Most of the criminal activities in the society can be viewed through the consensus and conflict views. According to the consensus view of crime, all people in the society detest crime. Due to this, people in the society set criminal laws that reflect their beliefs, opinions, and values of what the society should be. If people engage in activities that are against the criminal law, these activities are viewed as crime, and the law punishes them. Crime is defined uniformly to all the people in the society. It depends on the direction of social authorities, morality, and people living in the society. In contrast, conflict view of crime argues that the society is composed of people having diverse attributes. It makes the society be in constant conflict. Conflict view of crime argues that the definition of crime depends on power, wealth, and position that different people have in the society. Crime favors people in power and people in the upper classes of the society. This paper focuses on the view of rape considering the consensus and conflict approaches.
Rape refers to violent crime that involves any type of sexual act that is forced on one person by another person. Rapes can be categorized into anger rapes, power rapes, and sadistic rapes. In case a criminal engages in power rape, he/she aims at expressing dominance and power over the victim of the rape. Such rapists always want to express their masculinity and sexual adequacy towards victims who may fail to cooperate towards their fantasies. In case a rapist engages in anger rape, he/she aims at expressing the strong hatred that he may be having towards the victim of thee rape. The rapist wants the victim of the rape to understand his rage. In sadistic rapes, the rapist is usually obsessed with a particular ritual that occurs during sex. The rapist may torture the victim in order to experience sexual satisfaction. The crime of rape should be curbed in the society since it leads to many negative effects towards the victims. The rape victims may become traumatized after experiencing the rape ordeal. It is sad that some of the victims end up reliving the assault by having memories and nightmares on how the assault took place. Also, the victims may contact sexually transmitted diseases after the rape assault. In Africa, there is a myth that sexual act with a virgin helps in curing AIDS. People with HIV virus rape and infect young girls with the virus. Rape is a common crime in India. Recently, a married 29-year-old woman was gang raped by seven men after she boarded a night bus. It has made the government of this country to tighten its laws in order to stop sexual violence.
The consensus approach of rape argues that rape is illegal since it causes harm to other people in the society. Due to this, people should manage, stop, and control rape in order to reduce its harm in the society. Victims of rape experience post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Such victims may have hyper-arousals. Due to this, they may have trouble while trying to concentrate on anything. They may also become startled easily. Research has also established that these patients show avoidance symptoms. They want to change their routines in order to avoid another rape assault. In some instances, they try events and objects that may end up reminding them about the rape experience. In case a child becomes a victim of rape, he/she may start wetting the bed. Since rape causes the victims to develop PTSD, it shows that it causes harm to other people in the society and it should be outlawed. Rape victims may also end up becoming depressed. Depression causes such victims to experience periods of prolonged sadness. In addition, it may cause these patients to have social withdrawal. They lose interest of doing activities that they enjoyed doing at once.
Depression may also cause victims of rape to consider committing suicide. They feel that the society does not care for them and blames them for allowing the rape assault to happen. It makes them contemplate suicide in order to escape the stress they might face. On December 27 2012, a 18 years Indian rape victim committed suicide after she was gang raped on November 2012. She committed suicide after one of the police officers handling her case told her that it was better for her to drop the legal suit that she had filed against the rapists and marry one of her attackers. In Morocco, a 16 year old victim of rape committed suicide after she was forced to get married to the rapist. The laws of this country allow rapists to marry rape victims so that they can escape prosecution. The families of the victim for the rape allowed the forced marriage since they wanted to avoid any scandal that would have resulted because of the rape assault. Suicide is immoral since it causes harm the victim and the society. It proves that consensus approach would not allow rape since it contributes to suicide.
Consensus approach views rape as a crime since it may make the victims contact sexually transmitted diseases. One of the diseases that rape victims suffer from is chlamydia. This disease causes the rape victims to experience pain during urination. In addition, female victims may bleed after having sexual intercourse. In some instances, the victims may have abdominal pain. Chlamydia is dangerous since it may cause pelvic inflammatory disease. This disease makes the women’s fallopian tube develop scars, which may hinder the process of fertilization. Research conducted by medical experts has revealed that 10 to 15 percent of women suffering from pelvic inflammatory disease become infertile. Chlamydia also increases the chances of women getting cervical cancer. Victims of rape may end up contracting herpes. This disease may cause rape victims to experience burning and itching sensation around their sex organs. They may also develop painful blisters on their sex organs. Also, rape victims may contract syphilis. Syphilis is dangerous since it can cause birth defects on a child who may be born from rape. Pregnant women may have miscarriages, stillbirths, and premature births. Infants infected with syphilis may have sores on their skin, swollen liver and spleen, and anemia. They may also have rashes and jaundice. Other sexually diseases that may be caused by rape include trichomosa, hepatitis B, genital warts, and Aids.
Consensus approach also condemns rape since it may cause the victims to have physical trauma. Most of the rapists are violent especially rapists who engage in sadistic rapes. Due to this, the victims of rape may have throat irritations that may result from forced oral sex. In addition, these patients may have injuries that can be caused by the beatings that they experienced before being raped (Smith, 2012). It may cause them to have broken bones, bruises, cuts, and scratches. Also, rape victims may have swelling around their genital areas. The tearing of the tissues that connect the vagina and anus may cause such swellings. Rape victims may end up becoming pregnant. If the rape victim has reached the age of ovulation and the rapist is at puberty, there is a high possibility that the rape victim may end up becoming pregnant. According to previous studies, about 4.7 percent of rape cases result to pregnancies.
Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control revealed that about 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year in the United States of America (Liener et al, 2012). It suggests that five percent of the raped victims end up becoming pregnant. However, some doctors argue that rape victims may not become pregnant since stress brought about by the rape assault makes biochemical reactions occur in the body of the victim hindering conception. Most of the victims from rape who end up becoming pregnant prefer to abort such pregnancies since they claim that the born child may remind them of the rape assault. In addition, the victims of rape argue that they conduct abortion on the unborn child since the child reminds them of the rape perpetrator.
Victims of rape may start abusing substances as they believe the abuse of alcohol and other substances relieves their emotional suffering. Doctors have established that rape victims start abusing substances in order to cope with reality of the assault that happened to them. They may also turn to substance abuse so that they are able to deal with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. When victims of rape start abusing drugs, they start becoming aggressive and irritable. Long abuse of alcohol may cause rape victims to become dependent on alcohol. Due to this, they may start showing withdrawal symptoms such as irregular heartbeats, tremors, seizures, and hallucinations. Long alcohol use may also make the rape victims have slurs in their speech, decreased muscle control and coordination. Rape victims may also start abusing cocaine. Long abuse of cocaine may make the abusers have constriction on their blood vessels. It may make them have irregular heartbeats, kidney failure leading to death eventually.
Conflict theory argues that the main sources of crime are the economic and social forces operating within the society. According to this approach, criminal law and criminal justice system operate on behalf of powerful, rich and social elite people in the society. Rape is a crime since it is associated with patriarchy (Loseman & Bos, 2012). Patriarchy refers to a social organization in which the father holds the supreme authority in a family. In addition, the descendants of this social system are recognized in the male line. Children in such families belong to the clan of the father. Men are expected to endure hazardous conditions that may affect their lives. Also, they are not supposed to show emotional weakness or admit they are afraid of anything. In such society, men are supposed to endure violence and engage in violence acts in order to prove their toughness. They believe that they are masculine making them to feel invulnerable and independent. In this society, women expect men to act violently and express their power sexually. Such society views rape as a way of men exercising their sexual power. However, conflict theory would view this as a crime since men would be using their patriarchy to commit unjust action.
Patriarchy makes men feel that it is not wrong to rape a woman who wears short skirt and high heels since this would make a sexually violent man view her as a rape victim. In this society, women are not allowed to drink, since when a rape offence occurs while they were drunk, no one would believe their story. Conflict approach views such acts as crime since they make men have more social power than the female. In a patriarchy society, it is viewed that women allow rape to happen to them. Due to this, they have to constantly watch what they wear. In addition, it is wrong for them to drink with people that they may not know well since it is acceptable for such people to rape them in case a particular woman is intoxicated. However, this is a crime, according to conflict approach, since it would give males more dominance and power compared to their female counterparts.
Conflict theory makes it a crime for people to rape victims who are from lower social classes. Statistics have shown that poor people are more vulnerable to rape compared to the rich people. Security in lower social class areas is very poor. Due to this, it is common to hear of rape cases in such areas. In some cases, it is sad to hear that the police are responsible for raping poor women since they do not have a voice in the society. In refugee camps, the wardens sometimes trade clean water with sexual favors. Young girls are also asked to trade sexual favors so that they can be given food to eat. In India, most of the victims of rape in this country are poor. In 2009, a prominent politician raped a Russian national working in India after they had dinner together. Most of the poor girls in Indian society fail to report the rape incident since they argue that they cannot afford a good lawyer to represent them. In addition, this society does not value poor women in the society. When the rape victims report to the police after undergoing a rape ordeal, they are advised to drop the charges since it will only destroy their reputation and the reputation of their family. According to conflict theory, this is a crime since wealthy people and politicians have more power compared to the normal people in the society. It makes the wealthy people use their power to oppress the poor people in the society through rape.
Overall, rape can be explained using both the consensus and conflict approach. Considering the consensus approach, rape is crime since it causes harm to other people in the society. Victims of rape are affected significantly by the rape assault. Some of the victims end up developing posttraumatic stress disorder. It makes them start exhibiting avoidance symptoms. They change their routines so that they do not come across objects that may remind them of their rape encounter. Rape victims may become depressed. It may cause them to have prolonged sadness and suicidal thoughts. Research has proved that victims of rape contemplate committing suicide especially where they feel that the society does not care about them. In some instances, victims of rape end up contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Diseases such as AIDS and Syphilis are dangerous since they significantly affect the health of the pregnant mother. Syphilis affects the born child since the infant may develop liver and kidney complications and sores in his/her skin. Rape victim may also start abusing drugs since they believe that it helps in relieving their emotional suffering. However, drug abuse may lead to addiction.
Conflict theory helps us to understand rape by focusing on how it is caused by economic and social differences occurring in the society. One of the social forces that may cause rape to occur is patriarchy. Patriarchy argues that male gender should hold dominance and authority in the society. It allows men to use violence and sexual force to show their toughness. Due to this, the rape is seen as an act of men exercising their sexual power. In this society, women are not allowed to wear short dresses and high heels since this is provocative to the men. Also, they are not allowed to drink since it makes them vulnerable to rape. Conflict theory views this as a crime since it would make men have more power than women in the society. Most of the victims of rape are from the lower social classes. They are not able to afford a lawyer to represent them in a legal suit. The rich and politically powerful people take advantage of this and rape poor women. Conflict theory would view this as a crime since rich and powerful people will have more power compared to the poor people.