Legitimate rape!

Congressman Todd Akin, a Republican candidate for the United State Senate seat currently held by Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri in the fall elections has stirred up a firestorm across the political spectrum with his comments that there is something called “legitimate rape�! Rape, in its many connotations, stirs up deep emotions among many of both sexes because it has happened to so many, and, we have no idea of how many rapes go totally unreported. There are reasons why rape goes unreported. It is one of the most intimate violations of a persons body that can be conceived of. And, the process of telling the authorities about such an act are repulsive to many who have undergone the experience because, in so many instances, the person doing the reporting is scrutinized as much or more than the person doing the deed. It has long been known by many women that reporting a rape is the beginning of an ordeal that can last far longer and do as much or more damage than the brief experience of being raped. We, being a male, can only guess at the mind and soul numbing experience that having the most intimate parts of a woman’s body invaded can comprise.

Women are made up differently, physiologically and emotionally than men. The man’s inclination is to stay and fight while the woman’s predilection is to run and flee to safety. It has been that way through and even before the recorded history of humankind. A woman looks for a man who will love and protect her while a man looks for a woman, at least initially, to procreate with. There have been many relationships that have matured through the years to something much more than a sexual relationship but there have been fewer that have survived without sex in the initial stages. It has been said that a couple who have regular sex can extend their lives as much as eight years or longer than average.

So, sex is important to any relationship and it is something that women especially find rewarding with a willing partner whom they at least care for. It is the caring that is the key to most relationships. There are the “working girls� who have sex for a living and there have been many studies as to how they are able to divorce this part of their existence from the rest of their lives. We grew up in an age and at a time when sex before marriage was taboo no matter how long one dating before becoming wedded. We heard a very knowledgeable pastor state recently that sex to the modern age of 2012 was what the first kiss was to our generation of the late fifties and early sixties. So, there has been a change of mores, however, rape is still a bridge way to far for most women to travel even in this far more promiscuous age. Perhaps it is the promiscuity that causes so many of the problems when it comes to sharing with a part of the world, the authorities, that an invasion of ones body has occurred. There are far more female police officers around now than there were forty years ago, but, even they can be skeptical and dismissive of what a woman is trying to get them to believe. Men can be far worse than that, particularly if the person in question is not attractive and there is reason to believe that there would be any reason for anyone to want her at all. The attractive ones face a different equation because too often those that they are trying to convince that they have been violated are wondering what it was that they did to entice this act to occur to begin with. A woman’s first act after a rape may be to either draw into complete isolation from the horrific nature of it or to confide in someone other than the police who may tell them of bad experiences that they have encountered when trying to deal with them. It is key to prosecuting a successful rape conviction to getting to the police as soon as possible because the forensic evidence of what has occurred quickly fades away. Too many women wait far to long and this raises the question in the policepersons eyes as to why did they wait so long to report it.

If one wants to look at a specific area where rape is a problem, one needs to look no further than the United States military and how it chooses to deal with rape. The various service branches have elaborate systems set up to deal with rape in a coed military but, most of the time, the female who has been raped sees her career destroyed by the simple act of reporting the event. The military does its best to fight this at the highest levels, but, as they say, sergeants run the army and they do not care for this type of information at all. All to often it is the best and most aggressive soldiers who do the very worst of deeds when it comes to women and it seems to be a situation that cannot correct or remedy itself.

As far as Representative Akin goes, this idea of legitimate rape seems to encapsulate all of what you have already read in this piece. Akin seems to be saying that there are many rapes reported by woman that are not legitimate and this feeds into so many of the narratives already discussed here. What he is implying is that many women lie when they report a rape or that there must be some fine line that defines rape other than the traditional and legal definitions of the event. This is a narrative that people who currently inhabit the conservative movement and its allies like to, in private at least, believe. To put it bluntly for people like this, it is somehow the woman’s fault that a rape has occurred and, therefore, it is illegitimate instead of the other way around. This attitude is so pervasive in certain segments of our society that they have come to believe it as an absolute truth. That is why it was so easy for representative Aiken to roll it off of his tongue and it is simply one more part of a larger narrative that self perpetuates the feeling that women have that if they report a rape they will, on some level, simply not be believed. Many women feel that before a rape can be prosecuted they have to convince those who are to do it that it really happened as they said it did at all. And, that is why so many rapes go unreported in this country. And, the advent of things like the morning after pill have made it easier to simply keep private something that no one likes to admit has ever happened to them. The rapist knows this so the activity continues on with the same characters perpetuating much of it unabated. We suspicion that many women who have gone through the lengthy process of report, believability, hearings, and trial would have to weigh in the balance whether they would ever want to do that sort of thing again. Plus, in so many instances, if one reports more than one rape, we feel that the believability factor begins to subside as they are looked at as to why and what one did to attract this kind of attention. If the rapist gets a record, so does the one who is raped.

Too often, rape and its repercussions exist in a world dominated by men from inception to completion. President Obama stated in a press conference today that women’s issues are decided by men with the implied implication that women should be far more in charge of this process that governs and affects the rest of their lives than they currently are. Until those who enact the laws and set the moral tone for the nation realize that fact, we are destined to confront more and more like representative Akin and allies like Paul Ryan, the current vice presidential nominee for the Republican party, who joined with him a number of years ago to offer up a resolution in Congress that was very detrimental to women’s rights and expressed the same basic belief that the now under fire congressman from Missouri espoused.

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.