 Although what constituted this crime has varied by historical period and culture, the definitions tended to focus around an act of forced vaginal intercourse perpetrated through physical violence or imminent threat of death or severe bodily injury, by a man, on a woman or a girl, not his wife.The actus reus of the crime, was, in most societies, the insertion of the penis into the vagina.The way sexuality was conceptualized in many societies rejected the very notion that a woman could force a man into sex — women were often seen as passive while men were deemed to be assertive and aggressive.