Rape rape vs. "rape" rape
I cringe when I think about all the times that I've raped little boys. WAIT A SECOND BEFORE YOU FREAK OUT!
See, I have touched thousands of boys in my life. I have shaken hands with them, placed my hand on their shoulders, placed my hand on their knees when they sat next to me, slapped them on the back, brushed against them in tight spaces--just to mention a few of the ways I've touched boys.
But you need a little background information first.
A hundred or so years ago, a rich guy in Germany decided that certain people feeling certain ways about certain other people were sick--they were depraved, "tainted," mentally ill, etc. He wrote a book (for judges) which talked about his opinions of those kinds of people. The book was called Psychopathia Sexualis, and, in chapter 5 of the book, he said those people suffered from "psychological perversions". He decided to call those perversions pædophilia erotica.
Others picked up on his ideas (just opinions, really, because he had almost no experience with those kinds of people) and started to spread them around to their friends, who also were interested in people suffering from so-called "psychological perversions". They formed clubs together, where they sat around talking about those "psychologically perverted" people. Meanwhile, they were charging rich society ladies huge sums of money to sit around and talk--that is, to "treat"--the ladies for their "psychological problems".
Soon the ideas of these men spread to the US, and people became very afraid of others who might be ""psychologically perverted". So people got all excited, and started demanding that the lawmakers start passing laws to stop--and to punish--those "psychologically perverted" people if they did certain things.
It started out reasonably enough--if someone hit or beat other people to get those other people to do what they wanted, then they would be punished. But then, over the decades, certain groups of women started pushing for "women's liberation," which was reasonable enough, too.
But some of those women felt that they were not progressing fast enough in getting their rights. They picked one subject--rape--as their main topic to emphasize. OK, that's fair enough. But then they still didn't think they were getting enough attention. So they started to change the meanings of certain words. "Rape" was one of the words they started to change the meaning of.
Originally, "rape" meant a man forcing his penis into the vagina of an unwilling woman. Well, they said, "How about men forcing penises into the mouths or anuses of unwilling woman--that is "rape," too". Well, that seemed reasonable enough.
Then they started changing the meaning of the word "assault". They added "sexual assault" to the list of things that were "assaults". Then they started adding more and more things to the list of what "assault" was. Pretty soon, any kind of "unwanted touching" of certain parts of the woman's body was called "sexual assault".
But still they thought that they weren't getting enough attention.
So then they got the idea of expanding the meaning of "sexual assault" to men and to boys--boys could be sexually assaulted, too. So they changed all the laws about sexual assault to include the same stuff about sexual assault of women, but applied it to boys, too.
Meanwhile, there were other laws that told women how old they had to be to have sexual intercourse--meaning, how old a girl had to be before she was given permission by the government to let a man put his penis into her vagina. The ages decided on varied from 10 years old to around 13 years old.
But, of course, the woman felt that they still weren't getting enough attention. So they decided to make laws about how old a boy would have to be, before the boy could do any kind of sexual things with other people. (Until then, there weren't any laws like that for boys.)
And so they made those new laws, and made the ages for boys to do any sexual things the same as the ages for girls to decide who puts a penis into their vagina. Those laws were all called "statutory rape" laws. The "rape" part didn't mean that any real violence was involved; no, it just meant that some younger people weren't allowed by the government to decide who they wanted to have sex with.
Well, the women still felt they weren't getting enough attention. So they started messing around with the meaning of the word "sexual," too. They said that words could be sexual too, so "sexual assault" could happen without even touching someone. Pretty soon, all kinds of things people said became "sexual". And, of course, it all depended on what kinds of thoughts were going through the minds of the person when they said those words.
Then they decided that anything at all a person does could be "sexual," depending on what they person was thinking. One person could touch another person, but if his thinking was "pure" then that was OK. But if his thinking was "sexual," then the touching became "sexual assault".
And, of course, we know that they had already called sexual assault involving boys (and girls) under a certain age "statutory rape".
Well, I find myself attracted to young boys (not really young boys, but just fairly young boys). So I think about young boys in ways that are sexual. And I sometimes touch young boys, too. Not in what would be normally be considered "sexual" ways (at least, not in the past).
But with all the new definitions of words, well--I was thinking the boys were attractive (sexually) so then if I touched any boys, it must be "sexually touching" them--no matter where I touched the boys. And that fell into the new "statutory rape" category.
So now, I cringe when I think about all the times that I've "raped" little boys. Because touching them in any way at all (because of my thoughts) is raping them.
And I thought that I was such a nice guy, too! Boys really like me, and don't seem to mind at all that I (secretly) "rape" them all the time.
Still, something seems wrong about this whole thing. I mean, if you don't understand what certain words mean, then how can you talk about anything at all?
I mean, before, there was just "rape". But now, there is "rape" rape, and there is rape "rape". It's all kind of confusing to me...
(The inspiration for this article comes from a statement made by Whoopi Goldberg, when discussing the Roman Polanski case on The View, hosted by Sherri Shepherd: "I know it wasn't 'rape'-rape. It was something else, but I don't believe it was 'rape'-rape. He went to jail and and when they let him out he was like, 'You know what--this guy's going to give me a hundred years in jail--I'm not staying,' so that's why he left [the US and fled to Europe]."
NOTE: This needs editing for clarity, and for the corrections of the timeline of things mentioned. I need to work on it some more.
