Just a fair warning, this is a touchy subject for some people, and kind of off my typical subject matter. After reading 150+ comments over at Shamus’ site, I felt pretty compelled to add in my two cents.
If you read the comments to that post, you know how this one really brought out the real trolls of the internet. All manner of them, they came from the depths, with their warts and boils and their horrifying breath rasping out battle-cries such as, “Race and gender are social constructs!” It was frightening, and a few intrepid posters foolishly went at them with their swords sharpened. Trolls cannot be slain by conventional weapons, in fact, they only become more and more agitated by them. Trolls can only be killed by fire.
Those of us who don’t live in solipsistic darkness where external reality is only what we believe or imagine it to be can recognize that these claims are patently false. Skin color is not a good proxy for race, but races are genetically real concepts. Gender is sex. Despite the attempts by Feminists to redefine this word, Feminists have never made a serious attempt at delineating or measuring the influence of sex as opposed to gender. Gender therefore means only what Feminists decide it means as it is convenient for them at the time. Until science has made a great deal more progress, the influence of “sex” as opposed to “gender” is largely unknown and isn’t worth discussing, particularly not with those who think that their thoughts determine what is real.
Both of these are tangents, however. The real battle in the comments took place over the idea that “Rape is about power.” This is actually a shibboleth repeated by Trolls to determine whether the beings they encounter in their darkness are other Trolls, or if they are interlopers from the surface world. If it turns out the being was not another Troll, 1d3 Trolls are summoned within the next round.
“Rape is about Power” is not a verifiable claim. At best, this is a consensus, not a fact. In the world of Trolls, enough of a consensus may determine reality, but in reality it does no such thing. This sort of consensus is particularly suspect given the well-documented and overwhelming political bias of the Psychology field. As a further strike against the validity of this claim, a quick Google search revealed hundreds, possibly thousands of feminist agitprop sites using the formulation, MYTH: Rape is about sex. FACT: Rape is about power.
Even if “Rape is about Power” were true, what does that tell us? Aside from completely misleading us about when, where, why, and how rapes occur, it tells us nothing. One may as well say “Money is about Power.” Yes, and? An understanding of power relationships is already included in folk-psychological understandings of rape. Pseudo-expertise insisting that “Rape is about Power,” though, is far poorer in that it excludes the most obvious and influential factor in rape, sexual desire.
The claim is made not to illuminate our understanding of the subject to help prevent it, but instead to cast it into the Trolls’ delusion of “The Patriarchy.” According to this ideology, rape is a systematic expression of power by this mythical “Patriarchy” over women. Yet another tool in the toolbox, amongst things such as “Truth,” “Science,” “Marriage,” and so on. In reality, the claim “Rape is about Power” is about power. The entire point of this claim is not to help women or stop rape, it is to frame the unacceptable act of rape in terms that Trolls control. It is both a cavern that entices the curious into the darkness of the Trolls, and a weapon that can be used to frame those who oppose the Troll’s perception of reality as being supportive of socially and morally unacceptable behavior.
