationship from abuser to victim of course.

But if the abuser forces someone else to rape the victim or they die. That’s kind of different. Would you blame the interlocutor’s value for life or the sanctity of another person outside of them?

 

[Forever]

If you’re Schopenhauer, you’d definitely say that yeah the human race can just waste away by staying abstinent

 

[Metis]

Yeah I can’t see anything justifying rape. You could ask very extreme questions such as:

A man and a woman are the last two humans on earth. They hold the key to the future of humanity or they die alone. One wants to populate the earth, the other doesn’t? Is rape justifiable?

It’s almost one to laugh at actually lol (not that rape is funny, but the situation itself)

Or are the horrid made up moral dillemas of “if you don’t rape so and so, someone will die!”

Which is also weird, if someone doesn’t want sex and is going to die, but doesn’t want to die more than getting unwanted sex. Was that considered rape? If it’s a direct relationship from abuser to victim of course.

But if the abuser forces someone else to rape the victim or they die. That’s kind of different. Would you blame the interlocutor’s value for life or the sanctity of another person outside of them?

For the most part, those are pretty spurious scenarios, but there have been examples of prison guards forcing prisoners to fight each other.

In those cases, the guards' motivations would also be a subject of relevant study.

 

[Forever]

For the most part, those are pretty spurious scenarios, but there have been examples of prison guards forcing prisoners to fight each other.

In those cases, the guards are the assailants.

Unfortunate.

 

[Yuurei]

What motivations are their beyond a desire for for sex or power over another human being?
In ither words; no. I don't know what justification could possibly exist.

 

[Luminous]

Understanding motivations is not the same as justifying abhorrent behavior.

 

[Jaguar]

What motivations are their beyond a desire for for sex or power over another human being?

That was my line of thought as well. But someone else thought men rape women merely out of hatred.

Understanding motivations is not the same as justifying abhorrent behavior.

Agreed.

 

[Lib]

You are misinterpreting me probably intentionally. I have never said that it doesn't matter in the context you used it, only that it's all driven by some form of hate, ignorance, prejudice. That was explained in the article. It's sad when people cite things they don't understand.

Remove my quotes!!!

 

[Lib]

But someone else thought men rape women merely out of hatred.

Read the fucking article you cited.

 

[Jaguar]

Read the fucking article you cited.

Such hostility. Eat a cookie, Lib.

 

[Lark]

Can I rely on fate to keep me from becoming destructive to others and myself? Or do I need to know more about the mechanisms of corruption so that I don't find myself retaliating against society?

I really dont think its got that contagion quality, there is a pattern of victims becoming perpetrators but I dont think there's any need to be reductionist and generalise in that way. Its not like sex offences operate like the supernatural contagion of vampirism in folklore or something.

 

[Lib]

Such hostility. Eat a cookie, Lib.

You are such a hypocrite. First, claiming that you're not bothered with misogynist act, which you obviously admitted are some cases of rape, because no one is shouting "all women must die". Then pretending to care. Please, put your head in the oven. Your words count for shit.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Yes because profiling criminals and learning about their motives might help us prevent or catch them

 

[Jaguar]

You are such a hypocrite. First, claiming that you're not bothered with misogynist act, which you obviously admitted are some cases of rape, because no one is shouting "all women must die". Then pretending to care. Please, put your head in the oven. Your words count for shit.

There's also a post of mine that claims "I rape refrigerators and goldfish." Your relationship with the truth is broken.

 

[rav3n]

Dr. Malamuth has noticed that repeat offenders often tell similar stories of rejection in high school and of looking on as “jocks and the football players got all the attractive women.”

As these once-unpopular, often narcissistic men become more successful, he suspects that “getting back at these women, having power over them, seems to have become a source of arousal.”

Most subjects in these studies freely acknowledge nonconsensual sex — but that does not mean they consider it real rape. Researchers encounter this contradiction again and again.

Asked “if they had penetrated against their consent,” said Dr. Koss, the subject will say yes. Asked if he did “something like rape,” the answer is almost always no.

Studies of incarcerated rapists — even men who admit to keeping sex slaves in conflict zones — find a similar disconnect. It’s not that they deny sexual assault happens; it’s just that the crime is committed by the monster over there.

And this is not a sign that the respondents are psychopaths, said Dr. Hamby, the journal editor. It’s a sign that they are human. “No one thinks they are a bad guy,” she said.

Indeed, experts note one last trait shared by men who have raped: they do not believe they are the problem.

Narcissism includes delusions, gaslighting and victim blaming.

 

[Smilephantomhive]

I am honestly just curious, but yes is these rapists dealt with their problems probably about feeling a lack of control then maybe they wouldn't have raped anyone.

 

[Lark]

I am honestly just curious, but yes is these rapists dealt with their problems probably about feeling a lack of control then maybe they wouldn't have raped anyone.

I'm sorry but I think that's shockingly naive and optimistic AF.

Even a watch of the Louis Thoreau visit to maximum security pedophile treatment prisons in the US would dispel that and its not the most in depth investigation I've ever seen.

 

[Smilephantomhive]

I'm sorry but I think that's shockingly naive and optimistic AF.

Even a watch of the Louis Thoreau visit to maximum security pedophile treatment prisons in the US would dispel that and its not the most in depth investigation I've ever seen.

So, you dont even want to try?