This article is most assuredly going to piss some people off, but some things can't be helped. The reality is that there are just some basic assumptions that form the foundation for our, or any society, and these assumptions must, from time to time, be challenged. All throughout history you can see examples of great strides forward which were made because of the efforts of one valiant soul who was willing to question something which had always simply been taken for granted.

Today I was watching an episode of CSI: Miami. Now, apart from David Caruso, this show is generally pretty good. However, this particular episode rather pissed me off in how it handled a particular, rather delicate situation. The episode was about a man who was wrongfully incarcerated for six years for raping a woman and who was subsequently released. His release caused the investigation into the woman's rape to be reopened and, when the actual perpetrator was eventually found, he was murdered by the original victim, the woman he had raped.

Now, the thing that bothered me was that the show presented this retribution as a justifiable act considering what had been done to the woman. She spent the majority of the show moping about and saying things like, "my life will never be the same," and the investigators nodded and set their features as they went about looking for her assailant with ever increased diligence considering the vileness of the act committed.

I'm not going to argue that rape isn't a horrible thing, but I don't really know if I want to live in a society that thinks murder is a justifiable punishment for that act. I mean, come on, isn't it a little bit insulting to people who have suffered other and equally horrible traumas that they are forever considered more fortunate than people who have merely been raped? What about, for example, people who have been rendered quadriplegics because of an accident with a drunk driver or something like that? What, is their suffering somehow less worthy of empathy than a rape victim's?

This whole subject belongs quite firmly in the field of "things it's impossible to discuss in a public forum because people will have their logic blinded by righteous fury." Which is unfortunate because there seem to be a lot of issues about social and gender power coming into play here that really should be examined.

One of the things that happened to me here in Peru that has really stuck in my mind is a conversation I had with a girl I met near a shopping mall one time. During the course of our brief chat, this girl happened to casually mention that she had been abducted and raped recently. Now, this struck me as weird because this girl didn't mention this with the typical "I'm a banner waving victim, I am now due all manner of special privileges" type of attitude. It came up sort of by accident and I had to keep asking her for details because she didn't seem to feel it was all that important. She kept telling me, and these were the words that I thought were remarkable, that life had to go on and it wasn't worth thinking about such things.

Wow, what strength. I was really impressed with this girl. And this wasn't some casual rape like you see on all those TV shows. This wasn't some attractive longtime friend who hopped on her once after a drunken night and which she had spent the next six years moping about. Nope.

This girl had been kidnapped and taken to a mountain shack for two months where she was given very little to eat, repeatedly raped and beaten, and finally only managed to escape by her own efforts. My jaw dropped as she told me this. I didn't know how to respond. Plus, she informed me that there was no current investigation underway to find her assailant.

Just imagine if something similar had happened in the US? There'd have been a full page story on the cover of every major magazine in the US plus a visit to Oprah and probably a daytime movie starring Cybil Shepard.

But this woman wanted to just get over it and continue with her life. You see? She didn't think rape was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. She wasn't going to dwell on it for every waking moment for the rest of her life. She wasn't going to let it destroy her. Isn't that odd?

Now, the question that obviously arises is whether the efforts of our society to be overtly kind to rape victims is really in their best interests. Do you understand what I'm saying? In the US, it is considered a matter of fact that a victim of sexual assault should be permanently destroyed by this act. That they should be consumed by it for the rest of their days. That they should be tiptoed around like walking freaks.

Perhaps it is this attitude and not the actual rape that is the most damaging?

Maybe if we lived in a society in which people said, "count your blessings and get over it," people would be able to recover from this kind of attack. Maybe if we lived in a society that didn't present murder as a justifiable reaction to a rape, perhaps we wouldn't have people so desperately traumatized by such an act. Maybe if we lived in a society that associated a reasonable degree of sympathy and outrage to various heinous acts, we'd have more reasonable and sympathetic citizens.

I've heard it said that rape is about power not about sex. In many ways, it really seems to me that the balance of power has shifted to women in the US. In many ways, men are second citizens. From personal experience, many women who are incapable of doing a long division mathematical problem have considered themselves superior to me because they thought they were superficially more attractive. Enduring such an attitude can be traumatic.

As traumatic as a rape?

Does anybody watch American Idol? Isn't it a little annoying how superior singers are cut in the preliminary rounds because they aren't as physically attractive as the ones who are eventually chosen?

Humiliation.

Loss of self-esteem.

Degradation.

Horrible things that they are forced to endure because they don't hold the power.

Or how about this? I'm not worthy of being touched because I'm a man. To be touched, I have to have a better job, I have to study harder, I have to sacrifice more, I have to take a woman out, I have to pay for everything, and then, finally, at some undisclosed date, she....who has never done anything...gets to decide whether I deserve the bounty human physical intimacy?

No, it is not correct that anybody, ever should be forced to do something they don't want to do. However, it is also incorrect that unreasonable standards will be used to judge people. Human sexuality should NOT be used as a blunt instrument to bludgeon men into a position of docility. Human intimacy, whether it be the shaking of hands or a peck on the cheek is a necessary requirement for the sustenance of human life. What are the consequences if such acts are universally withheld? If a person is excluded from the ranks of the worthy? Banished? Ostracized?

Well, you're going to have some rebellion in the weaker models. And this rebellion will lead to...rape.

And I suppose it would be traumatic if you were one of those people who bought into the press and began to think that they were superior to the other gender, and thought that you never had to work, and that you could eternally play with men and make them pay your way, and control them with your sexuality. I suppose it would be traumatic to have that power you had grown giddy at the thought of using turned against you and crumbled like a dry, five-year-old, peanut-butter cookie.

Now, let me just be clear. Rape is not OK. And I'm not generalizing about all rapes. There are a lot of complete sadists out there who do deserve the death penalty for their rapes among their other acts. All I'm saying is that there's a big difference between a nun who gets raped while sitting in her convent reading the bible, and a woman who's drunk to the point of unconsciousness wearing a skirt down to her belly-button and passed out in a biker bar. You can't lump them all together. You can't make wild generalizations. And you certainly can't use an example of the later to make generalizations about the unworthiness and foulness of all men.

Unless your agenda isn't about truth, but about power. Maintaining power. Enforcing an unfair status quo.

Oh, and before I forget, rape doesn't just happen to women. Men are raped as well, therefore if you've been thinking to yourself, "you have no right to talk about this, you have no idea what this trauma is like," you really don't have an argument.

The End