Heather N investigates the ways in which calling rapists “evil” prevents us from making the changes necessary to prevent rape from happening.
This is a Tumblr post about a convention panel with the actor, Misha Collins, best known for his role as Castiel in Supernatural. He was verbally harassed at a convention in Las Vegas to such a degree he became visually flustered and uncomfortable. The women in the audience cheered on those who harassed him.
This is a popular photo about the new Pope. This is the YouTube video of Romney’s 47% gaffe. Here is an article about America’s huge prison population. This is a video of Sarah Palin calling Obama a socialist. This is an article about the sexual harassment game known as “fat girl rodeo.” Here is an article about a man who was gay bashed in California.
What do all of these stories have in common? Dehumanization. Our culture is thick with it. When Mikey Partida was beaten in California for being perceived as gay, the assailant wasn’t thinking of Mikey as an actual human being. All he cared about was that he thought Mikey belonged to a group he hated: gay men. When Misha Collins was verbally harassed in Las Vegas, the women who harassed him were blind to Misha’s reaction to those comments. At that moment, he wasn’t a person in their minds; he was a celebrity and as such he wasn’t expected to react as an actual person. When I laughed at that picture of the Pope, in that moment Pope Francis I was no longer a person. He was a symbol for a religion I have a lot of issues with, particularly with regards to accumulation of wealth and LGBT rights.
All those above examples don’t have the same effect on the individuals that have been dehumanized or to society at large. My laughing at a picture of the Pope is hardly comparable to the assault of Mikey Partida. Also, all of these instances of dehumanization are informed by specific cultural dynamics surrounding these specific issues. Celebrity culture and homophobia, for example, are more different than they are the same. However, they still stem from the same problem of failing to recognize another person as a person. I think it is this dehumanization, this lack of recognizing another individual’s personhood that is an underlying cause of a lot of our social problems.
This is perhaps most evident in instances of mass violence and rape. Perhaps this is because physical violence and violation are the most extreme and explicit ways in which we dehumanize one another. When someone violates another human being’s bodily autonomy, the only possible explanation is that for some reason they no longer considered that other person an actual person. As a Facebook friend said in a conversation about the Steubenville rape case: “If those guys could learn to truly see women as they see themselves, then they may be hard pressed to rape.”
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Now here’s something that’s strange to write: we also dehumanize rapists. That is probably difficult to read; it’s damn sure difficult to write. It’s true, though. In fact we dehumanize all criminals. In general mainstream society often doesn’t talk about rapists as though they are human. Instead we talk about them as though they are something else altogether. We talk about how rapists are monsters and absolutely evil, as though they are the boogie men hiding under the bed. They aren’t, though; they’re people.
My immediate reaction to the knowledge that we dehumanize rapists is, “so what?” After all, they have committed horrible crimes; what’s so wrong with considering them absolutely evil? Well, my answer comes in multiple parts. The first would be to point you to the article back at the top of the page about America’s imprisoned population. Treating convicts as though they are not people helps lead to a society that has no qualms with imprisoning large chunks of their population. Of course rapists deserve to be imprisoned; I’d argue for a lot longer than current sentencing allows in most states. But still, treating rapists as non-human because they are criminals only contributes to a culture which treats all its criminals as subhuman.
What’s wrong here is that considering rapists as unknowable monsters actually prevents us from accurately identifying rapists. In Steubenville, two young men took an unconscious woman from party to party and repeatedly raped and urinated on her. When people in the town were confronted with this, a lot of them reacted with, “but they’re good boys. They couldn’t have done this.”
Hannity’s invocation of “evil” serves only to dehumanize rapists and turn them into something unknown and inexplicable. If rape is inexplicable, then we can’t do anything to truly prevent or change it. That is essentially giving up our responsibility as a society to prevent would-be rapists from committing rape.
