Reasons for Rape

30 December 1997, 1979 words


If there is one thing which has emerged clearly from the recent debate on rape, it is that absolutely nothing will be done to reduce the crime. The only concrete proposals have been negative ones: castration or death for rapists, even unconvicted ones. Of course, such measures treat only symptoms, not causes, and therefore will do nothing to solve the problem.

The people who have been concerned with causes, however, have been equally useless in their analyses. Vague comments about "increasing respect for women" and "restoring family values" about sums up the contribution of the liberal side of this debate. Psychologists, religious leaders and feminists have either been unwilling or unable to grapple with the rape issue in any meaningful sense. I cannot tell if this lassitude is the result of hopelessness or intellectual incompetence. (Not that this dotishness is confined to local intellectuals: in November last year, the local Catholic Church brought a so-called professor of philosophy from the United States who, among other things, asserted that if a woman got pregnant for a rapist that meant that one good thing came from an evil act.)

The basic fact is this: rape is not going to be an easy problem to solve. No social issue is. Bringing about a drop in rape incidents is a long-term project. I doubt that any measures will see significant results inside ten years (and more likely 30.) This is because the problem has to tackled on the economic front as well as the social one. Despite the pious brayings of politicians, the legislative agenda is almost entirely irrelevant to dealing with rape.

But, because of the fixed mentality of the persons who have authority and power in Trinidad, I don't think this problem is going to be solved deliberately. If rape incidents do drop, it will be because of the natural evolution of Trinidadian society (but it is entirely possible that our culture will instead devolve as time goes on.) It is also quite possible that rape incidents are already less than they were ten or fifteen years ago and what has happened recently is that reports of rape have increased.

If this is so, it is because women have begun to understand that rape is a wrong done to them for which they need not blame themselves or feel ashamed about. Reporting the crime can be a way of dealing with the trauma. And if the attitude of ordinary women has indeed changed in this way, it is something for which no leaders in any sector of our society can take credit for: no politician, priest, pundit, feminist, calypsonian or intellectual.

But, even if it is only reportage rather than incidence which has risen, this does not change the fact that rape is a serious problem in Trinidad. And the reason I don't believe anything effective is going to be done is because effective measures will first of all require fundamental changes in attitude. For example, rich people in this society will have to stop viewing poor people simply as labour to be exploited. This is difficult enough, but in comparison to the second change in attitude which is required - a dismissal of religious patriarchy - the first change would be easy to bring about.

But if such changes are to happen, the first requirement is an objective and analytical examination of causes. And, while my readings in psychology and sociology are quite superficial, I don't think I can do worse than what I've seen or heard so far from the experts. What I want to do in this essay is lay out the problems in as clear a fashion as possible.

The first thing we need to do is disabuse ourselves of the notion that rape is "wrong" in some fundamental sense. "Wrong" is a term often used in a way which confuses biological truths with moral ones. Feminists like to insist that "rape is a crime of violence, not sex." But this statement is both foolish and at odds with reality. Rape is an act of sexual violence, and it is important to keep the sex part in because unless you deal with sexual attitudes you can't deal with rape.

Animals do not rape because animals have no moral strictures against sex, only instinctive ones. More importantly, the fundamental genetic imperative of all mammals to reproduce is hardly ever frustrated in the lower animals. Rape is wrong because it goes against certain criteria of individual rights which human beings have constructed, and the reason the crime happens at all is because it is impelled by other biological/cultural standards. The confusion between biology and ethics arises directly from the religious perspective which assumes, quite logically, that since God decreed all moral truths, then Nature must itself be moral. Even the experts fall into this trap: in November last year we had one of the country's most prominent social scientists, Professor Ramesh Deosaran, telling UWI graduates that crime "is a moral issue because such crimes at its most fundamental level express a lack of restraining values, a lack of social intelligence and of character."

The problem with this perspective is that, by viewing evil as fundamental, and therefore causeless, the only solution must, also logically, be causeless as well i.e. prayer. Unfortunately, prayer in the absence of practical measures will do little to solve the real issues facing us.

In terms of the specific problem of rape, religions must bear a large part of the blame. Many commentators have quite correctly said that rape is impelled by a lack of respect for women. However, no one has suggested exactly where this lack of respect comes from. Biologically, of course, it arises from the simple fact that most men are physically stronger than most women. But, culturally, it is inarguable that the main source of contempt for women comes from religion.

