{"id":8340,"date":"2025-09-09T10:38:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T10:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/?p=8340"},"modified":"2025-09-10T06:56:50","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T06:56:50","slug":"why-men-rape-and-why-men-rape-is-not-a-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/why-men-rape-and-why-men-rape-is-not-a-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Men Rape And Why Men Rape Is Not A Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"
Let\u2019s lay it straight\u2014I\u2019m not pitching this as gospel or some kind of bulletproof theory. This is observation, reasoning, and maybe a touch of personal disillusionment with the answers society gives. It all started for me when I saw a documentary: a woman went inside Tihar jail, looked rapists in the eye, and asked, \u201cWhy did you do it?\u201d Most of these men\u2014inmates for rape\u2014didn\u2019t flinch. They said, almost collectively, \u201cWe don\u2019t see rape as a crime; the only regret is that nobody would marry the woman anymore.\u201d That\u2019s heavy. And if you put that through any philosophical lens, things get murky.<\/p>\n

Let me drag in Immanuel Kant\u2014his categorical imperative, that old gem. Kant says a moral law is real only if you can imagine everyone doing it universally. So if I justify theft, I have to live in a world where everyone steals. My life and property would always be at risk; society destabilizes. Theft and murder are shut out as crimes for this very reason\u2014danger to all, crossing all boundaries: gender, caste, color. But rape? That\u2019s got history warped around it, especially in societies that skew male. Rape is never felt as something \u201cdone to men\u201d; it\u2019s always what men \u201cdo.\u201d It\u2019s an act claimed, not suffered, and so, deep down, it skips being tagged as a true universal crime\u2014at least in how men see it.<\/p>\n

If rape doesn\u2019t get universalized as a crime in the moral sense, it\u2019s because men simply never see themselves as potential victims. And to be clear, I\u2019m not saying this is right\u2014just that this is what the social mechanism looks like. The whole framing of rape as a crime is modern, contemporary, tied to concepts that didn\u2019t always exist: choice, consent, liberty. Those are very recent introductions into human rights, and for women? Even more recent, almost an afterthought, layered long after men got a taste of them.<\/p>\n

Now, here\u2019s the heart: even those ideas\u2014liberty, consent, choice\u2014weren\u2019t always built for women. For most of history, nobody handed women those cards. If rape is a violation of choice, personal consent, liberty, well\u2014those were never considered inherent to women to begin with. So, stacked against Kant\u2019s rule, rape flunks the universality test; liberty and consent arrive too late for justice to catch up.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, in my argument, most male rapists don\u2019t see what they did as a crime; they see an act, not a transgression. Why? Because the philosophical, legal, and social groundwork never handled rape as it handles murder or theft. It\u2019s not that complicated\u2014they did it, but didn\u2019t feel it was wrong, because the culture never really framed it as such. I haven\u2019t dug deep into psychological research here, but the simple answer is: it wasn\u2019t labelled a crime.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s get even more specific\u2014\u201cmodesty.\u201d Law talks about women\u2019s modesty, but even that concept is warped. Modesty is harnessed to chastity and purity, like a woman\u2019s honor is family property. It\u2019s a rotten framing. Modesty shouldn\u2019t be tied to sex or virginity. Under Indian law, modesty for men basically doesn\u2019t exist the way it does for women, and frankly, even for women, it\u2019s a narrow, unfair focus.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a famous judicial moment\u2014a judge tried to define modesty in terms of sex. Anything that violates a woman\u2019s sexual purity, chastity, is an attack on modesty. But that just turns women into vessels of family honor, instead of seeing them as individuals. It\u2019s limiting and cruel, making women objects, not subjects. Modesty needs rethinking, wider scope: see the woman first as human, second as any trope of honor or purity.<\/p>\n