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In spite of all the evidence, there are still people who cannot believe that two football-playing ‘normal’ boys could have raped anyone. They went into denial, they made excuses, they victim-blamed and tried to convince themselves that “silence is consent.” In fact, in order to reconcile their dehumanized vision of what a rapist is with the reality that their neighbours had committed rape, these people from Steubenville end up dehumanizing the victim. If we are unable to recognize a rapist when s/he’s our neighbour, then we are also unable to recognize a victim of that rapist as such.
Dehumanizing rapists actually prohibits us from effectively combatting and preventing rape. A week ago Zerlina Maxwell went onto Hannity’s show on Fox to talk about rape prevention. Hannity’s response to her was that “evil exists in this world,” and we should be teaching women to protect themselves from it. Hannity’s invocation of “evil” serves only to dehumanize rapists and turn them into something unknown and inexplicable. If rape is inexplicable, then we can’t do anything to truly prevent or change it. That is essentially giving up our responsibility as a society to prevent would-be rapists from committing rape.
What’s more, if we treat all rapists as though they are unknowable monsters, we run into a wall when we try to explain how and why people rape. How does someone explain evil? You can’t, and there’s the problem. So in order to understand why people rape, we need to start with the acknowledgement that the people who commit rape are human beings. They are human beings who have dehumanized their victims to such an extent that they have justified the violation of their victim’s bodily autonomy. So it is with that in mind that we can address the big question: what biological influences and cultural narratives have contributed to this dehumanization?
I’m by no means the first person to come to this conclusion. Others have expressed similar ideas, some more effectively than others. Julie Gillis wrote a great blog post about the underlying cultural narratives that contribute to sexual violation. I’d argue that the concept of rape culture arguably starts with the acknowledgement that rapists are people and does much to explain the vast majority of rapes committed by men to women. Though, of course, it doesn’t explain everything.
Perhaps that is the larger conclusion to draw away from this: there is no single cause of rape. There is no single reason that will explain why all rapists have committed their crimes. There is the underlying current of dehumanization and power, yes. A rapist positions him/herself in a position of power over his/her victim. Beyond that, however, there are too many variables to come to one, single explanation. Everyone, from Ghandi to Charles Manson, is influenced by cultural narratives, biological influences and individual experiences in vastly different ways.
Why would we expect anything different from a rapist?
Photo: Flickr/xoder
I really do not think violating someone is inherently dehumanizing because i believe what make an action dehumanizing toward someone is, at least mostly, the intentions
There appears to be a positive assumption about human nature here, that if a person sees someone else as human that naturally tends towards empathy, basic respect, and decency. What if the reality is much darker than that, and dehumanization may not be a prerequisite for evil at all? The scary thing is that there may be rapists out there who don’t dehumanize their victims, they see their victims as people but they just don’t care one way or the other. “Seeing someone as human” is not necessarily the same thing as “respecting a person’s human rights.” For example, seeing… Read more »
I’ll start with the easy: the idea behind the use of the -ize is suggesting of transforming something…but in this case it’s transforming our conception of who (rather than what) a rapist is. There is a need to “humanize” people who, in the public conscious, aren’t considered human already. However a title like: “The Necessity of Humanizing Rapists in the Public Conscious” – or something, would be overly long and a bit of a complicated title. “The Necessity of Recognizing the Humanity of Rapists,” could work better as it’s less complicated…but it’s also unfortunately academic sounding and also kind of… Read more »
“We’d been drinking and what-not and I kind of don’t want to have sex with him, so I lie there very passively with a very obviously unhappy look on my face.” Kind of don’t want to have sex? Do you mean you aren’t interested in sex but allow it to happen to please him or you don’t want sex, and don’t want HIM to engage in sex with you? They’re very different concepts and mean the difference between bad sex and rape. Although not necessarily bad sex if you are trying to please your partner but not overly in the… Read more »
Okay, and…as for the idea that somehow recognizing another person’s humanity is always the same as respecting their humanity. Well…okay most of my essay kind of suggests that…but that’s not exactly what I mean. Part of recognizing another person’s humanity is about recognizing that they have to take responsibility for their actions. So in the case of rapists, really…humanizing them is, at least in part about stopping making excuses (alcohol, short skirts, etc) for what they did. I’d say, recognizing someone’s humanity doesn’t always lead to respecting their human rights. But you can’t ever respect someone’s human rights without first… Read more »
Let me just add that, of course, a large part of the benefit of understanding that those who commit heinous acts are human just like the rest of us are human is that it keeps the rest of us humble and on our toes.
