Rape Is Not a Crime of Violence Only

To the Editors of The Crimson:

This letter is a response to Jon Eliot Morgan's March 8 Opinion piece about date rape, "An Orwellian Nightmare." I would like Jon to consider the following analogy:

Suppose, Jon, that I decided I had something to gain in taking your life. I could accomplish this by asserting violence against your physical resistance--I could beat you to death with a crowbar or slash your throat with a knife. This would certainly be a horrible crime. But is it the physical violence against your persistent resistance that distinguishes the act as a crime?

Suppose instead that I meet you at a party and you allow me to persuade you to have several drinks, so that you become intoxicated and your powers of reasoning are weakened. I suggest that we go for a walk because I like you and I want to talk with you.

We walk to the edge of a cliff, and I describe to you how wonderful the experience of jumping off would be. I promise you that it's not dangerous--you are with me and you're safe. In your state of confusion, you allow my passionate description of the pleasure and excitement of jumping off the cliff to displace your own judgment, and you are afraid to hurt my feelings, so you jump.

Without violence it will be difficult to prove my guilt in court, but the difficulty involved in legally implicating me in this murder does not render my intention to kill you less criminal. Does the fact that I never touched you, that you decided yourself to jump, make you any less dead?

Even though increased violence causes much greater suffering, I think you would agree with me that it is more important to recognize that taking a person's life is a violation than it is to distinguish whether the life was taken violently.

The same is true about rape: Physical violence greatly increases the pain, but the violence itself is not what makes it a violation. Physical violence is one means to an end, and the end is a violation that does not have to be achieved through physical force.

Sex is not a conquest, it is not a place for the advancement of self-interest. It is a mutual sharing. People must completely physically open themselves in sex, and therefore they are completely vulnerable emotionally, physically and psychologically. If a man views a woman's expression of affection as a weakness to be exploited in his conquest, he destroys her respect for the affection she gave and thus destroys her self-respect, her self-image, her capacity for free self-expression.

To perceive a woman as a sexual object is to deny the value of her feelings and thoughts. And to act based on this perception in the process of sex, to use her at that moment as an object, a means of furthering self-interest, is to take from her her very self.

Mutual consent does not mean the lack of physical resistance. It means both parties taking full, active responsibility for each other. If a man wants to have sex with a woman regardless of whether it's right for her, then he's violating her in intention. If he acts on that intention, then he's violating her physically.

If the man acts on anything else but knowledge that the woman is fully ready and willing and eager to have intercourse, then his action is a violation. Knowledge of her readiness does not mean coercing her to say yes, it means understanding her perspective. It means believing that she's ready based on what she says and does as well as what he understands she feels and thinks. It means viewing her interests as equal in importance to his. Anything else is a violation.

If calling it rape is what it takes for men to view sexual exploitation of women as a violation, then it should be called rape. I understand that it is traumatic and painful for a person to accept that an action she or he committed was a serious violation of another person. I assure you that it is every bit as traumatic and painful to accept having been violated.

Yet, I think it is extremely important for both men and women to address this reality, because otherwise objectification of women will continue to be equated with sex; men will continue to feel pressure to conquer, and women will continue to be raped. M. Bridget Neale '91