Extremely tired of ppl tryna dunk on prison abolition by being like "well what are we gonna do with all the rapists then huh"

Like idk how to tell you this but most rapists don't go to prison. My rapist isn't in prison. It would have been extremely difficult for me to put him there, even if I had realized that what he did to me was rape immediately after the fact, which I did not. I'm not a good rape victim. Sorry for not being handy evidence in support of your rhetorical argument.

That's not even setting aside the number of rapes committed by cops, and the number of rapes committed against prison inmates in both men's and women's prisons. Perhaps the criminal "justice" system facilitates rape. Perhaps any purported deterrent provided by the vague prospect of prison time is offset by the amount of sexual violence perpetrated by the people who are theoretically supposed to be enacting that punishment in the first place.

I don't think my rapist ever thought of what he did to me as rape. I don't think he thought it was violent or bad. I honestly think he was like 19 and wanted to fuck me and didn't really care what I wanted. He would probably have stopped if I'd put up enough of a fuss, but I didn't. Would subjecting him to the incredible violence of the prison system almost 10yrs later constitute justice? Like I'm incredibly angry at him and I don't forgive him, he massively derailed my fucking life and almost killed me, but I'm still not convinced.

Let's talk about unprosecutable rapes. Let's talk about the term "gray rape". Let's talk about people who are raped by friends or significant others, who aren't beaten or drugged, who don't put up a fight. Let's talk about how criminalization and the carceral system create entire classes of people who can be raped with relative impunity: prisoners, sex workers, undocumented immigrants. How do prisons protect them?

Cops don't protect people from sexual violence when their assailants are cops. Prisons don't protect people from sexual violence when they're assaulted in prison. The criminalization of rape only has a chance at being an effective deterrent for people who understand that what they're doing is technically rape, and believe that they might get caught and prosecuted. I honestly do not think that is true of most rapists.