Thursday, July 11, 2019

Ignoring Female-Male Rape

If a woman stalked and killed a man, I can't think of anyone who is likely to label the deed anything other than outright murder--it is very unlikely that anyone would deny that women can kill men.  Substitute the word raped for murdered, though, and many people suddenly become reluctant to admit that women can and do rape men, if they do not reject the idea from the beginning.  The very notion is offensive to many who espouse conservative delusions about gender roles.

Women are certainly capable of killing men, as they can kill them with any means that a man could kill someone.  In the same way, women can coerce unwilling men to have sex with them by the same means a man could use to rape someone: physical force, drugs, weapons, or blackmail.  The only differences between rape by male and female perpetrators are the gender of the aggressor and the societal reaction to it.

Just as murder is murder and theft is theft without respect to the gender of either party, nonconsensual sex is rape regardless of the offender's gender or that of the victim.  Leftover patriarchal ideas have so distorted the way that many people understand sexual assault that the very claim that women can rape men is controversial.  Even accounts of female-male rape in the Bible itself (Genesis 19 and 39) go ignored or undiscovered by all but a select few Christians who would condemn rape in most, if not all, other scenarios.

Anyone who thinks that seeking justice for women who have been victimized by male rapists is all that must be done to combat sexual assault holds to an incredibly incomplete stance on sexual consent.  No matter what fallacious bullshit a person might appeal to in order to affirm such an illogical and harmful belief, the only reasons why someone would deny that women can sexually assault or rape men are sexism and stupidity.  Neither is in short supply in this world.

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