Study of sexual crimes have found that one of the key parts of an assailant’s mentality towards the crime is the dehumanization of the victim. Victims are often seen as objects of desire, and the actions commuted against them are seen not as crimes against another human being, but as a procedure to achieve an end; not unlike the slaughtering of a cow to produce your Twisted Root burger. This intersection of dehumanization and sexuality is present across a wide range of mediums but, most disturbingly, can be seen in a biblical story. In Genesis 19 Lot is hosting two men in his home and the people of Sodom come to his door, demanding that the visitors be brought out so that they can rape them. It is well known in the biblical narrative that the people of Sodom were given over to sin, which makes this demand so very interesting. There is a want of this party of men to rape and dominate over these two visitors as a way of asserting themselves over them; a power grab using the reduction of someone to an object of personal pleasure and gain. The most controversial part of this story is that Lot then offers his daughters in the place of these men. This is an interesting stipulation as Lot would prefer the men rape his daughters rather than commit homosexual acts with the visitors. This story can be paralleled easily to the events of the night counts in the Stanford Prison Experiment.

In the night counts the degradation rituals become increasingly disturbing as the experiment drags on. Ultimately these rituals become homoerotic in nature with the prisoners being demanded to tell each they are in love, playing leap frog in the nude, and even having to role-play as two camels having sex. These behaviors were all promoted by Hellman, the most deranged of the Correctional Officers, and it is suspected that they may have been connected to latent homosexual tendencies that he had. These behaviors revolved around creating shame and helplessness in the prisoners, and cementing them in the hierarchy as being below the guards, furthering what they could get away with in terms of punishment.

Progressive reduction of humanity is the catalyst for sin in respect to the Stanford Prison Experiment. As the prisoners became less human they simultaneously became more like toys to the guards. From this point sadistic games were created that allowed the guards to feel as though they had control over them and their actions; in their own way they played god. This behavior was thrilling to them, and it acted as a positive feedback loop: increasing in intensity until someone finally put a stop to it. It is interesting that sexuality has such a continued use in this form of dehumanization, but it is simultaneously unsurprising. Sexual crimes are often some of the most impactful psychologically so, if trying to strip a human being of their humanity, they work incredibly well.