Friday, April 26, 2013

The Rape of the Unconscious

Image "Sleeping Girl" taken from morgueFile by Xenia
I wanted to write about the rape of unconscious (or semi-conscious) women.  Because I just don’t get it.

The most recent news story on it hits close to home – UH (University of Houston), nice and local-ish, like near where I live.  And in this news story (which, by the way, has the awesomeness of the title “UH student raped by friend” cause, you know, that’s what friends are for…), this guy basically strips a completely drunk girl, has sex with her, and then videos her naked body.  The girl’s roommate comes across the scene and makes the guy stop and leave.

Things are admitted to, and when the guys talks to the police, he says that, “she mumbled something and appeared to grin. He then said he had sex with her, but agreed that it was a one-way encounter because she never responded or reciprocated.”

And that, my friends, is why I’m confused and don’t get it.  Why the fuck do you want to have sex with someone who doesn’t know you’re having sex with them?  Seriously, how do you brag about that?  “Damn, dude, she didn’t even know I was in her!”  Doesn’t sound too impressive to me!  Why not just have consensual sex at that point?  Cause, guess what, she probably won’t notice you then either if you can only get it up for the nearly dead!

Which, I suppose, is even worse because the rape of the unconscious always reminds me (ickily) of necrophilia.  What’s the old saying – hole and a heartbeat, heartbeat optional?  Because in cases like these, that’s pretty much what it is.  There’s no response.  All you have is something warm that you can manipulate.  For that, buying a fucking sex doll. 

Now, I’m not an idiot.  I do understand the large “appeal” for the rapist is the power, and I can understand that there is power of a form in doing something when no one can stop you or say no.  When you know something about a person that they don’t know – you know what you did to them.  You have memories of their body that they do.  And that, for the rapist, is probably what makes it so great.  Probably why they take videos to help them remember what they’ve done.

And that is also why this is so much like necrophilia and so completely unfathomable by a healthy, normal human being.  I don’t want to make judgment calls about what rape is worse and if rape can be worse or better (really, what kind of sliding scale to hell in a hand basket is that??), but I just think that this is such a truly disturbing trend that we all need to sit back and think about what we can do to start teaching the guys who do this that they need severe psychological counseling…and some time in jail.

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