xenologer | Rape and Capital Punishment

I was linked this article today.

The gist of this recent Supreme Court decision is that the death penalty in America shouldn't be resorted to unless the crime involves espionage or treason, or the crime results in the death of the victim. The context is whether or not people who sexually abuse children should be faced with capital punishment as an option.

Now, on the one hand... if someone raped anybody that I know, I don't know that I'll be responsible for my actions in the matter. That counts both for a child and a grown adult. In that sense, I can understand why many people have a problem with this ruling. After all, it's natural to want to hurt and even eliminate someone who hurts us badly enough, and the rape of a child is not just an offense to the whole community, but downright damaging to the whole community.

But the rape of an adult woman is, too. The UN Security Council just equated it to a war crime. It happens in war because, as the article states, "rape is a deliberate war tactic meant to intimidate and destroy communities." This is coloring my reception of this ruling. As the article I first linked states, "The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman."

If we executed people who rape children but not people who rape adult women... I feel that would create a harmful double standard. To say that raping kids is morally more reprehensible than raping adult women kind of smacks of the old view that raping virgins was a grievous evil, but raping adult women (who might have had sex before) was merely rude.

Now, granted, I think raping children is weirder than raping an adult woman, but that doesn't make it worse. Just weirder. To say that an adult woman is morally more rapeable than a child really is a throwback to days that I don't think anyone wants to see us repeat. Sexual violence should be treated the same way across the board, no matter what stage of life the victim is in.

Personally I have my reservations about capital punishment in practice, but that's a topic for another day. Right now I'm concentrating on the fact that rape of adults and children is being treated the same way by our legal system, and I think that's a good thing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I will probably post about this later too.

I'm against capital punishment because while I think there are certainly crimes people deserve to die for committing, I don't want my government in that business.

I am also concerned that death penalty for rape (of any sort) implies that rape as effectively ends or destroys a life as death, which is a terrible message to send to survivors of rape, even if the fuckers do deserve to die for the crime.

Interesting point, and I hadn't thought of that. I look forward to reading your post when you get it written.

This is actually why people were against death penalty for rape of an adult woman.

Do you think any crime committed against a child is more grievous than one committed against an adult?

Generally speaking, children, unlike adults, are a vulnerable population incapable of protecting themselves or of making rational decisions.

One of the duties of the law is to protect vulnerable populations. That's why statuatory rape is a crime, for example. It's also why organizations like DFCS exist, because children, by definition, lack access to the resources necessary to defend themselves.

There's also this idea that childhood is a time of innocence, play, and exploration, and early confrontation with adults in decidedly adult situations (rape is one, war is another) irrevocably ends childhood.

I don't think the death penalty should be used in either case, but I'm not comfortable with saying that crimes against children are qualitatively the same as crimes against adults.

And that's totally valid. I can understand why crimes against children are so viscerally repugnant. I'm just uncertain that we should let our outrage at that cause us to give crimes against adult women a backseat emphasis. Punishment for rape is often barely more than a slap on the wrist (if that), and perhaps grouping offenses like child rape in there (which seems to get more of a reaction out of people) will make it clear that sexual violence against children isn't the only kind we should be worried about.

Just thinking out loud as well. But I can see what you're saying.

Alternatively, do you think grouping child rape and adult rape (which, functionally speaking, means rape against women) would bring back that whole women are children idea?

That seems less likely to me. Unless courts somehow started talking about lost innocence (a dubious claim in any time, much less ours) with adult rape victims, at that point you'd still be talking about violence and violation. Just now you'd primarily be talking about violence and violation when you talk about children as well.

*stops before she starts rambling*

Why are we continuing to assume that adult men can't be raped, or that if they are raped it isn't as serious?

I don't think we are. I think it's more an issue of frequency. Something like one male rape for every thousand female rapes (or more, I don't have the stats in front of me); it makes sense that when people discuss rape, they mean women being raped.

Doesn't mean rape of males shouldn't be discussed, of course. But it's good that people in this discussion have reliably specified gender.

UCR, NCVS, and NVAW data finds that women are between 7 and 10 times more likely to be raped than men, even when accounting for underreporting. Women are also more likely to experience serious injury after a rape and multiple rapes over the life course. Other studies show that women, unlike men, structure their lives around the fear of being raped.

