Your taking a shotgun to the subject in hopes of hitting something. I'll start out in being blunt in saying (as I've said before) that I myself was raped by a gay man when I was six. In my cause though I blocked it out, which doesn't make it any easier when you know it happened.
THAT said, you have to understand that there is more than one side to an issue like this. The feminists and their agenda are the biggest area of confrontation over issues like rape because that is the biggest front, that generally eclipses any side arguements or discussions.
The thing with rape discussions is that it usually comes down to demands for dual standards that favor women. We see this in the court system where it's basically argued that in a case where rape is the accusation that the defendant (the accused) should have to prove a negative (nearly impossible) and their own innocence, as opposed to the burden of proof being placed on the accuser and prosecution. Politics in these cases have created some massive travesties of justice, as rape is one of the few crimes where people have been convicted (sometimes regularly) on what amounts to purely circumstantial evidence, given that due to the trauma involved the victims (or those claiming to be victims) might wait weeks, months, or even years to ever say anything. Like most such things rife for abuse, it has been abused in all kinds of money grabbing schemes, black mail, or simply women wanting to ruin people's lives for "lulz" or using the system to effectively change their mind after the fact (ie if a girl sleeps with some guy, but decides it was a mistake, she can claim the guy raped her by way of justifying it to her boyfriend and then have the system remove the problem). This has all contributed to rape being an increasingly gray area.... especially as the definition of rape is being broadened beyond the intended meaning of someone forcing themselves sexually on a struggling victim, to simple things like getting someone drunk. Given the wide array of consentual sexual behavior, it can also be a touchy subject to determine whether someone who does have injuries was forced or not... which is incidently why the alleged rape victims are themselves dragged through the mud in such cases. It's also one of the reasons why a lot of the time I feel "closed door doctrine" should have made it into law (though I understand why it didn't).
The feminist arguements also come down to a dual standard as to what should be allowed. The basic arguement being that it's okay for women to produce, and read books about being ravished by pirates or whatever, but it's not okay for men to create or read the same thing.
I touched on this in a response to The Jimquisition recently about fantasy rape and the differance between it and reality. I generally don't think "rape" in a story where everyone winds up (eventually) having a good time is a big deal. It's adult material because you need to have an adult point of view to seperate that from reality. The problem of course being that a lot of feminist arguements come down to there being seperate standards for men and women when it comes to entertainment. If some lady reads about a female protaganist being tied up and raped (which is more politically changed to "ravished" in such cases) in a book with Fabio on the cover, purchused from the romance section, that's okay... but if some guy reads a book/comic/watches a movie about the same basic thing then it's to be treated differantly.
Feminism sucks because it by and large represents a dual standard, and the arguement that girls should be able to do things that get guys branded freaks or wierdos.
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As far as rape as a TERM goes, it's use comes from the belief for many people that rape is more about power than sex. In reality that's not the case as much as many people like to believe, the belief being popularized because of the victims being upset over the loss of power and control, rather than that nessicarly being the motivating force for the rapist. I've read some analysises in the past that have pointed towards a trend where if it's about power for the rapist then the victim is unlikely to survive the experience as it usually crosses over into torture and murder as opposed to just being about the sex. The term gets used as a way of talking about dominating and using someone completly, with nothing they can do about it. Rather than saying "I'm going to dominate you and use you up" or "you got dominated" it's simply "your going to get raped". which flows better and conveys the meaning. I don't care for it myself even if I've used the term that way myself to fit in, but I don't think it's worth getting upset about either, slang changes over time, and we're liable to see this go away in a decade or so. Truthfully the more people complain about it, and the more they show their cards about it getting their goats, the longer it will stick around, as such complaints will simply fuel the subversive quality that fuels slang. Indeed I'd argue that articles like this are actually going to encorage people.... want to see the term die? Wait for it to be used non-stop, and only correctly about 20% of the time on some primetime programming that's trying to be hip (as opposed to judgemental). Have a bunch of "hipsters" running around a modern 90120 using the term constantly on some preppy beach or whatever, and that will kill it.
