Word.ws English Dictionary

self-rape

/ˈsɛlfˌɹeɪp/

self-rape noun: an act of rape where the rapist identifies with or is the same as the victim.

Noun

self-rape (countable and uncountable, plural self-rapes)

  1. An act of rape where the rapist identifies with or is the same as the victim.
    • Tubby transvestite star Divine still manages to provide some fine, ghastly moments, including a Christmas tantrum (she fails to get shoes with cha-cha heels), a hilariously gross trampoline act, and, through the magic of cross-cutting, a self-rape, which must be a movie first.1975, The Washingtonian - Volume 10, page 210
    • Read literally, that "as" means that Stephan renders the oft-depicted scene from Ovid as follows: Leda, the raped, has become the metamorphosed Zeus, the rapist, and is therefore caught up in a hopeless knot of self-rape.1987, Arts Magazine - Volume 61, page 126
  2. Submission to an unwanted sexual act.
    • If I forced myself to let myself be made love to against my inclination I'd hang myself for a rapist. There is self-rape, isn't there?1965, Gerald Kersh, A Long Cool Day in Hell, page 14
    • This ever-ready willingness not only to be raped but to like it too, is of course the wet-dream ideal of womanhood — that is to say, of all other women but one's own — remarked upon bitterly in Ruth Hersch- berger's Adam's Rib (1948) chap. 3, "Is Rape A Myth?" It represents a fantasy escape by men...1968, Gershon Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor, First Series
  3. (broadly) Behaving contrary to one's own nature, usually as a result of outside pressure.
    • Only when he desists from his self-rape and gives his animal side its head, no matter how "unnatural" its aspirations, can he finally transcend it and grow into a human being.1972, Paul J. Stern, In praise of madness: realness therapy--the self reclaimed, page 46
    • Another parliamentarian, Gabi Potthast, agreed that the situation is destructive. To go into patriarchal politics and adapt to their ways is self-rape.1985, Woman of Power - Issues 2-7, page 28
  4. (derogatory, often) Masturbation.
    • I'm sure in your mind, that pee wee's masturbation was probably self-rape. We should cut off the offending hand. Uh oh, what if he used both?1996 June 27, Howard L. Bloom, “COMCAST and RAPE”, in talk.rape (Usenet)
    • One perspective I heard when growing up was that masturbation amounts to self-rape.2002 November 1, Bryce, “Pornography addiction -- please help”, in alt.religion.mormon (Usenet)
  5. Masturbation without self-love.
    • Masturbation undertaken with an inhibition of enjoyment, physical pain, or regrets and remorse is a genital example of self-rape.1975, Journal of religion and health - Volume 14, page 56
    • Masturbation can also be carried out as a self-rape, in which case it becomes doing to oneself what one would like to do to another — an act of aggression, not love.1986, The Gestalt Journal - Volume 9, page 49
  6. The act of inflicting obscene violence against oneself.
    • At the moment when Faustus is damned, they don pontifical ornaments to cast him into Hell. Brown monks' robes are worn by the other characters. When Faustus signs Mephisto's pact he divests himself of his vestments in a sort of self-rape.1972, Raymonde Temkine, Grotowski, page 130
    • "In New York" she recalls, "I could go out to clubs and get laid. That's unheard-of in Santa Cruz, where they nurture each other and have sex side by side so that no one is on top. I dated a woman there who thought that using a dildo was like committing self-rape."1992, The Advocate - Issues 594-597, page 68
  7. (broadly) Self-destructive activity.
    • The shipping boom the industry had been riding since the prelude to the war collapsed in 1920. As Europe recovered from its self-rape and rebuilt its industries, the demand for American goods and the ships to carry them was greatly curtailed.1967, Industrial and Labor Relations Forum - Volume 4, page 25
    • ...as an act of "self-rape" by the "willingly self-conflicting soul that inflicts suffering upon itself, out of pleasure in inflicting suffering" (GM, II, § 18).1990, Laurence A. Rickels, Looking After Nietzsche: Interdisciplinary Encounters with Merleau-Ponty, →ISBN, page 38

Verb

self-rape (third-person singular simple present self-rapes, present participle self-raping, simple past and past participle self-raped)

  1. (rare) To engage in an act of self-rape.
    • And wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that psychiatrist's offices would be filled to the ceiling with these self-raping homos pleading for help?2004 March 15, Electric Nachos, “Homophobia”, in rec.arts.fine (Usenet)
    • Satan's pregnancy repeats the theme of melancholy and narcissism: he is 'self-impregnated, or self-raped, making love to himself and then to his daughter, the product of his incestuous mind' (Mulryan 18).2011, M. Middeke, Christina Wald, The Literature of Melancholia: Early Modern to Postmodern, →ISBN, page 43

Examples of self-rape in a sentence

  • It thus follows that if Ryuji and Noboru are two halves of one person, Ryuji's murder is a "self-rape" or self-killing, a "suicide." (It is perhaps in this sense that every murder is a "suicide."1999, The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese:
  • The poem's shocking conclusion (envisioning self-rape) benefits from an analysis of the unconscious that Marta Lamas and Nelly Richard highlight.2016, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Marisa Belausteguigoitia, Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American...
  • These jokes of female self-rape, by 'mistake,' may be lumped with the endless novelistic tales of adultery written by men in which the woman is always at fault.1968, Gershon Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor, First Series:
  • This is anger turned inward; this is self-rape.1987, Health - Volume 19, page 6:

Forms of self-rape

Noun
pluralself-rapes
Verb
third-person singular presentself-rapes
present participleself-raping
past participleself-raped
pastself-raped

Origin of self-rape

From self- + rape.

Questions about self-rape

What does self-rape mean?
Self-rape means an act of rape where the rapist identifies with or is the same as the victim.
How do you use self-rape in a sentence?
It thus follows that if Ryuji and Noboru are two halves of one person, Ryuji's murder is a "self-rape" or self-killing, a "suicide." (It is perhaps in this sense that every murder is a "suicide."
What part of speech is self-rape?
Self-rape can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce self-rape?
Self-rape is pronounced /ˈsɛlfˌɹeɪp/ (US).
What is the plural of self-rape?
The plural of self-rape is self-rapes.

Words near self-rape in the dictionary

  1. self-radicalizes
  2. self-radicalizing
  3. self-raising
  4. self-raising flour
  5. self-raising flours
  6. self-rape
  7. self-raped
  8. self-rapes
  9. self-raping
  10. self-realisation
  11. self-realisations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self-rape (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-self-rape.wav.

Cite this entry: “self-rape.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/self-rape. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.