A basic lesson of philosophy is that terms need to be properly defined. Oversimplifying a bit, a good definition needs to avoid being too narrow and too broad. A definition that is too narrow leaves out things that the term should include. One that is too broad allows in too much. A handy analogy for this is the firewall that your computer should have: if it is doing its job properly, it lets in what should be allowed while keeping attacks out. An example of a definition that is too narrow would be to define “art” as “any product of the visual arts, such as painting and sculpture.” This is too narrow because it leaves out literature. As an example of a definition that is too broad, defining “art” as “that which creates an emotional effect” is defective since such things as being punch in the face or winning the lottery would be art. A perfect definition would be like perfect security: all that belongs is allowed in and all that does not is excluded.
While people have a general understanding of the meaning of “rape”, the usual view covers what my colleague Jean Kazez calls “classic” rape—an attack that involves force, threat or coercion. As she notes, another sort of rape is “date” rape—a form of assault that, on college campuses, often involves intoxication rather than overt violence.
In many cases survivors of sexual assault do not classify the assault as rape. According to Cathy Young, “three quarters of the female students who were classified as victims of sexual assault by incapacitation did not believe they had been raped; even when only incidents involving penetration were counted, nearly two-thirds did not call it rape. Two-thirds did not report the incident to the authorities because they didn’t think it was serious enough.”
In some cases, a person changes their assessment and re-classify the incident as rape. For example, a woman who eventually reported being raped twice by a friend explained her delay on the grounds that it took her a while to “to identify what happened as an assault.”
The fact that a person changed her mind does not, obviously, invalidate their claim. However, there is the question of what is a good definition of an extremely vile thing. After all, when people claim there is an epidemic of campus rapes, they point to statistics claiming that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted in college. This statistic is horrifying, but it is still reasonable to consider what it means.
One problem with inquiring into the statistics and examining the definition of “rape” is that this can be an ideological issue for some people. For some, “rape” is broadly construed and to raise even rational concerns about the broadness of the definition is to invite accusations of ignorant insensitivity (at best) and charges of misogyny. For some on the right, “rape” is very narrowly defined (including the infamous notion of “legitimate” rape) and to consider expanding the definition is to invite accusations of being woke or a radical feminist man hater.
As the ideological territory is staked out and fortified, the potential for rational discussion is proportionally decreased. In fact, to even suggest that there is a matter to be rationally discussed (with the potential for dispute and disagreement) might be greeted with hostility. After all, when a view becomes part of a person’s ideological identity, the person tends to believe that there is nothing left to discuss and any attempt at criticism is both automatically in error and a personal attack.
However, the very fact that there are such distinct ideological fortresses indicates a clear need for rational discussion of this matter and I will endeavor to do so in the essays that follows. While this is a subject I wrote on back in 2014, the rise of the manosphere and the misogynistic right has pushed me to re-visit this topic.
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