Does the truism cover a falsehood?

"It’s standard knowledge on a feminist blog that rape isn’t about sex; it’s about power, entitlement and violence. It’s about keeping women in their place, and keeping women as a class fearful. It’s at least a step forward that large media outlets are catching on, and aren’t characterizing rapists as simply sex-crazed maniacs." 

Source.

I think this is a curious formula. A "curiouser and curiouser" kind of curious. Because it asserts a truism in order to promote a completely undemonstrated assertion.

Some background, first:

I belong to that very small percentage of total rape victims who have male genitalia. I understand that most rape victims are women, and that most rapists are men. I don't want to give any impression that I dispute that - or that rape is "just as much a man's problem." It's not. It's just fucking not.

After the final incident, I contacted a high school friend who worked at the local YWCA, coordinating that organizations outreach to rape victims, as well as its shelter for abused women. To put it as lightly as possible, I was having a hard time coping. So, I went for a resource I knew, and in doing so learned that there just aren't a lot of resources for rape victims, in general. I know this is fairly common knowledge, but it wasn't for me at the time.

I would come to understand that as a man I still ended up having a privileged position as a victim. When I asked for some help (my friend wasn't in, the first day I went) finding resources, it was rather sharply pointed out to me that I had the whole world as a resource, because of the dick between my legs. I didn't agree then, and I don't fully agree now - but I understand the sentiment. It was a rejection of the privilege I was assumed to have. I get the rejection, though I think that sometimes the assumption falls on the wrong target.

Women's resources are rightly used for women, and I was essentially asking that some of those precious few resources be devoted to my pain. I didn't really see it that way at the time, because I was consumed with my own shame and pain, but I was eventually able to comprehend that whether or not I had any real privilege in the everyday world (I didn't), in the context of an underfunded women's shelter and rape counseling service, I was asking for a privileged position. I was asking for some some women's time to be devoted to me, a man. It took a while, but I figured it out. Dick between my legs and all.

I ended up getting a private counselor. Which is where we get into the applicable background. Out of contact with that therapist, I would eventually gain the opportunity to speak with a number of sexual assailants, all men, from varying economic and social, racial and national backgrounds. Nearly all of them were also non-sexual abusers, but I don't know if that is representative or not. It was just my particular experience. A sizable percentage of them were abused as children. But less than I would previously have imagined.

Not one of them was a political rapist, as is argued in the quote above.

I have never interviewed nor encountered a rapist who was consciously and deliberately attempting to dominate women as a class. I'm not suggesting that this sort of rapist does not exist. I assume the full set of possible universes, when it comes to human depravity. And I certainly understand that rape is itself often a deliberately political act - especially for soldiers and occupation forces attempting to subjugate a population.

I've just never encountered any evidence to support the claim that rape is "about keeping women as a class fearful." It is my actual experience that rapists are a selfish and often solipsistic type of men, with very immediate and parochial urges towards domination.

Rape is about domination. That's the truism, and even though it is obviously a sexual violation, and therefore strictly "about sex," despite the quoted claims to the contrary above, I have met very few rapists who actually had the goal of sexual satiety. For the majority of them, the goal - the expressed, stated, conscious, understood goal - was to hunt and capture a woman as a prey animal.

To kill her, in his mind, by penetrating her. To own and dominate her. To leave his mark on her mind.

I accept this truism. It is valid, and my own limited work in the area sure seems to bear it out.

But the undemonstrated assertion that men rape as a class act of domination bothers me - because I think it ends up as tenet of belief that has no solid corroboration, and one which serves to confuse the issue more than it can or could shed light on it, at least without a data set.

Is it possible that rapists tend to see women as interchangeable victims, as types of a categorical class - even if they couldn't put it in those terms? Sure. But, I'd be very interested in corroborating data.

If anyone has real data, I'd very much appreciate a link to it.

Thanks,

Jack