Assault by itself is pretty traumatic. Not just the physical pain, but the stress, fear, and feeling of loss of control. I was mugged at knifepoint once, and though I wasn’t physically hurt at all, the worst part was just feeling totally powerless and at the mercy of someone else. I was so scared I couldn’t move or speak.
I don’t think your views on rape are as far from the norm as you seem to think. They make sense to me.
Rape can happen without assault, though—I know someone to whom such a rape happened, and she found it very traumatic, to the point where it still affects her life decades later.
There are also apparently other things that can evoke the same kind of traumatized reaction without involving physical contact at all; Eliezer gave ‘having nude photos posted online against your will’ as an example. (I mentioned that example in a discussion with the aforementioned friend, and she agreed with Eliezer that it’d be similarly traumatic, in both type and degree, for whatever one data-point might be worth.)
Assault by itself is pretty traumatic. Not just the physical pain, but the stress, fear, and feeling of loss of control. I was mugged at knifepoint once, and though I wasn’t physically hurt at all, the worst part was just feeling totally powerless and at the mercy of someone else. I was so scared I couldn’t move or speak.
I don’t think your views on rape are as far from the norm as you seem to think. They make sense to me.
Rape can happen without assault, though—I know someone to whom such a rape happened, and she found it very traumatic, to the point where it still affects her life decades later.
There are also apparently other things that can evoke the same kind of traumatized reaction without involving physical contact at all; Eliezer gave ‘having nude photos posted online against your will’ as an example. (I mentioned that example in a discussion with the aforementioned friend, and she agreed with Eliezer that it’d be similarly traumatic, in both type and degree, for whatever one data-point might be worth.)