While I agree with the moral viewpoint of the OP (“pray for your enemies”) and thought the comment that quoted Solzhenitsyn was spot on, there is a social science dimension that is missing (perhaps necessarily missing) from the OP. David Lisak’s work at the UMass Boston studying male rapists is pretty persuasive that a limited number of men (about 1 in 12) are responsible for a disproportionate number of rapes (90% or so), many of which fall into the category of acquaintance rape or date rape. They are serial rapists, they share certain identifiable MOs, and they are really good… Read more »
I’m somewhat familiar with Lisak’s study, and there are a few problems with it. I suggest reading these two articles: http://changefromwithin.org/2013/02/26/rethinking-lisak-miller-checking-the-math/ and http://changefromwithin.org/2013/01/30/rethinking-sexual-violence-rethinking-lisak-miller/
So I TOTALLY agree that it’s pretty much impossible to make a proper sociopath feel remorse in any way. I am just doubtful that as many rapists are sociopaths as the current mainstream narrative would suggest.
Also, did I quote Solzhenitsyn and not realize it? Where’s that?
Understood. Thank you for those links and for your other post on the subject. The Solzhenitsyn quote was in Jennifer’s comment, above, and quoted here: “Watching developments in the Steubenville case, I kept thinking of Aleksander Solzenhitsyn’s comments on evil: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own… Read more »
Oooh. Right. I was worried for a moment I’d quoted someone and not cited them. Wouldn’t want to plagiarize. 🙂
Simpler words are, all men are potential rapist. No matter how good he is.
Better to say, would be that all humans are potential rapists. no matter how moral they claim to be.
No, rape culture is the culture that make ALL MEN are potential rapist, not women.
I suppose then that women are to be defined as “sugar and spice and everything nice”. Bull@$%*. That idea, leads to our cultural blindspot towards equality between the sexes…..the benefit of the doubt that is applied more liberally to women then to men. The unintended consequence of that is that for a man to receive the benefit of the doubt vs a woman, her moral standing needs to be trashed……deserved or not. Balancing the first would allow the rebalancing of the second. Humans, of both sexes are morally ambiguous by nature, neither sex is inherently good or evil…….we choose every… Read more »
“All men are potential rapists.” On the surface that kind of statement looks like a massive insult to all men, which it is, but really the statement is so broad that it’s basically meaningless. It’s a handy catchphrase to generate much superficial emotional response but absolutely no substance. On some literal level the statement is true, the same way that I could say that “all men are potential recipients of sex change operations” or “all men are potential victims of female rapists.” It’s no more sophisticated or logical than saying “all women are potential fellators.” It’s possible to say virtually… Read more »
People feel safer if they know it’s demons that cause harm, not other humans I guess.
Humanizing rapists might help recognizing female rapists too, but I’m not holding my breath.
The motivation to excuse female rapists is different than wanting to detach from the rapist (I’m good, not like them), and is more of a “Nothing bad happened, why are you accusing this person?” Because maleness means you either ought to have defended yourself, or you wanted it (or at least should want it).
Female victims of female perpetrators get forgotten in the theories of “male violence against women”, along the male victims who are “too powerful” to count.
