Why would someone ever commit a sexual assault?

(Pasting one of my Quora answers)

  1. S/he thinks that s/he can get away with it with negligible consequences.

  2. S/he is so short-sighted, being blind in sexual compulsion, that s/he isn't seeing the bigger picture of what s/he is doing.

(It's often 'he'.)

 

A nonlinear combination of these two leads to an atrocity of rape or sexual harassment. Reason #2 is especially true in cases where one regrets one's act (minutes after the crime) when one faces society or realizes what devastating impact it had on the victim.

 

Looking back, I could see a part of me that might have been tempted to do something that can be called sexual harassment. But I decided to experiment with things with myself instead of messing with other bodies. But now I am out of that zone. I know I can control it & I can wait. I might even be able to saturate it within myself until my death if time demands.

 

Now, my experiments have turned more psychological in nature. You, too, can develop a frame like this.

 

You see a young, healthy woman (man) working in the neighborhood, and spontaneously, within femtoseconds, your sexual fantasy imagination goes wild. Now, you pull back and see the state of the universe more neutrally. Quick observations are: this is what's happening with your mind (and probably with your thing down there, but generally not so early). One other obvious consideration should be: what's probably going on in his/her mind? The probable answer on a particular day, say, looks like: "After milking buffalo, I gotta clean the ground too and dispose of the dung too. Oh shit! Swabbing. I almost forgot… ", unless the person finds out you are staring at them from 1st floor, making them uncomfortable and putting them into a psychological loop of “what's wrong with this being? What does s/he want?"

 

And you realize people have work to do. You too. Much work. And it's complicated. And you are wasting your time & disturbing other creatures for reasons as silly as hormones.

 

Back to the topic, compulsive sexual desires alone cannot lead to rape. Reason #1 is the real psychological uptick.

___

PS: The author doesn't endorse the concept of sex/gender-based division of labor. 

 

VKJ)