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Comment by mahranch | Hacker News Reader

Your comment presumes an equal education (that rape is equally "bad"), it presumes that both cultures are taught the same thing. They are not.

In fact, it is currently legal to rape your wife in India.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/asia/marital-rape-india/

Think about that for a moment. What kind of effect do you think that would have on their rape statistics? In the U.S, Marital Rape accounts for half of all reported rapes. In India, those rapes aren't even being reported because they're not illegal.

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Your comment does not address the key points in mine.

There is no doubt that marital/ spousal rape needs to be criminalized. Criminalization, of course, is not going to entirely eliminate it - which brings me to the point I'm trying to make: when both social-conditioning and law-and-order have failed, what's the solution?

Feminists, including Nikhil and ChongLi, advocate further explicit conditioning (which ain't gonna have much effect on the criminals who already care less about their own social conditioning). Without understanding the criminals' underlying motives, people wanting to effect change will only go around in circles. Where is the proof that the feminist approach works?

Social conditioning has not failed.

Right now it's telling men in several societies that "it's the right thing to rape your woman" since it's your property, and that "a woman needs to be protected by her owner-man in order not to get raped by other men" so raping her is not the rapist's fault, it's her owner's fault for not protecting her.

This conditioning lets men with rape fantasies to explain everything else away and act them out with no perception of wrongdoing.

Your comment does not address the key points in mine.

There is no doubt that marital/ spousal rape needs to be criminalized. Criminalization, of course, is not going to entirely eliminate it[1] - which brings me to the point I'm trying to make: when both social-conditioning and law-and-order have failed[2], what's the solution?

Moreover this is not a gender issue, as the likes of you ignorantly make it out to be (in an fervent attempt to distract via identity politics), as the reverse is equally applicable -- such as, to use your phraseology, letting women with divorce-rape fantasies to explain everything else away and act them out with no perception of wrongdoing[3] -- where the aforementioned question continues to hold.

[1] The West has historically had the idea that by marriage a woman gives irrevocable consent for her husband to have sex with her any time he demands it ... and even though marital/ spousal rape has recently been criminalized (made a crime in all 50 states in the US by 1993, for example), it has not entirely eliminated it.

[2] The very fact that marital/ spousal rape continues to be prevalent even among countries where it has been criminalized suggests that both social-conditioning and law-and-order have failed, in regards to entirely eliminating it. Hence, my question: what's the solution?

[3] Some unscrupulous women in India are wont to extort money and harass their husband's entire extended family. http://www.498a.org

But how does that work with tolerance ? After all, several religions teach that that is in fact allowed, albeit with conditions.

I think you won't quite find that in India raping women is "morally allowed", but merely that if certain rules are followed (relating to caste and the marital state and age of the woman and the men involved) it is ok. The culture does not put a blanket ok on the practice. For the other religion the rules are slightly different (and blatantly racist: essentially if a woman behaves like she's a member of that religion, she's safe, otherwise, go ahead), but rape (non-consensual sex) is definitely allowed.

Since this is quite explicit in the holy books of both religions you will at the very least need to change the way these religions are taught if you want to really change the attitude. I think it's pretty clear that won't be considered being tolerant.

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