As I mentioned in my comment to Danny, the motivation to dehumanize male rapists is usually quite similar. We (people) like an easy solution…we want to deny that someone we know could do something evil. If you look at a bunch of the horrible Twitter messages about Steubenville you’ll find similar ideas…”she was asking for it,” and “those poor guys’ lives are going to be ruined now,” and “she shouldn’t have been so drunk.” RAPISTS are evil, and those two teens don’t seem evil…so they can’t be rapists…so they couldn’t have attacked her – that’s the logic. By holding onto… Read more »
the motivation to dehumanize male rapists is usually quite similar. We (people) like an easy solution…we want to deny that someone we know could do something evil I read somewhere a while back that female jurors are more likely to acquit in male-on-female rape cases than male jurors. The jurors shouldn’t know either the accused or the victim. The explanation offered differs somewhat from the one you offered above. They exonerate the accused male rapist not because they don’t think that he can be evil, but because they need to know that they can be in control of not being… Read more »
Another related reason is that with emotionally charged or politically charged topics, it’s very hard for many people to make a distinction between explaining and excusing. With rape (or allegations of rape), it’s simpler emotionally to put people in hero/victim or villain categories, because if you start to explain how relatively normal people could be rapists, then it sounds someone saying rape isn’t so evil. Then the simple mind would not have to confront the idea that “normality” could itself be a source of evil. There is a real difference between giving an understandable, nuanced explanation and giving a rationalization.… Read more »
Rehabilitation is possible only when there is remorse. One of those convicted boys didn’t seem to be remorseful at all.
What would you be saying if you were the one who was raped? Would you appreciate someone saying, “We have faith in your resilience and power to heal”?
I guess we shouldn’t imprison rapists at all. Just send them to a shrink.
So it is with that in mind that we can address the big question: what biological influences and cultural narratives have contributed to this dehumanization? That is still dehumanizing. Theories like “rape culture” are just methods to “explain” the “evil” Hannity mentioned. You are just couching it in prettier language.You are still arguing that there is some biological of cultural difference between you and them, but there is not. The only difference between a rapist and a non-rapist is that one of them has not raped (yet). That is it. Just the act. Nothing more, nothing less. That is what… Read more »
Being introduced to the concept of “rape culture,” is actually what made me first realize that rapists are humans. In a nutshell, rape culture theory seeks to explain the various cultural influences that create a society in which men can rationalize raping women. (What is limiting is that it doesn’t explain rape between people of the same gender, or women raping men). And that’s what a lot of culture is about…setting up narratives and “common sense” that we use to rationalize our behaviour. That’s HUMAN. How do I justify pirating music off the internet when I would never steal a… Read more »
Being introduced to the concept of “rape culture,” is actually what made me first realize that rapists are humans. In a nutshell, rape culture theory seeks to explain the various cultural influences that create a society in which men can rationalize raping women. (What is limiting is that it doesn’t explain rape between people of the same gender, or women raping men). Now when bringing up that limitation I’ve been told that the concept of rape culture is not gender specific and that it applies to all rape (although oddly enough this claim of not being gender specific seems to… Read more »
How rape culture theory is applied is not always rooted in the understanding that rapists are humans, sure. There are people who agree with rape culture theory, but also think that predator theory explains every rape committed by a man, not realizing the two kind of don’t go together very well. – The only way predator theory could explain EVERY rape committed by a man is if rapists weren’t as influenced by rape culture as everyone else is. But all of that doesn’t change the way that rape culture theory is, actually rooted in the idea that rapists are people… Read more »
However, I think that if you look at how rape culture expects men to be highly sexual, you get a case of “can’t rape the willing.” That’s been my thought on it as well. Of course while the influences would be different I would imagine there is some sort of cultureal influence in most rapes (even if its a simple “no one will believe you”). BUT not all cases of women (or men) raping men is necessarily rationalized by the logic that men always want sex, so that doesn’t explain every case. See I’d agree that “men always want sex”… Read more »
