Forensic Psychology Assignment: Rape is a Sexual Crime (Essay Sample)

Rape is a Sexual Crime
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Rape is the act of forcing someone into sexual affair without his or her personal consent. A man or woman can commit the offence of rape by cogently having an intercourse with another man, woman or child while aware of the fact that the other party does not consent to such an engagement. In some cases, the offender recklessly disregards whether the other party agrees or disagrees. However, as to whether rape is a sexual crime or not remains an intriguing question to most psychological scholars. As such, the prime focus of this paper is to critically discuss the extent to which rape is a sexual crime.  To inform the line of argument, series of relevant psychological theories and research outcomes are examined.
Mythical and Research Perspective:
More often than not, rape as a sexual crime is always misunderstood and bordered with series of myths and misconceptions. One commonly conceived fable is that rape is principally a sexual act. People who hold to this conception often inadvertently put their victims on trial (Cohen and McKenna 2016:1). Their dress codes, motives, and actions not only render the friends suspicious but also the law enforcement officials. The credibility of such people, as a result, can be questioned, and their sexual acts and privacies may be made public.
Perhaps due to embarrassment, humiliation, and obsession with guilt, rape has, for long, been a vastly underreported crime. Nevertheless, through the past two decades, different sociological and psychological studies have focused on examining the psychology of rapists and criminal roadmaps of the act of rape. In most of the findings, rape is portrayed as a crime associated with sexual violence, often observed by the women as a life-threatening engagement coupled with emotions of personal humiliation and fear. Sexual drive is less impetus for men than violent aggression.
From the mental acuity perspective, one would even think such men or individuals perpetrating the act of rape are mentally ill. If so, then, it would not be wrong to argue that rape is not a sexual crime since before the law are psychopaths are not actually questionable criminals. Their acts are out of influence of mental conditions which drive them uninformed of the possible consequences of their actions. In a research conducted by Doctor Amir between 1960’s and 1970’s, it was established that rapists are not really psychopathic, belligerent groups people as one many would think of them (Cohen and McKenna 2016:2). Rather, rapists are just extreme individuals driven desire. A good proportion of these people blend well in their societies, and no much differences separate them from normal groups. What provokes a number of rapists is not functionally different from what which motivates people who resort to prostitutes or buy tickets to peep shows. All these actions do not meet the threshold of emotional intimacy or mutual enjoyment and all of them fall within the realm of sex.
Theoretical Perspectives:
There several theoretical postulations examining the extent to which rape can be considered a sexual crime. Notable amongst many are the Commodification Theory, Control Theory, and Developmental Theory.
The first theory, commodification theory, views sex as an asset that can be stolen from a person without consent. Rape, therefore, comes in as a property theft crime in which one party is forcefully ripped off his/her commodity. No emotional intimacy, common sex experience nor personal feelings shared between the victim and the rapist. Although men often understand forceful sex without the subject’s approval is off the beam, most of them do not perceive such an act as really bad. Obviously, it is for a reason aforementioned that most rapist rarely ends up convicted of sexual crimes. Based on this theory, rape can be considered a high-standard sexual crime is embodying theft or robbery of one's personal commodity intentionally. Thus, like theft crime cases are handled, rape cases should as well be handled with ruthless criminal approaches to avoid the possibility of recidivism.
The Behavioral theory brought forth by two psychological researchers, Malamuth and Heilmann, analyses the evolution the rape and its criminal scaling with respect to sexual offences. In their theoretical analysis, the researchers tends tend to purport that prevalence of rape among men and women is a result of developmental events involving continuous process of learning. Based on this theory people who perpetrate the act of rape often come from punitive development backgrounds married with of short-term and impersonal relationships (Ullman 2010). In such backgrounds, coercion, violence and manipulation are effective ways of steering social relationships alluding to direct linkage to criminal offences. Therefore, relative to the extent to which rape can be categorized as a sexual crime, the theory posits that forced sexual contact a true reflection of disrespect towards the victimized gender. Thus, with the argument that everyone has the right to be sexually decisive such that sex is only granted at will and when one is completely comfortable with the whole process and the possible consequences, then rape is not far different sexual assault or sexual violence. A criminal act.
Another theory is the Control Theory which examines rape not as a construct of sexuality, but as a countenance of control. In this conception, radical sages challenge present understandings laws relating to rape cases to change their towards control issues involved. The extent to which rape is ought to be conceptualized as sexual crime is analyzed from the viewpoints of perpetrator and the victim by dissecting the matter into whether discussion consequence, experience or motivation erupts before the event. For the authors, rape is a sexual crime, and especially when the victim does not wishfully consent to the activity. The inadvertent impacts of rape threats on the victim’s trust in others, perception of personal control and self-esteem are clearly negative. Meaning, it goes against personal expectation of good quality of life.
From the perspective of human health, rape is really a threat. There are series of rape consequences that might jeopardize a person’s life ranging intentional killing of victim in case of resistance, contraction of dangerous diseases to suicide. Biblically people have the right to autonomy, and one is supposed to live completely without the interference another person threatening to take his or her life. Obviously, rape is a life-threatening situation which might mean death to the victim in question. Some rapists go as far as threatening their subjects with guns, knives and other lethal arms, leaving the victims in contemplation what might ensue in case of resistance. In the end, the victim is forced to either give in or accept any possible outcome of resistance. The general implication is that is rape is nothing but just a violent sexual crime.
Critical Analysis:
Based on the available theoretical suppositions and research outcomes, rape can be categorized a sexual crime at various levels. At marriage levels, gender considerations, and age. In marriage situations, sex is an open and acceptable thing. However, in some cases it might be considered an action legally punishable by law. These are the instances of rape. A husband or wife can be considered to have committed an offence of rape if either of them acts without full consent of the other. Also, in this regard, rape can be seen as a sexual crime when a husband or wife acts recklessly, not caring about the stance of the other party about intercourse.
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