The reason why I do not consider rape to be horrible is simply that IT DOES NOT INVOLVE ANY PHYSICAL INJURY. (I am speaking here of female rape. Male rape, which happens all the time in our wonderful egalitarian prison system, where black equals white and weak equals strong, is often accompanied by injury to the anus.) OK, maybe the victim is traumatized, but more than likely, she pretty much gets over it after a few days and after she has had her Wasserman test and maybe her penicillin. (As the San Francisco Chronicle's gossip columnist and wit Herb Cain was known for saying in a takeoff on Tennyson's famous line, "Better to fail your Wasserman test/Than never to have loved at all.") Yes, being traumatized by rape can happen, but this is rare as far as I know and is certainly not something that compels us to classify rape in general as 'horrible'. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere, until recent times most women were introduced to sex by the act of rape: A woman was regarded as the husband's property, and was married under the directive to 'obey' him, and indeed was married in a ceremony accompanied by the husband's 'best man', who turns out to have traditionally been the 'best man' the husband could find to help him ABDUCT HIS BRIDE.