Religious leaders can argue all they like about teaching respect for women and the sanctity of marriage and so on. But actions always speak far louder than words. So when the Catholic Church does not allow women to be priests, when Muslims hold that women must cover themselves from head to toe, and when Hindu fathers pay a dowry to men to marry their daughters, the message comes through loud and clear. The philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, "Evil passions make men incapable of seeing the truth and false beliefs afford excuses for evil passions." So Kenrick London is not as anomalous as religious leaders would like to believe.

Religion is also responsible for a culture of sexual repression and it seems clear that repression must play a large part in the rape of infants and prepubescent children. Yet, as far as I know, no one has pointed out that the three categories of rape - individual attackers, gang rape and child abuse - are different types of act whose common factor is sexual domination. But, unless these distinctions are made, there is no way that one can effectively deal with the individuals who commit these acts.

So the rational view - that women are the social and intellectual equals of men - cannot be inculcated as long as religious values hold that women are fundamentally inferior. Therefore, as long as religion continues to exert a hold on the popular imagination, women will be viewed as legitimate targets for sexual domination.

Unfortunately, evolutionary realities make the religious view more readily acceptable than the liberal one. Men and women are both genetically programmed to maximize their reproductive value. But the ways in which both sexes do this differ. A man simply has to impregnate as many women as possible to maximize his genetic value. But a woman has to ensure that she is impregnated by the best male available - one with strength, power and resources - to maximize her genetic value. Thus, when a woman dresses so as to advertise her sexual availability, she is trying to attract a good man (and, yes, they do exist.) But men often take the woman's sexual signals to mean that she is trying to attract any or every man, because this is how men think. Hence you get the silly comments that women should "dress decently" in order to deter rapists and those women who dress in skimpy clothes "look for dat."

Another factor that needs to be understood is that men are always in sexual competition for women. The most recent figures from the Central Statistical Office show that there are now more men than women in Trinidad and Tobago. This is odd, because in all normal populations - those not skewed by war or disease or famine - the male/female ratio is usually equal. So there needs to be an investigation into what has caused this skewing. Is it that women are dying faster than men, or are emigrating in greater numbers, or that many women have been having their first child for men five or more years older than them (a factor which increases the likelihood of having a boy)? This is something which needs to be analyzed and dealt with.

At the same time, the fact that men outnumber women would, in a rational society, lead to greater empowerment for women. When women can pick and choose, polyandry inevitably results. The number of domestic murders where men have killed women for infidelity suggests that polyandry, serial and otherwise, has in fact been happening at the informal level. And, were it not for religious and social strictures, prostitution would be an acceptable way for women to take economic advantage of this situation. Legalized and socially approved prostitution could well have the result of reducing rape by making sexual partners readily available. But, again, this would be possible only in a scenario where the gap between rich and poor was not so wide, because it is the poor men who would more need the services of prostitutes.

In any case, Trinidad is a society where the deputy essential mentality still holds. So what happens is that high-status men tend to have more than one woman of child-bearing age, thus increasing sexual competition among males at lower levels. And, at the lowest levels, this competition for the resources to attract women leads almost inevitably to crime, including rape. The phenomenon of gang rape, paradoxically, seems to embody both this factor of sexual competitiveness and male homosexuality. The latter is not too surprising, when one considers that captive animals, when deprived of mates, indulge in homosexual activity. (You can see this with pet dogs, for example.)

This is where the social transformation involves the economic. Contrary to what the Chamber of Commerce would like the public to believe, the most important economic challenge facing Trinidad and Tobago is not increasing GNP - we are quite productive enough for our population- but reducing the gap between rich and poor. But business people in this country will resist any measure designed to accomplish such an end, which is why the Employers Consultative Association has already criticized Government's proposed plan to introduce a minimum wage of seven dollars an hour. (Exactly why anyone should be expected to live on a salary of less than $1,120 a month - eight-hour day, five-day week - is beyond me.)

Meanwhile, violent crime continues to worsen, but the economic elites in this society continue not to see the connection between crime and poverty. The recent spate of rapes and child murders will not open their eyes because, you will notice, these crimes involve poor people. The ironic justice here, of course, is that both the rich and the poor end up living behind bars. The solutions are, to my mind, simple. But they are also radical for those with colonized minds and that is why I doubt practical measures will ever be deliberately implemented to stop this society from crumbling further.

Copyright ©1997, Kevin Baldeosingh