I don't think the act of rape itself is morally unique at all, or that a rapist is more evil than, say, a murderer or a nonsexual torturer.
You know what's interesting...
(Not about the OP hardly much at all but now we're all philosophical and shit so that's cool right?)
I'm a huge fan of the show
Dexter (although I haven't seen the most recent season yet so NOBODY TELL ME ANYTHING *lalala*), which, if you haven't heard of it, is about a serial killer. A deeply conflicted and tortured serial killer, who murders people, methodically and clinically, over and over, and I like him.
To me, he is redeemable. He only kills people who have hurt others--other killers, mainly, and often people way more depraved than he is, so you're like YEAH KILL THAT ASSFACE YOU GO GET THAT SARAN WRAP DEXTER. He also saves people in trouble, sometimes, like Julia Stiles. He has a Horribly Traumatic Childhood Event, so there's a Reason. Voila, redemption. We like our serial killer protagonist. (Well I like him. Not everyone, probably. Everyone else is a boob, though.) (<<not in seriousness, just to be clear)
But I try to imagine what it would be like if he were a serial rapist who only raped other rapists and also saved good people from rape occasionally and...it's...somehow not the same. I don't know if it would work like that. And I have no cogent ideas about why that is, but it is.
Murder is seen as much more justifiable than rape--that is, there are a lot more reasons for it seen as legitimate. I also watch a lot of prison documentaries, and the sex offenders (particularly pedophiles) are the ones who are most ostracized even in prison society among murderers and stabbers and...and...(my brain just started in on "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" but I feel like I shouldn't go into it).
Which is a very long way of saying the exact same thing that HoneyBadger said...murder is seen as having some legitimate reasons sometimes. Rape...I can't think of any. There's a much narrower window of redeemability.
I understand why rape is such an emotional subject, but I really can't agree that a rapist is automatically worse than, say, Bernie Madoff, who destroyed thousands of lives, simply because rape is a more personal and viscerally disgusting crime than stealing old people's pensions.
(bold mine)
I definitely see your logic there, but, in my view, morality/redeemability/sympathy/condemnation are not things that depend on logic. At least not completely. Empathy and sympathy trump logic. That's why those ethics questions are so damn difficult (e.g. "if you can push a man in front of a train to save fifteen other people from dying, would you?") even though the logical answer is clear. That's why morality is such a gray and crooked thing.
A lot of it depends on feelings, visceral and cultural and irrational. And in terms of empathy, feelings, humanity and the like--direct contact, direct touch, direct violation, and the absolute disregard for the human being screaming in front of you implies a more dangerous lack of empathy than the disregard for thousands of distant and therefore only nominally real folks that you rob and never see.
And yet, here we are. To which I ask, Seriously? To which I answer, Apparently so.
Is the idea of initiating an open debate about an interesting philosophical topic abhorrent to you? Why, I've got a mind to call up a possibly-misquoted Voltaire's Ghost upon thee
(<<again not in seriousness, all in fun, jab jab nudge nudge, s'all good?)