RationalWiki's Chilling Tales of True Crime |
Articles on illegal behaviour |
Busted |
Corrective rape is a criminal act and pseudoscience in which people rape suspected lesbians or gay men, asexuals, or transgender people, in order to "fix" their sexual orientation. The practice is a problem particularly in South Africa,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] but threats to do it happen also in the UK.[8] Knowing homophobes and the frat-boy mentality, it is quite possibly more widespread than that.
A common trope in fiction which applies both to gay men and lesbians is that they can be "cured" of homosexuality through "corrective rape".[9]
The underlying "logic" of corrective rape is that a forced, and therefore presumably unpleasant, sexual encounter can change the victim's sexual orientation. This appears to be the same "logic" that says that homosexual men "recruit" young boys by exposing them to homosexuality, at worst raping them, or because of child abuse. Those who say they would rape, or in their terms, "convert", lesbians are making a tacit assumption that if they were raped, they too would convert to homosexuality. Somehow, it's doubtful that they would agree that to be the case. So why the inconsistency and double standard?[note 1]