“You should have been able to fight him off” – is actually used as a justification for male-on-female rape too. It’s part of why you get women who are executed if they’re raped in some countries. And though rape victims aren’t executed in the U.S., that rationalization is still used. The way it differs by gender, I think…is that when it’s used against a woman it’s: “if you didn’t fight your rapist off, it’s because you secretly wanted it and/or deserved it for being slutty.” When it’s used against a man it’s more: “you wanted it and/or you deserved it… Read more »
In a nutshell, rape culture theory seeks to explain the various cultural influences that create a society in which men can rationalize raping women. Yet that assumes that a) men, and only men, rationalize sexual violence differently than they do other crimes, and b) that their rationalization is cultural in nature. Most people who commit crimes try to explain away their behavior. That some of them use cultural norms as an excuse is incidental. Most excuses have nothing to do with cultural norms. And that’s what a lot of culture is about…setting up narratives and “common sense” that we use… Read more »
A. Of course men (and women) rationalize sexual crimes differently than other crimes. I would rationalize murdering someone in a fit of rage differently than I would robbing a bank. And I would rationalize robbing a bank differently than I would robbing a loaf of bread because I’m starving (or whatever). B. All rationalization is cultural in nature. I am not suggesting we are “controlled” by social narratives, merely that we are limited by social narratives. All humans are influenced by culture…all humans are limited by culture. This doesn’t excuse anyone’s behaviour; this doesn’t suggest we are controlled by culture.… Read more »
It doesn’t dehumanize them, or suggest that men are controlled by social narratives. It says men are INFLUENCED by cultural narratives, because everyone is influenced by cultural narratives. I think this is where I get lost sometimes. I know that this is more about the way rape culture is applied than what you think about rapists but it just seems odd that it only comes up when its male against female rape as of other variations of rapists are not influenced by cultural narratives….but if you point this out the quick response is that rape culture does account for other… Read more »
Except, as we kind of discussed, rape culture theory does explain a few other cases. The case of women thinking men always want sex so you can’t rape men – that’s rape culture. The case of a man raping another man (if he thinks the other man is gay/bi) can also be explained by the man assuming that men always want sex so you can’t rape men – that’s rape culture. The cases of men and women raping another man, and then justifying it by saying, “he was just too weak to fight me off. Weak men deserve what they… Read more »
The problem with most of the critics of rape culture theory I’ve come across is that they’ll say, “this one case doesn’t fit so it doens’t exist.” Rape culture is real…so we use the theory to explain rapes…we tweak the theory to better explain new data…that’s all fine and necessary. But the critics will say “it’s not real,” and that is not helping. My criticism is more with the people who push the theory of rape culture than with the theory itself. Mainly because again they apply to rapes that are not male against female in name but not in… Read more »
“My criticism is more with the people who push the theory of rape culture than with the theory itself. ” Indeed. Just saw a post recently of a mother wanting to teach her young boy about not raping anyone, that post itself contributes to rape culture when there is no similar article teaching girls not to rape anyone. People who do NOT advocate (or at least try understand) for male victims allow rape culture to continue just as turning a blind eye to any horror. Currently there are initiatives to ask men to stand up to violence against women, but… Read more »
“we tweak the theory to better explain new data” that kind of sounds a bit like what Freud used to do; it’s generally acknowledged to be bad science. Keep tweaking the hypothesis rather than letting the counter-example disprove the hypothesis. I mean, if we all live in a rape culture why are rapists so rare? Why aren’t we all rapists? Are some of us just less susceptible to this social conditioning? Do you simply mean, we live in a culture that has conventions that makes rape more likely than it would be in a healthier society? And if so, might… Read more »
Well I do see the merits in rape culture being described to our culture (as in I see why people say it) as we have issues with victim blaming, etc. It does look like sometimes we have some degree of acceptance of rapists in our society, but you could say the similar for domestic violence too. I could say we live in an “it’s ok to hit men” society because often a man who is hit by a woman will be victim-blamed, people expect him to have done wrong, and often it’s overlooked and not taken seriously.