Why isn\u2019t rape of men recognized as a crime, in India or most of the world? Simple: men aren\u2019t given the conceptual space for modesty. Before even considering if men can be raped, society needs to admit men have liberty and consent, but it never did. That\u2019s inherited from male-dominated narratives\u2014men can\u2019t be objects, only agents. If men could understand consent, maybe they wouldn\u2019t rape, maybe they\u2019d realize they can be raped. But they don\u2019t, and without that, justice skips them, too.<\/p>\n

Exploring Modesty abit more,Under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Section 79, it\u2019s a crime to use any word, gesture, or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s necessary.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what the law quietly assumes:<\/p>\n

Only women have modesty.<\/p>\n

Back in Raju Pandurang Mahale v. State of Maharashtra (2004), the Supreme Court observed that:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe essence of a woman’s modesty is her sex.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That one line shaped the way our legal system sees modesty\u2014not as a human trait, but as something biologically exclusive to women.<\/p>\n

But what if a man\u2019s consent is violated in the same way?<\/p>\n

What if someone peeps at him while he\u2019s changing, records him in a vulnerable state, or touches him without permission?<\/p>\n

Where is his protection?<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t any.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying let\u2019s jump straight to making male rape a criminal offence. I get that we aren\u2019t socially ready for that. But this?<\/p>\n

This basic recognition that men, too, can be violated, that their modesty can be insulted\u2014isn\u2019t that a fair starting point?<\/p>\n

Because the truth is: if the law doesn\u2019t even acknowledge that you can be wronged, it definitely won\u2019t protect you when you are.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t about diminishing what women go through. It\u2019s not a competition of pain.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about expanding justice, not shifting it.<\/p>\n

Men are expected to \u201ctake it,\u201d laugh it off, or feel flattered when their space is crossed. But that\u2019s not strength\u2014that\u2019s silence enforced by shame.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s change the framing.<\/p>\n

Modesty is not about your sex. It\u2019s about your personhood. And any violation of that should be recognised, regardless of gender.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not radical. That\u2019s fair.<\/p>\n

Summing it up: Kant\u2019s universality fails for rape, because men don\u2019t see themselves as victims; liberty and consent are new, given to women even later. Men don\u2019t see rape as a crime, neither as perpetrators nor potential victims. The very seed that produced the tragedy of women\u2019s rape also blocks men\u2019s rape from being a crime. Karma, in a way, loops back.<\/p>\n

Even when rape is recognized as a crime, it\u2019s through a lens of modesty\u2014a woman\u2019s honor, not her individual self. Kant\u2019s logic can\u2019t fix this until it universalizes personhood, not just specific privileges. We need to see each person as a possible victim, as a possible agent of consent and liberty, not a vessel for family pride or societal function.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the raw observation. No gospel, no diary entry, just one philosophical rant on why men rape, and why, for most of history, rape hasn\u2019t been a crime\u2014certainly not for men.<\/p>\n

To further summarise this kants categorical imperative fails first when man and woman are not recognised as equal. Woman often treated as object or property and man as owner this very arrangment led to first easy disnullment of woman right from every start and this context of unrecognition of rape as crime and woman right is the very summary for this whole observation.<\/p>\n

One can argue that rape was so called right of man over a woman which was only a property carrying family honor and through history property has only been a subject of expoliation and plunder, and woman being an object was no different or even worse. Such a so called right is very reason of the violation of man\u2019s right against the very unrecognised crime called rape, now unrecognised in contemporary world, subjugated as a privilege by the same man who was born and brought in this privilege to distinguish property as subject and woman as object.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s lay it straight\u2014I\u2019m not pitching this as gospel or some kind of bulletproof theory. This is observation, reasoning, and maybe a touch of personal disillusionment with the answers society gives. It all started for me when I saw a documentary: a woman went inside Tihar jail, looked rapists in the eye, and asked, \u201cWhy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":369,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"two_page_speed":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_joinchat":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[651],"class_list":{"0":"post-8340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-woman-law","7":"tag-woman-law"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/369"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalserviceindia.com\/Legal-Articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}