ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY ON RAPE BEING A HATE CRIME

Numerous hate crimes that have been reported in recent times have prompted states to pass various bills concerning hate crime laws which are intended to deter the occurrence of such bias-motivated crimes. However, it has been cumbersome for most of them to draw a boundary that distinguishes which crimes should be treated as hate crimes and which shouldn’t be treated as hate offences. Determining whether rape is a hate crime has birthed a controversial debate among states and recently, the criminal justice system in New York defined rape as unconsensual sex where there is a forced penile vaginal penetration. This simply means that only people of the female gender can be rape victims and not the other way round. Linking this to the initial definition, it is evident that rape is a bias-motivated crime where victims belong to a gendered group membership; males are perpetrators and women are victims. What makes the debate on whether rape should be treated as a hate crime or not is that the definition of rape doesn’t account for oral and anal sex where men can also be victims. However, I choose to treat rape as a hate crime regardless of the sexual assault reported and therefore, this paper argues on why is a hate crime.