"Man rapes entire village."
"Man plunders entire village."

Can you see a difference there?
( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Mon 28 Jan 2013, 18:20, 1 reply)

Yes, I can, thanks - but it's not my comprehension at issue, is it? Do you honestly believe that when people talk about the rape of the rain forests, or oceans, that they're imagining the world's most prolific sexpest poking his johnson into every tree and monkey, or every fish and marine mammal*? Or would you think more along the lines of the term being used to imply some form of plunder? Such as might occur, for example, when money is extracted from a wallet?


* Clue: this is not normal. Most people do not do this.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 28 Jan 2013, 18:57, closed)

I think most people know that if they liken the damage we cause to the rainforests and oceans
to rape, that they are going to cause a PR fucking DISASTER, hence why only the fucking idiots at PETA do it.
( Wicca'd Witch needs ideas for a new sig on..., Mon 28 Jan 2013, 19:22, closed)

It's not that they're likening said devastation to a particularly abhorrent sexual assault - they're legitimately using 'rape' to convey a different meaning altogether (fairly frequently, too, according to Google). Dictionary.com - for what it's worth - offers,

...an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.

Most dictionaries (including the OED) mention something along similar lines. One word, multiple - distinct - meanings, the use of which should not belittle or trivialise the horror of its primary meaning. That said, I would probably avoid using it in the presence of someone who found the term uncomfortable.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 28 Jan 2013, 19:52, closed)

Hence why Johnny Depp (and Krtisten Stuart) had to apologise for using the term 'raped' in that context.
It rarely ends well.
( Wicca'd Witch needs ideas for a new sig on..., Mon 28 Jan 2013, 19:59, closed)

No-one should feel obliged to apologise for other people's ignorance; if they used the word correctly - ie, in a manner which is supported by decent, heavyweight dictionaries, as the entirely nonsexual plunder/despoil definition is - they really did nothing wrong.

Look, I'm not suggesting people go around actively forcing 'rape' into sentences purely to seem offensive whilst technically not being offensive - see 'niggardly' and 'the boy president' in relation to Obama - but people who use its secondary/tertiary/whatever meaning aren't necessarily doing it just to be assholes.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 28 Jan 2013, 22:04, closed)