Pod Reviews #5: Rape — A Love Story
5: Rape — A Love Story
By iHeartMedia’s Mating Matters
- Part 1 (45 minutes, uploaded on October 2, 2019)
- Part 2 (44 minutes, uploaded on October 9, 2019)
Language: English
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To make up for the missed schedule, Duck of All Ears is back with a review for two episodes from iHeartMedia’s Mating Matters — A show about human nature, particularly in the aspects of love, sex, and relationships through scientific, psychologic, and evolutionary views, hosted by psychotherapist Wendy Walsh. Throughout the series, you will find answers to many questions, like why girls fall for bad manly men, why nice guys finish last, dive into love through religious aspects, and even non-binary relationships. These two episodes, however, present to you issues about rape and sexual violations.
Rape — A Love Story, breaks down into two episodes, both containing all the facts and science about why rape happens by human evolution experts, along with special interviews from two exclusive guests. The first one personally contacted our host for a chance to share his story…as a sexual perpetrator, while the second reveals herself as a victim to a non-consensual sex, giving us perspectives on rape and sexual coersion from two different point of views. The perpetrator clearly felt immense guilt, which led him to get in touch and sharing his story on Mating Matters, hoping to give views and a special message to other guys to be cautious not to sexually assault others like he had done. Our second guest on part two tells her experience of being drugged into sex and her consequent struggles to file a lawsuit against her perpetrator. One particular fact I take home from the second interview is the fact that victim shaming is, unfortunately, widely practiced even within developed countries like the United States, heartbreakingly often by people as close to the victim as her own parents.
Moving on to the facts explaining part of the two episodes provided by the experts, we could understand in brief, that rape is a behaviour developed to increase a man’s chance of passing on his genes. Not all men possess genes women may deem suitable as a mate, hence comes sexual coercion — attempts for men to reproduce at the costs of stepping boundaries and violating women. Two important messages we could get from Rape — A Love Story is:
- Rape is natural, BUT-
- Rape also remains to be WRONG, as it strips the right to have a choice away from its victims.
The show continually emphasizes these facts throughout the episode, and also supports people to educate men, better so at a young age, to understand why rape happens and to further respect other people’s rights, in order to not become perpetrators themselves.
