In a way, I almost feel like it doesn't matter? Like, in a sense, I like the fact that it's ambiguous and we're all talking about it. Hotch has been violated. From what I've seen, everybody's in agreement over that. Does there need to be, uh, genital contact for it to count as rape? The show reiterates over and over: rape is about power and control, not sex. Here we have Hotch repeatedly penetrated, his bodily integrity violated by Foyet. Foyet, who has rendered Hotch powerless to asserts his own dominance. It reads as rape. It IS rape. I almost feel like that's Foyet's point, the show's point. It's not a substitution, not a stand-in, not a metaphor.

That's one theory anyway.