Poll: Which is worse: Rape or Murder?

[Random berk]

I could easily justify murdering Gaddafi, or Robert Mugabe, or some similar tyrant. I... can't really justify raping them.

 

[Kashrlyyk]

...
I think that excuse is very, very, very, very, very outdated for our species.

Today, yes it is, that is why I included the "not tribe or society" part. If a tribe is in danger of becoming extinct that isn't a good enough reason to justify rape. But if the whole human race is in danger of extinction, it is. And in a very far future it might not be outdated anymore.

 

[Jonluw]

I honestly don't think murder is as bad as many other crimes out there.
"Oh no, someone died." People die all the time.

And the people close to them consider it a tragedy. Although any bad thing you can think of happens all the time. Were you beat up? People get injured all the time. Robbed? People lose their possessions all the time. Raped? Yeah that happens a lot.

You obviously didn't get my point.
What you replied to was the introduction to my post.
Here's the core of it:

Commiting a horrible act of sexual violence, and then leaving the victim alive to be scarred for life is much worse in my opinion.
Living and suffering is worse than being dead.

My point is that dying isn't all that horrible a thing to go through, assuming it's fairly painless.

Torture is worse than killing, in my opinion.

It's not the dying it's the shear nothingness that follows. You don't exist, you literally can't do anything. You can't even be lazy. You have no experiences left, you're through you're finished. I'd say better luck next time but there is no next time.

Indeed, and why is that such a horrible thing?

Because it robs you of any possible positive experience you could ever have EVER. Rape may rob you of a lot, but it doesn't render it impossible to experience joy or happiness. Therefore murder is worse.

I disagree. You won't care that you can't have any more positive experiences, because you're dead.

Sure, the thought of ending life early might feel very unsatisfying. There were so many things you didn't get to do, but you won't be able to feel unsatisfied.
In terms of bad stuff, I say:
Living and in pain > dead

Sure, the thought that I'll be leaving a large anime backlog if I die now bothers me, but I comfort myself with the fact that it can't bother me if I'm dead.

 

[Halceon]

Murder can be Justified

Rape on the other hand, Can not!

Murder is unjust killing. We're not debating war, execution or whatever else here. Whatever reasoning you can find for murder, you can pretty much equally apply it to rape.

 

[zedel]

Murder simply leads to nothingness or better depending on your religion.

Rape leads to the conscious warping and distortion of one's very psyche. Rape is not really something that you can recover from. Rape is unforgivable.

 

[godofgamers]

Rape won't stop the trolley car and I can't think of any realistic situation (save the imminent extinction of the human race) where raping something would help.

I highly doubt this will prove an effective experiment, but let's consider the argument of killing one to save five. Would you rape one person to keep five people from being raped? For the sake of argument let's assume they're all completely and utterly innocent, and that they are all the same sex as you.

 

[ramboondiea]

well obviously murder. rape is bad and all, but your still alive,
murder is to end a life, they just dont exist anymore, they can never do anything ever again.

 

[zedel]

Murder can be Justified

Rape on the other hand, Can not!

Murder is unjust killing. We're not debating war, execution or whatever else here. Whatever reasoning you can find for murder, you can pretty much equally apply it to rape.

No, you can't. You say that murder is unjust killing, but the only objective definition I've ever seen of "justice" is the tendency towards order. While murder can indeed lead to order, I doubt this was your intention. Murder is the unlawful killing of another. There are many understandable reasons that one may kill another that are not exactly legal. However, there is no situation in which rape becomes acceptable or understandable.

 

[XHolySmokesX]

I wasn't 100% sure about this but i went with murder in the end.

The thing is, there are lots of ethical implications with rape, and the subject has to live with them. One of the main ones for me is what would the girl do if she fell pregnant from the experience but was heavily against abortions?

However death is the ultimate destruction of freedom. By killing someone, you are taking away their ability to live and make choices to live how they want. Although despite this, death does seem to always end with a possitive, you either go to heaven (if you believe in it) or you become immune to pain and suffering. Death is not a problem for you, it is a problem for those who are still alive.

Rape leaves the subject with a horrible experience that they have to live with for the rest of their life, but murder down right destroys life, as well as effecting the people around you a lot more. So for these reasons i have to conclude that murder is worse.

 

[Laser Priest]

Rape scars people for life. Murder makes life a much shorter measurement.

Murder also gets me more minions, so I'd say rape is worse.

 

[smeghead25]

I have yet to hear a single good reason to rape another person.

