What Role Do Catholics Play in Combatting Rape Culture?

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Also; rape is a problem in the western world too and has been for a very long time. Islam didn’t cause it. And we need to not pass the buck.
 
Come to think of it, we in the West have our own problem of pressuring women to mutilate their bodies through dangerous surgery, (I remember the whole silicone breast scandal of the 1990s) and eating disorders.

We have a history of other sordid, dangerous practices to conform to cultural expectations, like corsets, addictive diet pills, and swallowing tapeworms. Then there was the foot-binding in China.

FGM stands out as particularly horrible, I’ll grant, and has to do more directly with guarding a woman’s sexuality than her beauty. But patriarchal cultures as a whole place inordinate amounts of pressure on women to harm themselves in order to meet expectations.

There’s no way to prove or even articulate this well, but I wonder if that’s all part of the bigger picture of rape culture. Both involve exerting a lot of cultural control over women’s looks and/or sexuality.
 
Did it never occur to anyone that rape was a form of sex outside of marriage?

I am astonished that a specific warning against rape might be considered necessary. It seems self evident. No one ever speicifically admonished me not to kill my parents or my brother or sister either. I guess we just took it as an essential aspect of good manners.

But the fact that such a specific warning might be needed is itself part of the problem.
 
michaelArc said:
You may have heard of the term Incels? These are angry young men who identify themselves as involuntary celibate. They hold an ideology similar to one taught at a young age by pornography. The idea that they are ENTITLED to a female body and they are to be used for self-pleasure. Porn had played a pivotal role in the development Elliot Rodger’s development from a privileged young man to a misogynist serial killer. Then we have Alek Minassian, the man who posted to Facebook “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” just before he plowed a van into people in the streets of Toronto. How likely is it for someone to fantasize or commit rape if they are willing to kill out of sexual frustration?
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Horrible post. Celibacy should never be involuntary (for people eligible to marry); in fact, St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7 that in order to avoid immorality, people should have spouses. As far as sexually frustrated men getting violent, it’s not something to take lightly; in fact, the fact that many Chinese and Indian males may not be able to find wives (due to the gender imbalance resulting from the “one child policy” and sex-selection abortions that result in far more numbers of males than females in certain age groups) is causing great concern:

www.scmp.com

Too many men: China and India battle with the consequences

In the world’s most populous nations, men outnumber women by 70 million. Both countries are trying to come to grips with the policies that created this generation of gender imbalance
www.scmp.com www.scmp.com

www.scmp.com

My Take | China's real problem: leftover men

Recently a group of women came together at a cafe in Beijing to stage The Leftover Monologues. It was so successful that the organisers decided to do two encores in bigger venues.
www.scmp.com www.scmp.com

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/women-men-gender-identify-gender-equality/2018/04/18/id/855346/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-men/

And I saw one article (can’t find it online now) that suggested that this may cause China to be more aggressive militarily. In fact, I heard a saying that when men can’t find wives, war occurs.

The sad thing is that in China, it is due to gender-imbalance demographics. Here in America and the West, people can’t find spouses due to people voluntarily not making themselves available for marriage, which was encouraged by the famous quotes “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” and “you don’t need a man / children / family to make you happy” that were slogans of the early “career woman” movement of the 1970s. It’s reinforced today by societal acceptance of fornication, same-sex relationships, divorce, cohabitation; it is also given a boost by many in the Church promoting singleness as a “vocation”.

So, the Catholic response should be to emphasize marriage.
 
I worry that this comes very close to suggesting that women should be forced to, or are morally obligated to marry someone they don’t want to in order to avoid violence.
 
Of course, but rape which happens outside of marriage, with persons known or unknown is sex outside of marriage. The poster said that in 12 years of Catholic schooling he was never told not to rape, but was warned against having sex outside of marriage.

I am still astonished that such a warning might be thought necessary.
 
I actually think it’s pretty important to teach both. I mean only a couple of decades ago in Aus marital rape was viewed as a legal impossibility.
 
When it comes to marriage, the parties bind themselves together for life and give marital rights each to the other. But that does not give them the right to inflict force or violence—i.e.–rape. So yes, that should be taught.

When I went to school, it was taken as self evident that no one had a right to rape. It was a sin whether done to a stranger or even a spouse. But now it seems, even the most basic aspects of morality must be spelled out in detail. And that is part of the problem.
 
Did your country recognize rape outside of marriage as a reality? As something not to be done?
 
It is relevant to my reply to the original question, wherein a poster said he was never told not to rape. Marriage was not part of the question.
 
po18guy said:
I helped put rapists in prison for 31 years.
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I’m curious how many rapes were reported, and of those how many were investigated, and of those how many led to an arrest, to a trial, to a conviction. And how those numbers compared to those you put in prison?
 
gcshapero said:
It doesn’t clarify specifically what this means, just that if they had sex while inebriated.
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I didn’t see a specific reply to this but it’s not about regret it’s about the ability to consent.
 
Bruised_Reed said:
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crenfro:
Also, trust God to take care of you and your daughter in this world. Teach & model for her Christian values as best you can, then leave the rest to God. He’s in control of things.
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No word to the boys then? Do you think modesty and chastity will repel rapists somehow?
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Practical education is actually a very good idea. It’s just that we often give the wrong sort of practical education. Given the statistics, I’m not sure how much use all the don’t go out at night type advice is - the stranger in a dark alley is pretty uncommon.

What I wish I’d been told as a young adult was how to spot a bad man who was acting like a good man. So for example, I wish I’d been told I had a right to avoid associating with men who treated me disrespectfully. If a guy keeps pushing past where I didn’t want to go, I shouldn’t keep telling him no, I should drop him. Your risk of assault goes down if you avoid spending time with disrespectful men - even if they say they’re Catholic. Sadly, I think we have learned that those who are practicing and holy in public are not necessarily holy in private.
 
In our current culture it is more about consent to an activity than about the morality of an activity. Someone who is drunk is deemed unable to give consent. If a woman has consensual sex while drinking but she is not drunk, then it is not rape. Once she is drunk, it is rape. If a man is drunk while a woman is sober and they have sex, would the woman be guilty of rape?

Or, as in the case of Ms. Lewinsky, an activity that she insisted was consensual when it happened, is now claimed to have been non-consensual. Sometimes yes means no twenty years later.
 
Easy: yes. If the person, male or female, unable to give consent due to intoxication it is rape.
 
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