I didn't want to post and vanish. It was a question posed to kick start a debate, thus the why not? I honestly don't know what I think.
I am having real difficulty separating what would be possible in law from the moral issue.
Morally I feel that a rapist would not be a rapist unless he was driven by negative feelings about women e.g. he had hatred or contempt for them in the same way that someone who beats up a man because he is Asian or has a disability or is, say, transgender has hatred or contempt for the group from which the victim comes. I see women as a group in the same way that, say, Asians are a group in that context.
The individual suffering is representative of a group for whom the rapist/attacker has hatred or contempt.
Now, it may be that, legally it doesn't stack up as ALass indicates. As I said I expected to be told I'm wrong, daft, impractical…
However, the law seems to find a way to decide that a crime may be aggravated when it comes to the victims coming from various groups within the population and takes the crime against those individuals more seriously/gives stronger sentences etc. in those circumstances. In other words society and the law gives out a strong moral message.
But women, as a group, do not attract the same consideration.
So, I asked why not?
Perhaps the argument is that it is possible to beat up, for example, an Asian man simply because you had a fight with him and it was nothing to do with his ethnicity: and by the same token it is possible to rape a woman because you happened to dislike her individually and it was nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman. But is it?
I dunno. But I've found all the points being made food for thought. 