I have long thought back on those early days of my sexual life and wondered how many boys and men I’ve known who raped. These would be guys I cared about, broke bread with, and who were like brothers to me. Nice people, well-mannered, but also raised by a culture that tells them they aren’t men if they don’t behave certain ways, to ignore silly girls who are fickle and need to be told what they want in one way or another. They wouldn’t know they’d raped someone until accused, and even then they might respond... by citing their credibility and feigning complete ignorance of consent. That’s rape culture when men can be so totally unaware that the person they’re laying with doesn’t want them there and they don’t have to care.
...
To top all of that off there’s the vast gray zone between being labeled a rapist and not being a rapist. The stigma of the word makes it really hard for young men to own up to non-consensual sex. Rape sounds like such a violent word, and when men reflect on events and note the stark absence of violence, they may admit it was non-consensual, but they will not call it a rape. Even though those things are equivalent. Men who don’t take their victims by violence or overt coercion struggle to identify the event as an act of rape. For them, rapist means something else, something that’s clearly wrong, something that’s obvious. For them, rape can’t simply be having sex with someone who isn’t struggling against you, sex with someone who just lays there without participating, sex with someone who hasn’t shown interest, but who appears to allow it to happen. I think most of the time, these are what typical rapes look like.
The question is one of identifying the rapists - studies like Lisak & Miller (2002) and McWhorter (2009) identified, respectively 6% and 13% of the male population as rapists - however, alarmingly, questions were only focused upon rape via physical force or threat, or rape in which the victim was intoxicated to the point of black-out. This ignored rape in which the victim simply does not grant affirmative consent and the perpetrator does whatever the ###$ they want anyway, or rape due to the fact that the victim is underage - I suspect that these comprise the majority of rape cases i.e. the vast majority of men will stop when they hear a 'no' and wouldn't use physical force or violence, but a sizeable number are scummy enough to exploit an awkward 'I'm not really sure' or convince themselves that "sex" with anyone underage (a child under 18) can be anything other than rape.
Personally, the above considered, I think the percentage of rapists in the male population is probably close to 25% than, say, 6 or 13% - especially considering that many rapes are completed with fingers and do not involved intercourse.
As written about before, I am a rapist (my victim, who was my girlfriend, was a 16-year-old child, so was unable to consent to anything sexual, even if she believed herself able to at the time. Furthermore, in the worst incident of abuse, I pressured her when she had said she was not in the mood that night - not "merely" statutory rape - although frankly statutory rape is just as hideous and unforgivable as any other form of rape).
With overpopulation as it is, I am leaning more and more towards the idea that rapists have forfeited the right to life... though I would make a serious exception for those who commit abuse as child (before 18) since they cannot really be held responsible for their actions to anywhere near the same degree as adults - I think this is a really important fact of law and I hate it when kids are charged in court as though they were adults.
I'm very aware that killing myself would, sadly, hurt others. I have a lot of beautiful and wonderful people in my life. However, two quotes makes a lot of sense to me:
“If I ever did anything as awful as rape someone, I’d want everyone to never speak to me again. If you let me be that horrible to someone, and you’re fine with it, you’re not a real friend.”
http://teneightymagazine.com/2014/04/20/abuse-scandals/
And:
“Either he couldn't be made well--- in which case he was better dead for his own sake and for the safety of others---or he could be treated and made sane. In which case (it seemed to me) if he ever became sane enough for civilized society . . . and thought over what he had done while he was "sick"---what could be left for him but suicide? How could he Live with himself?”
http://themacavity.com/stch8web.txt