The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP)

The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many. Read more about the NCIDP...

Rape is about power, not sex.

The exercise of arbitrary and capricious power over another, the power to enact one's own will over another person's private being at the merest whim of it, is what rape is about. The power to control another person, another person's body and very existence, without regard to, and contrary to, the will of that person, the person to whom that body and existence belong, is rape. It is an enslavement of another human being to the rapist's own purposes.

This is widely well understood.

The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) works hard to cast light on that same attitude of entitled disempowerment and enslavement of others to the whims of rapist-minded perpetrators. It is this attitude, this arbitrary and capricious control over the existence of others in broad contexts, that is rape culture.

The more any society allows, permits or condones the co-opting of the autonomy of private persons by others, the more prevalent, domineering, that society's rape culture becomes.

A predator prefers the meekest, gentlest as his targeted prey.

The human predator, the perpetrators, help us identify the meekest, gentlest, most innocent and kind among us – those that they target most. Any responsible, moral society, to remain so and to be at peace, must recognize this and most protect and empower such gentle and meek spirits.

Common features of a modern rape culture:

- Victim blaming is pervasive and normalized, even among, sometimes especially among, those to whom victims are ostensibly supposed to be able to turn for help and safety: law enforcement [U.S. Park Police (Presidio Reperp)]; domestic violence agencies [Terrorists 'Own' San Francisco]; health care agencies [Rapists Protected by SF Doctors]). In rape cultures, pervasive victim blaming will include "mental health" practices and diagnoses that will pathologize victims routinely, but pathologize perpetrators (most at least suffering Abusive Personality Disorder) rarely – further indicating that the rape mentality permeates and controls that rape culture's "mental health" sector.

- Misogyny and other identity judgement is prevalent and normalized: perpetrators feel entitled to sit in judgement of women's womanhood and bodies [DSM V Zucker-Blanchard Revisions], and, in the case of rapists, identity criminals and other violent assailants, take possession and control over women or other persons' identities and existence[Canada-US Security Perimeter; Violence at IAAF; Tax Time Homicides; U.S. Coast Guard (Vic Complaint); The Hate that Kills at Tom Waddell; Terrorists 'Own' San Francisco].

- Individual rights to privacy and anonymity are widely oppressed. [Canada-US Security Perimeter]

- The rights of individuals to determine and control their own identities and identity information is widely oppressed. [Cal Poly Pomona (CSU)].

- Widespread sense of entitlement to individual identities is pervasive and normalized across public entities (business and government entities), and any laws still in existence contrary to that sense of entitlement are widely ignored, unprosecuted and roundly trampled by those public entities and their rape-enculturated agents/employees. [UCSF Violent ID Theft Racket].

- Many "private sector" public entities, and even private citizens, are expected or forced to act as "State Actors" in a variety of ways and by a variety of mechanisms.

- Domestic violence is epidemic.

Individuals with a rapist's mentality may not necessarily commit actual physical sexual assaults, but are much more likely to. In general, the mere exercise of their own judgments and whim upon another is what matters most to them.

Rape, and rape culture, are about the psychodynamics of rape, nothing more. In other words, it is no less a matter of rape mentality to abuse a position of power to do any significant identity violence against a victim, than it is to force a physical sexual assault upon a victim. The rape mentality behind both actions are fundamentally the same. Adding physical battery to the underlying violent assault to arrive at rape contributes to the significance of the experience of the violent assault for many victims.

Understanding that is just about the most important thing any society and its members can ever understand if their aim is to build a civilized, free, peaceful society.

Indeed, surviving a rape is likely to be, for many, a much more traumatic psychological experience of a violent assault than surviving an attempted murder. The act of controlling another person's existence so totally, to use another person's existence for one's own purposes, to manipulate another's existence to the exclusion of that victim's autonomy, lies at the heart of the very meaning of "violence". It is a forcible enslavement. And while the potential result of an attempted murder is as extreme a result of violence as can be found, there is typically a lesser act of this enslavement involved.

Victim judging and victim blaming are integral parts of any rape culture, and clear evidence that a society has a rape culture. This blaming and judging comes from those who've adopted the rapist mentality and, even though they may not commit physical sexual assaults themselves, they state a message supporting and approving of rape within those statements.

Perpetrators drive the violence that they commit! Perpetrators select their targets. Perpetrators hunt their targets. Perpetrators attack their targets. Perpetrators drive the violence that they commit. This is the case whether speaking of rape, of domestic violence, or any rape culture, rape-minded violence of any kind.

The most meek, peaceful, sweet, gentle, nonviolent, non-reactive victims of domestic violence are those most likely to be killed by their abusive partners during or leaving the relationship. And when we engage in victim blaming questioning of victims, such as, "What did you do to bring this into your life?", we condone and support the violent perpetrator and are participating in rape culture.

Victim blaming is a eugenicist action.

Victims of domestic violence who are reactive, respond to their perpetrators with some lesser violence, or provoke violence from their perpetrators, are less likely to be killed by those perpetrators, apparently providing a pressure-relief-valve type of function to their perpetrators, helping manage the rage level and buildup of violence for their perpetrator. And when we engage in victim blaming, when we encourage victims to become more like perpetrators, become less meek and gentle and peaceful, we grow our rape culture larger and root it ever deeper.

Human predators have the same instinct as animal predators in the wild: hunt the meek, the weak, the most vulnerable. Any society that wishes to be a peaceful, gentle society cannot encourage this predatory instinct, but does when it engages in victim blaming. So, when a law enforcement officer in Toronto [or anywhere else] tells women that they shouldn't dress as sluts if they don't want to be victims of rape, he's telling perpetrators that their predation is just fine and good, and telling victims that they deserve what they get – for being so meek and vulnerable. That officer is a predator himself, has adopted as his own the rape mentality of the rape culture that surrounds him – and it is his fault that women are raped.

In a rape culture, where rape mentality is often condoned and supported across a broad variety of contexts, that society declines into ever-increasing levels of rape-mentality behaviors and violence, especially including domestic violence and sexual assaults – the two physical acts against another human being that most enslave that victim's existence to the will of the perpetrator. But, at the vanguard of rape culture violence lies the co-opting of personal identities and the trade in identity information.

As with the encouragement of any general behavioral principal, all of the specific behavioral activities of like mind are encouraged, even if "lip-service" is paid against some of those behaviors. That means that, within a rape culture, messages against physical sexual assaults can be espoused until the criers are blue in the face, to no avail – the overall context of the rape culture, the broader condoning of the control-and-power rapist mentality in wide contexts, will always prevail.

As law enforcement in Toronto, ON, Canada, and in the United States' Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has aptly demonstrated, rape culture, rape mentality, eugenics, often wears a badge.