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Effects Of Rape On Women Essay

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Webster’s Dictionary describes rape as the crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse. Rape is a crime in which most women cannot defend themselves. The fear of rape plagues every woman at some point or another in her life. The traumatic effects of rape vary from mild to severe, from psychological to physical. This paper will evaluate rape, as well as the effects it has on women, the theory behind male dominance and patriarchy, and differences in demographics.
“Rape is a crime that combines sex and violence, that makes sex the weapon in an act of violence.”(Kimmel 257) Because of this, rape is often traumatic for the victim of a rape.
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In general, men feel like if they take a woman out for dinner or to a movie, or make some sort of effort, that the woman is indebted to them. For their payment, they expect some sort of sex or sexual activity. “Though both men and women feel entitled to pleasure, and both have their first sexual experience because they want to, men still seem to believe that entitlement also covers acting on it-even when the woman doesn’t want to.” (Kimmel 232) The idea that men feel like they are entitled to sexual gratification after a date, and the fact that our culture makes women feel like they owe the man, makes date rape a much more common occurance than it should be. The cultural norm that this idea creates could be one of the leading causes in the fact that most rapes go unreported. With the education of both men and women, that this type of coercion is wrong, the common occurance of date rapes will hopefully soon be a thing of the past.
“Paranoia concerning the protection of white women from sexual assault by black men is a legacy of American slavery that has fequently served as a focus for racist exaggerations about black men”(LaFree 312) Interracial rapes seem to cause the greatest sensation in the news, when the victim is white and the rapist is black. When a black man violates a white women, the news as well as the public
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