Shifting Definitions of Legitimate Rape: Troubling Scenarios

After my "hilarious rape" post, my various posts about Todd Akin and the problem of defining "date rape,"  you might think that the subject of "rape" has been exhausted.  Boy, are you wrong!

Recently I mentioned the man (Charlie S.) who says that he has debilitating trauma from a woman date-raping him.  If this hadn't already been noteworthy enough, he was among those that said that Todd Akin's comments made him relive the trauma of his violation.

Example of Inappropriate Leftwing Rape Humor

Amanda Terkel commends Eric Holder's update of the definition of rape, but the aforementioned victim Charlie S. will be disappointed to know that the groundbreaking Attorney General Holder will not be including his sort of experience, apparently making his rape illegitimate.

Terkel curiously doesn't explain how the FBI's previous definition of rape somehow made special allowances that excluded violations by a "blood relative."  Is there something about being a blood relative that makes it no longer forcible or against the victim's will?

In other news, I read about an Albanian woman who was violated by Serbians who snapped her newborn's neck shortly after being born, essentially performing her own "4th trimester abortion."  I think this was cited by the journalist as supporting the idea that making a woman carry the "product of rape" is itself a violation ("[p]sychologically raped a second time").  The author also suggests in places that it would be more humane to kill these children before they are born rather than after.  Now, we have many teenagers serving harsh sentences for killing their newborns when they could've had a partial birth abortion instead.  But, in this woman's case, she apparently felt violated by the rapist's baby and acted as judge, jury, and executioner.  I can imagine Joe Biden saying, "As a Catholic, I know she's going to hell, but as a politician, who really can say that it was wrong for her to snap her baby's neck?"

No, I'm not making fun of it — I'm mocking a society in which people feel they must shrug about it in a sympathetic malaise.  The language game is played so fast and loose that it does sound like we should be understanding about the baby being victimized as well, rather than looking at this as a double-tragedy, a woman killing a Bosnian baby in retaliation for a Bosnian crime.

Under the "morning after regret" category of rape I was recently reminded of the movie Switch in which the protagonist is a recently deceased philanderer who was recently sent back after death in the body of a woman.  <movie-spoiler> In the course of the movie, he/she ends up being taken home drunk by her .  It is clear from the context of the movie that he/she doesn't remember anything that happened, and his/her "best friend" was all too aware. He got lucky.  As in other accounts, she doesn't at the time consider this a rape -- more of a "taking advantage" situation, and later ends up marrying her rapist (how Old Testament, at least as Dan Savage tells it).  Did the Jimmy Smits character commit rape?  The movie sure makes him look like a sympathetic character.  Does anyone hate the movie because it approves of rape?  </movie-spoiler>

And here's a case in which it is claimed that a woman was raped by a man, because the man misrepresented himself.  See, she thought she was committing adultery with him at the behest of the man's wife, as a favor to her.  Really, she had been talking online to the man who was posing as his own wife, because apparently a sucker is born every minute.  This is being called "rape" because she knowingly committed adultery (a prolonged affair at that) while being misled by the guy's ridiculous B.S. stories to think this was something his wife wanted her to do. Next thing you know, it will be rape if the man gets her into bed by lying about his salary.

But hey, rape is rape.  Perhaps she'll claim that Todd Akin made her relive her gullibility all over again.