Irvine511 said:
i really find this whole thing interesting because i feel like i'm in the position of someone who could be raped, but would could also be accused of being a rapist, and i honestly can't imagine myself at all in either situation (whereas most women i know can easily imagine themselves a rape victim) so i'm just trying to understand it better.
...................................
the last thing i wonder is that if part of the power of rape comes not from forced penetration, not from genetalia used to commit a crime, but to certain dynamics that exist between men and women that wouldn't necessarily apply to same sex couples. perhaps it's the combination of opposite-sex interactions, combined with (on average) greater male strength and his possession of "the weapon" that turns rape into a multi-layered violation on a physical, emotional, and psychic level, and that it's ultimately much more than simply an unwanted penetration.
Have you ever known a man who considered himself to have been raped? I just ask because I had a (male) friend in grad school who had been. Admittedly what happened to him was way outside this "gray area" category, because he'd been gang-raped by a group of complete strangers in the parking lot of a bar. So, I'm not certain how fully or even whether it's relevant here. But for sure, it was very clear to me from hearing him talk about it that being a man, in and of itself, had NOT made him immune to all those feelings of profound humiliation, suppressed rage, deep shame, etc. that we'd more commonly associate with raped women. It was almost 10 years since it happened, but he still regarded it as being by far the most traumatic experience of his life, and was still haunted and badly messed up by it in all sorts of ways.
I should probably add that he was straight, and therefore most unlikely to have ever had any sort of "rape fantasy" involving other men--though frankly, I find it hard to believe that a gay man would've found such a situation anything but horribly traumatic, either. I can imagine--actually, I think I might even have read somewhere--an argument that Well, gay men's sexuality is much less bound up with needing to be "The Man," sexually speaking, and that makes it different, etc.; but I'm wary of this line of thinking because it seems like by the same logic, straight women shouldn't really get all that worked up about the odd "forced penetration" here and there, because after all isn't
their sexuality all bound up with that Object-of-the-Gaze, longing-to-inspire-uncontrollable-lust kind of stuff. Sure, underlying social messages (e.g., women who "let" men take advantage of them are "dishonored")
do affect the whole equation; I'm not denying that. But I also suspect that
everyone, regardless of sex or orientation, has certain irreducible core needs for control over who "uses" their bodies sexually and how, psychological boundaries that can't be violated without taking a toll.
I'd be interested to know more about to what extent rape is considered an "issue" within the gay community, though.
Overall, and at least with reference to straight couples, I think I feel most sympathetic to maycocksean's point--that while it may happen sometimes that an initially wholly unwelcome sexual encounter later gives rise to arousal or even "tender" feelings (maybe even
especially in longterm-but-highly-dysfunctional relationships?), nonetheless, whatever emotional "resolution" it is that occurs there really does need to be held somewhat suspect, and we really do need to consider whether it might in the end take a high toll on the woman's psychological health (and for that matter, the man's too, IMO). I don't think we can assume that the emotional dynamics involved there are necessarily similar to those that might make consensual rough sex or S/M roleplaying erotic. And the same goes for date rape, really--it just seems like it's ultimately in everyone's best interests to regard nonconsensuality as unacceptable from the get-go; it's not as if you're missing something you couldn't experience less riskily (and more healthily) the consensual way.