Because they're hot and have standards that don't include me, forcing me to spend long nights wishing, wanting, waiting, until they have messed with my mind by being 'friendly' when all she's doing is teasing, tempting, and tormenting me with that which I may not have, until the fateful day where my sanity is tested by a smile, the lick of her lips, an overly sensual fluttering of her lashes, wordlessly reeling me in with false hopes and promises while simultaneously crushing such hopes and dreams with a restraining order, effectively making stealthy observation a necessity until finally I succumb to the urge to kidnap and rape her in the dark, dirty woodlands behind her house with nothing but a wet sock in her mouth to cover our bodies as we make love, her screams of delight and writhing body forcing me onwards and quite literally upwards, towards a righteous conclusion from which she will cry tears of incrediblye joy and happiness having finally expressed her love to me in such an unforgettable way...

KIDDING! Not really. Geez I scare myself sometimes...

Here comes the banhammer...

OT: I dunno, rape can definitely psychology affect someone, but I think murder takes any chance of recovery way from them.

However, I would entireloy condone the murder of rapists. Some murders may be justified to some small extent however and I think murder should be considered case by case.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Ultimately, it really depends, much of the time as you have 'reasoned' murder (revenge/motives) which are often (though not always) isolated incidents in the perpetrator. However, this can escalate if the individual gains a 'taste' for killing. Then, you have 'unreasoned' murder (either stemming from a 'reasoned' murderer who decides to make a hobby of it) which is usually found in some sort of psychopathy. In the latter case, this is what makes people choose murder.

However, rape can never be justified. Even statutory rape is questionable at best. The physical cost to the victim is rarely better than something on a par with GBH (note - opinion).

In both cases there is emotional cost, and all things being equal (sic) rape is by far the worse. Largely because there is the victim's suffering, and his/her acquaintances' having to see said suffering. It tears them apart even more because it's much more difficult to express the grief than if the victim were just dead.

Also, one question to ponder: if you were a man and you were raped, how would you deal with it?

 

[Womplord]

Murder is worse. When someone gets raped, they get hurt and humiliated, thats about it. I don't understand how someone can think this is worse than getting killed.

I'm pretty sure if you asked a rape victim if they would rather have died, they would say no.

Some commit suicide because of it.

What you should ask them is that if given the chance would they go back in time and kill themselves before they were raped.

Okay. But most don't commit suicide and would rather be alive. I looked up some statistics:

"About 33% of rape victims have suicidal thought. About 13% of rape victims will attempt suicide. "

In none of the sites I found could I find successful suicide rates. I'm guessing this rate was pretty low. Here's some statistics I found for major depressive disorder:

"Among adults aged 18 or older who experienced a past year major depressive episode (MDE), 56.3 percent thought, during their worst or most recent episode, that it would be better if they were dead, 40.3 percent thought about committing suicide, 14.5 percent made a suicide plan, and 10.4 percent made a suicide attempt"

So apparently, getting raped causes about as much psychological damage as a major depressive episode. I don't see how this is as bad as murder.

 

[Queen Michael]

I'd rather be raped than killed. At least I get a chance to recover. So I'm going with murder as the worst act. (Since there are so many different possible scenarios, I'm assuming that both the rape and the murder are for fun.)

 

[shroomie]

Rape does way more damage to a person than murder does, once someone has been murdered they are dead forever and nothing matters anymore. But victims of rape often find themselves vicitms of wider society too, there have been cases of rape victims just abandoned by their families and shunned from society plus the psychological damage lasts forever. Murder, though bad, can be justified in some cases but rape can never be justified.

 

[MrFluffy-X]

I say Murder because people can and have recovered from rape. They go on to have a happy life. Cant imagine how hard it must be to recover from rape.

 

[MasterOfWorlds]

This is a serious and no doubt contentious topic, but I think the answer is interesting enough to talk about. Though please, keep it clean.

Ultimately, both acts are against one's will. Murder you could argue is worse because ultimately you are dead afterwards. But Rape is also generally tortuous and prolonged, and while you live, it is often a very painful existence. Also, I would imagine the emotional damage would be not insignificant.

So what do you think? Please backup your reasons, I'm sure it'll be interesting.

If you look at it from a societal standpoint, murder would probably be wrose because then you're completely removing someone from society, and they won't be able to work, love the people that they loved, and so forth and so on since they're gone.

On the other hand, a lot of rape victims never get over their attack. Sometimes they get therapy and it helps them get over it, but I don't think any victim of rape ever really gets over it, they just learn to cope with it. But rape victims, for the most part, can still be productive members of society, but teir qualit of life might vary. You'd have some that would never leave their homes, but on the other hand, you might have some that go into the legal system to help put people like the ones that raped them behind bars.

People eventually get over the death of a person though. Life would move on for those that knew the murdered person.

It's a tough call if you look at it strictly through a societal view. If you look at it more personally though, I'd say that rape is, for the most part, worse than murder. This is simply because of the theoretical continued suffering of both the victim, and the continued involvement of those around the victim.