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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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The part where a victim just shrugs it off and feels fine, that story I find much less likely and here's where it's complicated.

I think that's the meat of my claim/conjecture though. Not just that it feels physically good in the moment, but that they literally are happier as a result of the encounter than they were before. Or at least would be absent the social ramifications. You can imagine it happening for any type of crime, but it seems highly implausible for most crimes, but rape seems like the scenario where, because things are so complicated and unstraightforward, you'd have more variance: with some people being damaged by it way more than something simple like being mugged, but some being damaged way less and possibly negative.

If they are not consenting in their minds, something has just happened to them they didn't want or ask for. Most normal people are never going to be happy about that. If they are consenting from the word go, but don't indicate it, then, well, that's just a weirdo.

To be honest I find it easier to imagine someone who shrugs off being beaten up because it gives them a good story or makes them feel more alive, than I do this.

Most normal people are never going to be happy about that.

And who's to say that they're normal? Some people are weird. I'm not even slightly suggesting that this is the typical case, because it's obviously not. But some people are weird.

A lot of people have responded to you and covered more substantial ground than I will cover here, but I'd like to bring up the odd point of maturity, which I believe is relevant. Many of the Epstein girls readily went along with his cash-for-sex deals in the 90s or whenever. Courtney Wild, One of the most vocal women in the various documentaries, has admitted that, after initially pleasuring Epstein and I guess ageing out(?) she became a kind of tout for him, corralling other girls who might have wanted to make some extra money (for drugs or whatever). While she presumably did not do this for erotic pleasure, she did do it to cash out.

That she could do this then and now regret it is no impenetrable conundrum. She was something like 14 or 15 at the time. By current standards, just a dumb hustling kid. We get older, we realize how stupid we were.

In another infamous pop culture case, Mackenzie Phillips, former star of the 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time, claims to have had an ongoing consensual sexual relationship with her own biological father for ten years .

If this doesn't trip your WTF meter I don't want to know what does. Anyway she regrets it now, has admitted to being really messed up in the head, and over the ensuing years of regret and shame wrote a book about it (as one does.)

My point here is that we are all always growing, and the orgasm of yesteryear may today be something we look back on later with feelings of guilt and shame (Notably I have never had this experience). It doesn't really matter. To enjoy rape as the raped surely still does not excuse the rapist. The old Monty Python skit springs to mind:

MANDY: Well, Brian,... your father isn't Mr. Cohen.

BRIAN: I never thought he was.

MANDY: Now, none of your cheek! He was a Roman, Brian. He was a centurion in the Roman army.

BRIAN: You mean... you were raped?

MANDY: Well, at first, yes.

The crux of your question is whether some women (or men?) might actually sensually enjoy the experience of violent rape. I would suggest that looking at the macabre list of salacious and bizarre experiences that people report enjoying (a list I shall not enumerate) no doubt this is one of them. I also don't think this is necessarily anything we need to worry about collectively or individually.