Why is rape or even just sex worse than death?

[BiscuitTrouser]

A lot of rape is followed by murder, so that sucks.

This is my thought on it.

Death and murder *IN MY OPINION* isn't always bad. Death as a natural or accidental thing could be stupid, tragic and sad, but it is never hateful. Now look at murder, I believe murder is a perfectly sound reason to defend yourself from getting murdered.

So what I am trying to say is you can kill someone without the act of hate, could be an act of defense, protection of a loved one, justice and what not.

Rape on the other hand is ALWAYS hateful. There is no such scenerio as an OKAY rape. It's always forced and it's always evil.

The more you know *Rainbow*

Quoted for absolute truth. In games you rarely murder in cold blood. And if you do the character you murder is so comically defined as an obvious "game character" (ie generic face number 5 in GTA that youve seen 1000 of already and will respawn right away) that you cant relate to it at all. Which is good since being able to relate to a mindless drone in those games would make them less fun. Id feel bad.

However in a lot of games you murder either in self defence or in the defence of something greater or its just monsters. In these cases the killing can be rationalised by your mind to not be horrific. "Its justified" you can tell yourself and in most cases it is. Even the little girls in bioshock manage to avoid this by being portrayed as very unhuman making it hard for us to see them as anything but monsters.

Basically no games show you actually committing outright cold blooded murder on real human defined beings with serious character and personality. Ever. Because being asked to do this would trigger all the "this is wrong" pads that go off on the subject of rape. Rape is always hatefull. And i can almost promise a gamer would almost be as hesitant to do that in a game as to commit a motiveless coldblooded murder on a person with real character who begs and pleads and cries and has a family. It would come off as wrong. But games avoid this like the plague because they dont want you to feel bad about playing them. Movies do this too. Only the evil characters do this. We only cheer when this happens to people defined as "bad" by being obviously evil.

 

[Abedeus]

Because when you die, you don't have to spend the rest of your life dealing with the trauma.

And in some countries, shame, then having to raise an unwanted rape baby as a single mother and nobody will help you from your family.

Except the example given defies all sense and logic. Can the human body even sustain that much torture before just shutting down? You can't even claim to know the effects of being endlessly tortured for that long. So really the argument still relies on a mountain of assumptions and guesses, rather than any actual fact.

The difference between a good torturer and a great torturer is how long he can keep the victim alive.

 

[subtlefuge]

Because it's torture. I can't watch even a mild torture scene without cringing. At least that's what I think it has the most similarity to.

Also, I've become conditioned to have zero response to easily identified fake death, but even simulated rape feels all to real to watch. I'm thankful that it's still unsettling to me.

I'm not going to pretend to know really anything about the subject, but I have to assume that some rape victims are glad that they are still alive.

 

[Biosophilogical]

Witnessing a rape perhaps causes a similiar reaction to that of watching someone being tortured.

Watching some dude get decapitated, while pretty nasty, isn't nearly as nasty as watching someone have their kneecaps smashed in with a hammer.

Why do you think that might be? Do you think it's because we find it easier to empathise with rape/torture? I mean, we've all experienced some degree of pain, or feeling of helplessness, so while few of us could truly understand what it means to be raped or tortured, we can at least say "It's probably something like this, but way worse!". As for death, it is so far removed from our experience (by virtue of being death, it is as far removed from experience as it is possible to be) that we can't process it on as personal a level as rape/tortue.

OT: My answer is ^there^. It isn't actually worse, but we are better able to understand the bad of it.

 

[irishda]

It depends on your viewpoints of death and on the parameters of the murder. At the top of the hierarchy in things I can handle is death on the battlefield, or between cops and criminals. These two groups knew what they were getting into, and in a way it's almost inspiring watching two people test themselves with the highest stakes. Under that is manslaughter, people who for whatever reason end up dead through no intentions of their killer. It's harder to see mostly because of the pain you'll find in the perpetrator, who now has to live with the knowledge of what their actions caused.

Third is murder of the more horrific sense. Crimes of passion and especially methodical, systemic murder is hard to watch because it acknowledges people with either the lack of empathy or the lack of discipline. But rape or torture? That's definitely worse to see if only because there's a sense of peace with death. A man killed is a man at rest. There's an end to the pain.
But to rape someone is not only to be a physical violation but also a complete psychological dominance. With rape comes a complete loss of sense of control, the inability to feel like you have any sort of power. And that is very important to people, to not feel utterly helpless against an uncaring world. When you kill someone, you just break their body, but when you rape someone, you can very well break them as a person.

Case in point: Watching The Hills Have Eyes

Spoiler: Just in case you haven't seen it, I guess

the rape of the daughter was easily the hardest thing to watch for me.

My knuckles were absolutely white because I almost snapped the arm off the movie theater seat.

TL;DR Death is a finality. Someone's killing you, but there will be no more pain at the end of it. Rape is a violation of a person's sense of control. I haven't heard of anyone being psychologically scarred from dying.

 

[FamoFunk]

Because rape is about dominance. Look at a child abuse or long term school bullying or ostracism victim, someone who has been completely dehumanized, dominated, and subjugated. Now condense those years of abuse into one single episode. That's why.

I think it's insulting to compare 1 episode of rape to years of mental abuse.

And that's pretty damn insulting to a rape victim.