Maybe it helps with understanding when you think of examples of female rape that isn’t a stranger beating up a woman in a dark alley.

Like Harvey Weinstein. Countless women have come forward about rape and sexual violence from him. I doubt he always used physical violence on these women. But he was this all powerful person in the filmindustry who could and would destroy lives and careers with a wave of his hand if you’d deny him.

Very often rape and sexual violence comes out of a power dynamic where the victim (no matter the gender) feels they don’t have a choice. Physical violence does not have to be involved.

Power over another person, the prerequisite for most sexual violence, doesn’t have to come from superior physical strength. It could come from an age difference, a professor-student or boss-employee dynamic, or some form of blackmail, for example. And the body can experience physical arousal in response to the right stimuli even when you don’t want to have sex. You can also do acts of sexual violence that do not require an erect penis.

1. Rape does not always involve physically overpowering someone. Someone may coerce someone else into sex with blackmail, lies, threats, or abuse of a position of power.

2. Erections are controlled by a person’s autonomic nervous system. A man can get hard even when he is not turned on or consenting to what is happening.

3. Not all rape involves a penis. A woman who sticks an object into a man without his consent is committing rape. Rape is about power and control over another person, and the rapist need not be directly stimulated for rape to occur.