That's not to minimize the rape of men at all, but for something that affects so many women (something like 1 in 6 women), piping up with "Men are raped too!" doesn't seem to effectively address any problem. Rather it seems like yet another distraction from issues that affect women primarily.

My point is that claiming that treating the rape of children and adults the same lumps women in with children is silly -- unless we are specifically having another set of penalties for men.

I was suggesting it as another possible interpretation, not making a statement of my beliefs.

You sound like the only person making assumptions here.

I'm not saying that men can't be raped (though, in many states, legally speaking, they cannot). Nor am I saying that men's sexual assault is less serious than women's sexual assault.

I am saying, however, that men are much less likely to be victims of rape, or any other kind of sexual assault over their life course, than women. Therefore, when talking about rape, the de facto meaning is of a man raping a woman.

I disagree: Rape does not irrevocably end childhood, or even usually. A child who is raped (or otherwise sexually abused) is still a child. And I suspect the same would be true about war.

You may know more about this than me of course, but I was under the impression that rape and sexual abuse are not only extremely traumatic for children, but also affect their development into adulthood.

This is not only because the children are exposed to sexual stimuli inappropriate for their age, but also because children are most likely to be raped by members of their own household, which increases the trauma.

Children who are sexually assaulted are also more likely to enter abusive relationships as adults, and to be diagnosed with an assortment of mental health problems ranging from depression to post traumatic stress disorder to anxiety disorder. None of those things is exactly commensurate with a child's age appropriate development, need for love, or need for play.

Finally, there is definitely some evidence that children affected by war (for example, as child soldiers) are irrevocably changed after the experience and don't behave as, say, children not affected by war do.

I'm interested in knowing about your research that says rape and war don't affect childhood.

Rape *affecting* childhood is not the same thing as rape *ending* childhood. Two different things. (I mean, and I ask this in all seriousness, would you give a child who had been raped the right to vote? To own land?)

Indeed. The distinction becomes very clear when you speak to someone who has been abused as a child. It's hard to convey in spoken word, let alone written, but the experience is not to be missed should you be placed in a situation to allow for such talk.

If you like, I would appreciate you trying to explain it to me.

Most of what I know comes from research which isn't always accurate. If your reality is different, I'm interested in hearing about it.

I don't understand where you're trying to go with this.

Children already can't vote, survivors of rape or not, because they're children and the right to vote excludes children.

I'm pretty sure children can own lands and property, but in most cases they can't access said land or property until they reach the age of majority, regardless of previous victimization or not.

So, once again, not sure where you're going here.

There's also likely a bit of confusion over how we're defining childhood. Obviously, sexual assault doesn't catapult a child into the age of majority, but it does change the natural development of the child into an adult in ways that are not reversible (and are, therefore, irrevocable).

People who research childhood agree that there are certain things children should be doing at certain ages. Being raped or sexually assaulted severely disrupts that progression, and has long-ranging consequences on into adulthood. That's what I'm saying. Not that a child is assaulted and all of sudden becomes an adult.

Yes. In other words, we all accept that rape *changes* childhood. It does not *end* childhood.

Unless you literally mean it turns a child into an adult, the claim that it "ends" childhood is meaningless and rhetorically misleading and should not be used. A child who has been raped will be different from a child who has not been raped, but is *still a child*.

Specifically, you said:

There's also this idea that childhood is a time of innocence, play, and exploration, and early confrontation with adults in decidedly adult situations (rape is one, war is another) irrevocably ends childhood.

Which I think is nonsense.

Then I should have used better words. Okay.

Aside from the general outrage we [justifiably] feel whenever children are victimized, I can't help but wonder if there's a significant difference in the amount of psychological harm caused when a child is raped vs. when a woman is raped.

That I don't know about. I'm not even sure how one would begin to study such a thing, but I'd be interested to see the results.

Supreme Court already said can't execute for adult rape decades ago. LA tried to get around that by restricting it to a child. Still, the rapist's life expectancy isn't much better in the prison.

Indeed. From what I hear, it's true that the majority in prisons (even the more violent criminals) typically have issues with rapists and ESPECIALLY those whose crimes involve children in some way.

