Nov 17, 2024
Nov 17, 2024
by BS Murthy
The refrain of a rapist is that he was unjustly arraigned even though the bitch of the accuser had equally enjoyed the sexual act with him. While the woman’s possible yielding to the rapist and her probable acquiescence during the act cannot be equated to her having had sex with him on her own volition, her violator’s averment that she enjoyed sex with him is akin to adding insult to her injury.
Given that rape is ‘the act of forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse against her will’, the chemistry of female injury is better appreciated by visualizing the physics of male force. Where else is there a better laboratory for that than a household to test the characteristics of the sexes, and to develop the matrix of rape, we must discern the moulds of sex in the minds of the couple.
Let us begin with man, the sexual aggressor. Should he be half-hearted about lovemaking, a woman, with her advances, might yet lead him onto the sexual track, and by the same token, a man-in-mood could nudge his off-mood wife into the sexual act. However, if man were to be emotionally dead set against sex, in spite of her amorous moves, the woman-in-want would fail to drag him onto the arousal course, but a man with his physical imposition on his emotionally unwilling mate, still would be able to penetrate into her mentally reluctant self. Hence, the moot point is that while a woman won’t be able to have sex with an unwilling man, yet she could sexually yield to him against her will, with the attendant, though transient, resentment against him.
Nevertheless, should his sexual impositions against her will, become all too frequent, it is then they acquire the infamous tag of marital rape. That being the case of man’s forceful sex with his own woman against her will, the violent penetration into her self, by a total stranger, or someone she is not sexually inclined to, can well be imagined as it is not the physical pain of penetration but the painful affects of it, on her psyche, which make the matrix of rape.
Now, back to the rapist’s refrain that ‘the bitch of the accuser had equally enjoyed the sexual act with him’ and those who back such, like Judge Derek Johnson of a Californian Court that the alleged victim of rape 'didn't put up a fight' during her assault and that if someone doesn't want sexual intercourse the body "will not permit that to happen".
What is amiss in these lines of argument of woman’s coalescence to rape and her enjoyment in it is the realization that it is not warranted that man might force himself upon an unwilling or disinterested woman, never mind her biological vulnerability to his sexual assault might have eventually let her yield her body for his pleasure, in spite of her mental apathy towards sexual union with him.
More than man’s distasteful violation of her, it is the thought of having allowed him to have her, even seemingly enjoyed sex with him that induces a demeaning feeling in woman’s mind-set, which self-diminishes her in her own esteem, and that is the tragic import of rape on a woman.
12-Jan-2013
More by : BS Murthy