Prison rape is one of America's most normalized, overlooked atrocities, something referenced often enough in entertainment that many people would have heard of it and yet something that is often dismissed or defended when brought up. Part of the problem is that it is not brought up in a condemning way very often, which is consistent with both America's leftover prudery and general lack of concern for any idea of justice that contradicts popular attitudes or personal feelings. Since prison violence, sexual or otherwise, is usually acknowledged as male-male or female-female, this leaves many conservatives in a state of total hypocrisy.
Most conservatives either seem to not be aware of the common trivializing of prison rape--as they tend to ignore or mock male victims of sexual assault or somehow consider it just, and they would probably never even think women would sexually assault each other in prison--or they are content to encourage, joke, and dismiss it. In doing any of these, they betray their own stupidity and hypocrisy, for they are often the same people who oppose consensual homosexual acts in the name of objective morality. They might harshly object to mild, nonsexual displays of affection among homosexual couples, only to turn around and consider nonconsensual homosexual behaviors deserved and amusing.
No matter which of these categories they fall into, conservatives almost unanimously act as if prison rape is hardly worth mentioning when discussing ethics and political changes, especially when justice is concerned. The same conservatives who revere the American Constitution conveniently forget that the 8th Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment," and the same evangelicals that claim to care about Biblical justice when murder is concerned (capital punishment for murder is one of the only moral-political stances they acknowledge the Bible on) treat prison rape as a non-issue through their silence and mockery.
When the evangelicals who joke about or tolerate prison rape are pressed, it becomes clear that, although female victims of sexual assault in prison are practically ignored by them altogether, they hate rape more when women are victims--perhaps because this attitude fits better with complementarian assumptions about men and women. Consequently, sexual assault of men is considered a mild offense, if it is considered one at all. A heinous misunderstanding of the scope of Lex Talionis may even be invoked by alleged Christians in defense of prison rape. However, the Bible is inescapably, blatantly opposed to all forms of rape, calling for the execution of all rapists regardless of gender (Deuteronomy 22:25-27) and execution for homosexual intercourse.
The reason why so many political and theological conservatives would have such cognitive dissonance is because they, like sincere liberals, aren't concerned with truth, reason, and morality. They are at best concerned with upholding a set of arbitrary and sometimes conflicting assumptions that are often wrong in the first place--not that any assumption is ever more than an epistemologically unjustifiable belief based on preference or intellectual laziness. A genuine seeker of truth does not care about conserving traditions or utilitarian social structures, but pursues reason, consistency, and justice.
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