...so in a sense, the prison population as a whole will greatly shorten the expectancy and quality of life for such types.

Which sucks. But then, so does the whole prison architecture.

While it may seem that women were getting a "back seat" in terms of punishment for rape, actually the main people who lobbied for ending the death penalty for rape were feminists. The argument was that imposing the death penalty for rape placed too much value on women's "chastity" and presupposed that women who experienced rape were somehow worthless afterward or that women are so sexually vulnerable that it's worse to rape a woman than it is to do pretty much anything to a man - including, say, cutting all his limbs off, which didn't merit the death penalty.

Also, the death penalty for rape made it harder to achieve convictions, especially of respectable, professional white males who couldn't possibly have done something so awful it merits the death penalty.

And, because it was almost exclusively reserved for black men, was used as a form of racist terrorism more than it was used to actually protect women from violence. This movement was, I think, a bit before "take back the night" marches and feminist movements against date rape.

Punishing child rape, and not rape of adults, with death was therefore never actually a matter of devaluing violence against women so much as a matter of overreacting to violence against children. People are more comfortable seeing children as people whose chastity needs to be protected and who are sexually vulnerable.

All the same, on a practical level, I'm seriously opposed to death penalty for child rapists, not just because I'm against the death penalty, but because most child rapists are the children's family members. One of the most sure-fire ways to get a kid not to report what's happening to them is telling them that if they do, they'll be killing daddy. Or Uncle Fred. Or whoever. Even if daddy or Uncle Fred puts their lives in danger, they will almost certainly not report. And even non-perpetrators in the family, who already often try to keep rape out of view of authorities because they don't want their sons and spouses to go to jail, will become even worse about it. Heck, I know that if my spouse raped my child and they faced the death penalty, I would take my kid as far away from my spouse as possible, but also do everything in my power to keep that kid quiet. I think I'd be more willing to see justice done if it was a matter of jail time.

One of the most sure-fire ways to get a kid not to report what's happening to them is telling them that if they do, they'll be killing daddy.

Completely forgot about that bit.

Makes perfect sense.

The argument was that imposing the death penalty for rape placed too much value on women's "chastity" and presupposed that women who experienced rape were somehow worthless afterward

This is why I found

_jeremiad's "Rape irrevocably ends childhood!" thing so disturbing.

It's another version of the same thing -- "You were once innocent and happy, now your innocence is gone and you are a broken, stained, ugly thing who is incapable of wholeness". It's a horrible message to send kids who have actually been victims of abuse -- it essentializes the abuse as part of them rather than something that happened to them.

And using it to analogously support the death penalty by comparing it to "murder" -- the "murder of innocence", the "murder of childhood", etc. -- does it to an even more extreme degree. ("The person I was is dead; the happy child no longer exists and has been permanently replaced by a rape victim".)

This is really true. There is a place for acknowledging the severe harm that rape does to kids. But you know, I have a lot of friends who were raped as kids and they're, you know, not as good as dead?

I think the attitude that you may as well be as good as dead once something bad enough happens to you actually contributes to a lot of the harm that people suffer later in life, like low self-esteem, self-harm, suicide attempts and drug abuse. It also contributes to really fucking crazy reactions against that attitude: at least one friend I have who was abused thinks that child abuse is actually not that bad at all and it gave him an interesting life, and he would be sad if child abuse actually stopped because then there wouldn't be any people like him anymore. That's pretty fucked up, but I can sort of see where he got that from. Sort of like how some people with, say, cerebral palsy complain that they wouldn't want a world without cerebral palsy and that attempts to prevent it are genocidal - it's a pretty natural reaction to a world that really does think that they'd rather die than be you.

(clarification - right now I'm speaking to a general societal attitude and don't want to attribute more to

_jeremiah than she actually meant. People do say that being raped and especially being raped as a child is a fate worse than death, which disturbs me)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Profile

xenologer

Rainbow Rumpus Roleplay Town: An Inclusive RPG Directory

November 2017

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

Page Summary

Style Credit

Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: Au Lait by chiming

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jun. 21st, 2025 10:04 am

This Will All Be Very Useful

Rape and Capital Punishment

Links

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags