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Powergamz1 -> RE: Is rape about power? (5/25/2013 1:34:13 PM)
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These are in response to multiple posters who were pointing out the same concept, that the act of raping someone else, in every category... gunpoint, drugs, children, elderly, spousal, is exercising some actual form of power over the victim from a position of perceived superordinate status.
Analyzing the way power facilitates rape is a valid premise.
These responses clearly deny the premise that power is a factor, an assertion that remains unsupported by anything remotely factual.
If anyone else would like to support the claim that rape doesn't involve power, or power isn't useful in analyzing rape and rape culture, please go for it.
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Everything possible boils down to power, so why should sex be any different?
The central question is whether it's a particularly useful analysis.
Around here, teaching people about consent helps.
Stranger rape is, after all, a rare thing.
Post 12
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The vintage misogyny of ascribing such boundless power to the penis, and none to its passive receptacles(!), never ceases to amaze and disgust me.
Post 59
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That premise is the same for every crime: someone had the ability to do something (i.e. power), and (ab)used it.
I'm not sure how it's particularly meaningful to analyse it in those terms.
Post 96
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How is throwing power in there anything but a needless multiplication of entities?
One person engages in sexual activity without the consent of the other party, that's rape; why do you need power in there, too?
Post 107
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I still say life is about power. Nothing I've read on this thread says to me otherwise. Whether it is agriculture, cultivating the stock on hand, technology, stock markets, etc., it is about humans imposing their will on the environment.
The question is: does that perspective afford us any insights on how to live, on how to wield power, on the motives for abuses of power, on how we get from A to Z?
Does this perspective indeed do anything but throw out there the idea that men are powerful and women powerless?
Because I don't think that's a particularly helpful or empowering idea, nor even necessarily a correct one.
Post 108
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ORIGINAL: Powergamz1
The legal definition of rape contains the element of 'force, actual or constructive', which is clearly about power.
Aswad: Where you live, perhaps. Here, it's sexual acts without consent.
Post 111
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Original Aswad (In response to njlauren repeating 'rape is about power'):
Anyway, I still don't see how this differs from any other human endeavour. Power is being able to act. Imposing our will is what our existence as human beings is based on. It's how and why we no longer hunt and gather in Africa. Rape seems pointless to me to single out as 'the activity that's about power', when all human activities are about power on some level, analysed in that manner. Particularly Post 114
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Regardless of rape altogether, and without the assumption that it's got anything to do with power... Post 119
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How does a statement take away power?
I know of no form of power that is so flimsy that a simple statement negates it.
Post 125 after a long diatribe in the same vein.
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But these were already self-evident before throwing power into the mix, and become more obscure and doubtful with power in the mix?
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The sexual integrity of the victim is no longer seen either as a causal or mitigating factor, an issue of tremendous importance not only in the legal process prosecuting and punishing rapists, but also in the victim's recovery from her/his violation.
Excellent. I'm still not seeing how power as a model contributed, though.
Post 142
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