@Heather: I think you misunderstood my point. My point is not that people come up with different explanations for committing violence, but we should not assume they use a completely different logic for different acts of violence. I disagree that all rationalization is cultural. Some of it is certainly influenced by culture, but a great deal of it is just human nature and people’s natural persona. I also disagree with your second point about cultural influences. Cultural influences only go as far as people allow them to. This is how one gets social reformation. People use their ability to make… Read more »
Much of a culture’s influence is unconscious (or subconscious), so it’s really not about “allowing” it to influence you. Most of the time we don’t even realize it when it does. And even when we do recognize it, and go against it…the decisions we make are still limited by that culture. So, okay, we’ll take a very simple example. When I was a teenager I rebelled against my parents. How did I do this? I went goth…dressing in black and wearing bright red lipstick isn’t inherently rebellious. But because of all the cultural norms and narratives I was surrounded with… Read more »
Btw, thanks for sticking with us for the discussion. It’s good to have a debate on it.
Quick question, does violence culture exist, or subsets? Such as excusing female DV against men as being deserved or excusing boys bashing each other as kids as just being boys?
Yeah, “rape culture” isn’t the only type of culture you could name. There’s most certainly a “domestic violence culture,” very closely tied to rape culture, I’d say. And just our general, “violence culture,” is definitely tied the two above. (Julie Gillis writes a lot about our culture of violence at juliegillis.com. Cuz she’s awesome like that). That’s kind of why I started out with a bunch of examples of dehumanization that don’t really have a lot to do with rape (though Misha Collins was sexually harassed and “fat girl rodeo” is also sexual harassment)…but like the Pope and Obama and… Read more »
I disagree that most culture influence is un/subconscious. Again, that people rebel against cultural influences suggests that people are conscious of those influences. The other thing about cultural influences is that they often serve a purpose that works within the broader social structure. Your example of gay marriage fits this. The opposition comes from the greater religious structure that Western culture was built on. Those religious views, when combined with most people’s sexual preferences, create that bias. There is no purpose for rape in our culture. Most people do not support it, and most people want rapists punished. To say… Read more »
“It cannot be both, and the likelihood argument does not work here because the theory posits that absent those influences there would be no rape of women.” No it doesn’t. Absent rape culture, there would still be rape…but there would not be the widespread perpetuation of rape myths, and there would be fewer rapes. There will always be psychopaths and what-not out there. As I said in my article, no one theory will explain every single rape, because rapes are committed by individual people…not everyone is influenced by all of culture in exactly the same way. “Most people do not… Read more »
You still assume that “rape myths” have a direct impact on people committing violence. More so, the theory “rape culture” is built on states that rape happens only as a result of men’s oppression of women. Since “rape culture” is simply an extension of men’s domination, if one removed those elements, there should be no rape. If there is still rape, there is a problem with the theory. The other issue is that we have no way of proving that the majority of rape stems cultural influences. The best one can come up with is a correlation, and it is… Read more »
Watching developments in the Steubenville case, I kept thinking of Aleksander Solzenhitsyn’s comments on evil: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” I am glad the boys were not tried as adults: as horrible as their crime is, there are great odds for healing and rehabilitation.… Read more »
I think it’s important to remember that, though rapists are humans, and should be considered such, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily able to be rehabilitated. Humanizing rapists doesn’t just mean acknowledging the potentially “good” aspects of their character…it also means acknowledging the “bad” aspects of other human’s characters. So that we stop looking at this as someone being either statically “good” or “bad,” and thus become blinded to the reality when someone we thought was “good,” actually turns out to be a pretty horrible person doing horrible things.
Basically, some people cannot be rehabilitated.
EKBA. Means “Everybody Knows Better Already”
So here’s the EKBA: Until you get rapists to quit raping by no longer demonizing them, which will probably take a year, or a year and a half at best, what about women defending themselves?
This is the EKBA question.
