Yes, but I'd argue that so can other forms of torture be. If you mutilate someone, that's exerting control; if you starve them, or electrocute them, or shave their heads even.

There's nothing *in the act* that makes rape worse. The intent applies to the reaction it receives, doesn't it? Rape is worse because we treat it as worse, because women's worth is tied to sexual access in a way men's worth isn't. Though of course m/m rapes are treated as a similar loss of honour for roughly cognate reasons.

Rape is control *because* of how we think about sex, because rapists weaponise that system of thought, whereby a woman who has been violated is (a) less, (b) somehow belongs to the rapist. Or in a larger way to any man with whom there is sexual contact, however unwilling.

And thank you, though I very much doubt he did.