A.I. -
I went to BYU in the late seventies. This teaching was so pervasive at that time - ie, that it was better to die fighting than "allow" yourself to be raped" - that the local police (I can't remember if it was BYU police or Provo) conducted sessions with coeds to try and dissuade us from this belief. It was a female officer who came to address us, and she tried to convince us this was NOT a church teaching. Kind of hard to do when we knew what President Kimball had said on the subject:
“Also far-reaching is the effect of loss of chastity. Once given or taken or stolen it can never be regained. Even in forced contact such as rape or incest, the injured one is greatly outraged. If she has not cooperated and contributed to the foul deed, she is of course in a more favorable position. There is no condemnation where there is no Voluntary participation. It is better to die in defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.”–Spencer W. Kimball, THE MIRACLE OF FORGIVENESS
"It is better to die in defending one's virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle." I'm sorry, there is only one reasonable interpretation of these words. If Kimball was not referring to being raped, then he would not have brought up fighting and possibly dying. And he clearly states that chastity can be "taken or stolen". What the heck is he talking about, if not rape?????
I'm sure the LDS church has made progress in this area (they often do, albeit more slowly than the larger culture), but when I was a young female in the church, this was a common attitude, as demonstrated by the fact that BYU (or Provo) felt the need to try and dissuade young women from this idea.
It's not something we're just making up, or exaggerating. For heaven's sake, A.I., the fact that more than one MADdite was supporting this teaching ought to demonstrate that. I don't know how you escaped hearing about it, unless you're quite a bit younger than me.
One of the greatest problems I think the LDS church has is that it has an untrained lay ministry. People who are going to be counseling members with real, sometimes severe, problems - like abuse of one form or another - really need to be trained to do so, so they don't inadvertently do more damage than good. Otherwise, you end up with uninformed, untrained people telling victims of abuse that they, in some way, are to blame for the situation. Someone who has been trained to deal with victims of abuse would realize that abusers carefully train their victims to feel responsible, to take the blame, for the abuse. I can't imagine how damaging it would be to hear that reaffirmed from a respected church leader. Yes, we want victims of abuse to take responsibility for their lives and to be empowered to realize that is their right, but that is different than saying victims of abuse are also at fault for the abusive cycle. And some church leader probing with a victim of rape to see if she needs to "repent" of something, somehow, would be equally damaging.
I absolutely believe that a woman who has been exposed to the teaching that her chastity and virtue is more important than her very life, and that chastity CAN be stolen or taken, will have a much more difficult time dealing with rape than a woman who has not been brought up in such a culture. And no, I never said this is unique to the LDS culture, but when one considers the other cultures that teach this, that is hardly a point in favor of the LDS church.