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Rape is one of the most horrendous crimes that can happen to someone, leaving lifelong scars on the body and soul. Many women are left distressed for a lifetime and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder after being sexually assaulted. The social stigma attached to the violation of a female body in most societies worsens the conditions of women.
Is it only the Lust of Sexually Desperate Men Which Leads to Crimes like Rapes?
There are many factors behind rapes, and lust is just one of the factors. People often attribute factors like mental disorders and poverty to rape. The fact is that a rapist can be from any economic strata and mentally sound. The motives of a rapist differ from one to another and he may belong to any background, race, caste, creed, or religion. He can be from an economically affluent class or from a slum, a highly educated man or an illiterate, a banker or a rickshaw puller, white or black, European or Asian. But it’s equally true that there are certain communities and sections of the population in different countries from which disproportionately more rapists come.
Toxic Masculinity
Contrary to what most assume, rapes are the outcome of not mere lust, but they are manifestations of toxic patriarchal power and the urge to dominate the other being. In the case of the men-to-men equation, this domination is about physical harm, while in the case of women, it becomes a more vicious cocktail of both sexual exploitation and violence.
Sexual assault is less about sexual gratification and more about dominating others.
Toxic masculinity encourges the rape culture as many youth see it as their entitlement to be sexually gratified by any woman they like, whether she consents or not.
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
Rapes are also the outcome of frustration of men, generally poor or unemployed, who vent it out through aggression toward females. The frustration due to economic, intellectual incapability, personal failures, lack of romantic women in life, broken family at home, or any other thing can result in aggressive behavior towards others. This aggression manifests malevolently when they find a weaker target to vent out.
The frustration-aggression hypothesis is based on the psychodynamic approach. When people are frustrated, they experience a drive to be aggressive toward the object of their frustration, but this is often impossible or inappropriate, so the source of their aggression is displaced on something or someone else.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/frustration-aggression-hypothesis.html
Toxic masculinity combined with the frustration-aggression hypothesis is also the reason behind many acid attacks on women, in which a man is unable to digest a rejection of his proposal or sexual advances.
Objectification of Women
Objectification of women is a prominent reason behind rapes, as many become insensitive to the pains and emotions of women whom they consider as mere objects to satisfy the carnal desires of males. This objectification is promoted by popular media, society, advertisements, music albums, etc. Many patriarchal religious dogmas too promote women as an object for men’s pleasure and there is a high incidence of sexual exploitation in such religions and cults.
Consider the ad of Aston Martin below which objectifies women by bringing a comparison with used cars.
Desensitization Due to P*rn
Free availability and easy accessibility to different kinds of p*rn videos, repeated exposure to revenge sex, rape fantasy videos, BDSM videos, etc lead to the desensitization of young men towards women’s pains. They start believing by watching staged videos that women have immense/infinite capability to suffer pain during sex and it does not hurt them physically. Rather, they become immune to the suffering of a woman when maltreated or sexually assaulted. It also leads to the belief among many that women are meant to be treated in a dehumanizing manner, as shown in those videos.
In psychology, desensitization is a treatment or process that diminishes emotional responsiveness to a negative, aversive or positive stimulus after repeated exposure to it.
Definition- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)
Many such videos portray women as enjoying dehumanizing brutal treatment at the hands of perpetrators which leads to similar beliefs in men addicted to p*rn.
Upbringing
Probably the most important factor which determines the behavior of a man toward a woman is upbringing. A man fed with good values since childhood is highly unlikely to sexually assault a woman. The characteristics and nature he imbibes while growing up in his home, watching how his family treats female members within and outside his home, decides how well or bad behaving person he will become. Let’s not confuse it with being educated. Education is a small part of one’s upbringing. Upbringing comprises family values, culture, and respect for another gender/race/religion. Understanding consent is one of the important aspects of one’s rearing.
No Fear Of Law and Less Reporting Due To Social Stigma
When there is no fear of conviction, criminals are emboldened to commit rape crimes. There is a stigma attached to crimes like rapes, and often it turns into victim blaming, which leads to a very less number of cases being reported by women. This further increases the fearlessness of criminals in which they are almost sure that the victim won’t complain against them. This is visible from the fact that many victims come forward to lodge a complaint only when the videos of their assaults become viral, and not before that.
It’s not the severity of punishment but the surety of being convicted which acts as the deterrent in cases of crimes.
Culture/ Society
Some cultures and societies across the world have relegated women’s position to second-class humans whose existence only serves to please and serve men. Just like slavery used to exist in earlier days, oppression of women in these societies is a norm even today. Let’s consider the example of Afghanistan where women under the Taliban are not allowed to attend schools and colleges or Nigeria where extremist organization Boko Haram preaches that girls should be married even before the age of ten. A more vicious form could be seen under the ISIS rule in Iraq where Yazidi women were considered sex slaves of extremist fighters after men from their families were killed in wars. Horrid tales of rapes of minors and women by gangs of marauders were reported from Iraq during the battle days and many cases came to light after the war, where women told the stories of their misery when they were held as sex hostages by ISIS fighters. Religious justification to capture and enslave them for the sexual gratification of the jihadi fighters was given by ISIS and many clerics. In such societies and under such regimes, incidents of rapes see a manifold increase, but not many of them are reported and hence they do not come to light.
We see that so many factors come into play in the psychology behind rapes. Whatever the motive behind such heinous crimes, it’s the duty of the criminal justice system to inflict the harshest punishment on rapists so that it serves as a good deterrent to such crimes. Unfortunately, in India, the conviction rate for rapes is very less and that’s the reason many women do not come forward to report as they consider it as further harassment at the hands of the system.