So I just saw this link about CNN talking about how the two men convicted of the Steubenville case have had their lives destroyed, etc. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/17/cnn-grieves-that-guilty-verdict-ruined-promising-lives-of-steubenville-rapists/
I feel like this is relevant to my article, precisely because this is NOT what I mean when I talk about humanizing rapists. This isn’t humanizing them; this is infantilizing them.
Spot on
Furthermore. Personally I don’t think humanizing a rapist is a evil (I don’t know if you are trying to say that it is an evil much less a necessary one, just responding to the title of the post), necessary or not. Acknowledging someone as human, no matter how terrible of acts they perform, should not be considered an act of evil.
Two things, first is that isn’t the original title. I didn’t actually have a proper title for it, so this is what GMP came up with. Second, I actually agree with the title. Something doesn’t have to be considered an “act of evil,” to be a “necessary evil.” A “necessary evil,” is a colloquialism that just generally means something you take issue with, but also find necessary.
Two things, first is that isn’t the original title. I figured as much which is why I made sure to say I was not pointing that at you specifically. A “necessary evil,” is a colloquialism that just generally means something you take issue with, but also find necessary. So what issue to do you take with acknowledging the humanity of rapists? It’s not like by acknowledging their humanity you are condoning their actions or anything that extreme. Sounds like you just want to acknowledge their humanity just enough to get a good look at their motivations, use that knowledge to… Read more »
Um, no. The issue I have is that people do try to use their humanity as an excuse for their actions. “We all do bad things,” becomes just as dangerous as, “rapists are just evil.” Thus a “necessary evil.” Necessary to ensure we understand their motivations to better stop rape; necessary to ensure we treat our prisoners as human beings…but still something that can potentially cause problems if taken to an extreme. Though arguably, by using their humanity as an excuse, that also dehumanizes rapists in a way. Kind of like my comment below with a link to the CNN… Read more »
Now I’ll agree that there is a problem with using a rapist’s humanity as an excuse for their actions. I just don’t think that the act of acknowledging a rapists humanity is in and of itself the evil that is necessary. It seems that the evil is in using their humanity to excuse their behavior. To me acknowledging a rapist’s humanity is a neutral action and then from the good or evil comes in the form of using that humanity in a way to stop/prevent/unravel their actions or using that humanity to justify/excuse their actions. Plus, frankly, part of the… Read more »
“I see a rapist as a human that did an extremely horrible thing to another person.”
As do I. That’s my article’s point.
Edit to add: Perhaps the simpler title of “The Necessity of Humanizing Rapists,” would work better.
I’ve said before that I think part of the desire to dehumanize rapists (or any sort of bad doer) is explicitly related to people’s desire to hold themselves up as good. The common way for a person to hold themselves up as something is to hold someone else up as an opposite of the thing they want to hold themselves up as. You can see this in politics, various sides in the gender discourse, hell even high school/college rivalries. When it comes to criminals the method is clear. Strip them of their humanity and it becomes easier to post them… Read more »
I actually disagree with you on your proposed motivation for why we prefer to think of rapists as a nameless other. There is, perhaps, an element of using that evil to then position yourself as good…if a rapist is evil, and I am not a rapist, then I am good. That is, perhaps, a bit of it. But I don’t think that’s generally the primary reason why people categorize criminals as evil. Really we tend to categorize someone as evil because we are desperate for a way to explain what they did. Something so horrible happens, something seemingly senseless and… Read more »
That is, perhaps, a bit of it. But I don’t think that’s generally the primary reason why people categorize criminals as evil. So to be clear we don’t disagree that this happens, just how common it is? I’ll take that. I think its pretty common because of how people justify their actions in the form of “I’m not evil like that person is!”. Even in the face of doing something that may not be good they still want to make sure that we (the public) know that they are not “like them” (take a person that engages in vigilante justice… Read more »
Thanks for writing this, Heather. I agree wholeheartedly. People who commit horrible crimes are still people, and we don’t do their victims any favors by refusing to see them that way. The better we understand rapists and murderers, the better-equipped we’ll be to prevent future rapes and murders.