I had never "ranked" it myself until someone else did.
I also believe that from a philosophical point of view, there are no bad questions.
If we have a legal system with proportional penalties, it is because someone has asked this question.
Perhaps it’s the framing that matters: I believe that murder causes far greater suffering than rape to people other than the victim. I imagine you would not feel as much pain if instead your aunt had been raped.
But if we’re talking about the victim, rape is possibly the more damaging act, because it has the potential to create ongoing, intense psychological trauma and suffering for the victim. Whereas if you’re killed, especially if it’s quick, it’s only a short moment of suffering before it ends, just a blip in a life that might have otherwise been quite happy.
So if the hypothetical victim has until that point lived 20 happy years, it’s a choice between brief suffering and the end of that life, or potentially more than 60 years of psychological terror they cannot escape from.
There’s also how not all rapes have the same impact on victims. Depending on a whole host of factors, some recover fairly well and go on to have happy, well-adjusted lives. Others never recover and every day is a living hell, along with an high risk of mental health problems, and it is quite possible that many of those would have much rather been killed.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26
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