Two different stories about consent and "rape", a paradox

If I point you to a glory hole and tell you there is a woman on the other side and you agree to sex trough the hole, you have not been sexually violated even if the woman is old, fat and ugly. But what if it is not a woman, but a sheep? What if it is a man?

 

Some men would disagree with this example. That could be a borderline grey zone.


If you believe that is not a sexual violation, then one could also argue that this woman (in the story) who agreed to have kinky sex with her hands tied and a blindfold on (with a partner she did not even get a good look at) is not that different from a stupid guy who sticks his wiener in a glory hole.

 

People are free to take part in whatever sexual behavior they want as long as there is consent. The opinion of a "straight guy" is irrelevant.

True. There are bigots for example. But, America stands for equality, and the issue at had was a legal issue.

>>> Where in America is homosexuality illegal? Are you aware of Lawrence v Texas, for example?

The "what" and "with whom" aren't relevant, as the individuals may choose whatever sexual behavior they prefer, as long as there is consent.

In the OP examples, there wasn't consent. Had there been consent, there wouldn't be anything to talk about.

 

Again, the issue is consent.

We don't have to go through story after salacious story of disturbing sexual encounters.

Or, are the disturbing salacious stories the whole point of your thread??

 

You're just obscuring the actual issue.

Consent to what, exactly, is what we're talking about.

Is consent to the sex act itself enough, or do they have to consent to all the details of that sex, and all the details about that person whom they are having sex with.

 

If you're considering sex and you have lines you are not willing to cross, you have to check that out.

After all, your objective is to not cross those lines.

Your objective ISN'T to set up your partner for a charge of rape.

 

I see. So presumably you believe that woman was not raped?

Did you vote for option #3 in that poll? Because otherwise what you say here does not really make sense.

 

As I understand the story, she was lied to.

Beyond that, if she said stop and the act continued, then that is rape.

 

Were you the one single person that voted for option #3 in the poll? Did you vote in the poll?

 

Marriage is not permission to be raped.

In the other case, you claimed there was misrepresentation.

Misrepresentation invalidates consent. You can't lie and then hold someone to their consent.

That's true for business, too, by the way.

 

That's mostly putting up a straw man. That's not exactly the issue.


Option #3 still says that you believe the sex in marriage was rape.

Okay, so you voted for option #4. You believed both stories were rape.

I guess the question is what level of "misrepresentation" does there have to be for it to be considered "rape".

 

His opinion is relevant. That he is straight isn't.

Please don't make everything about America. I am not American, nor are many others. The world and reality and what is right and wrong do not depend on your country and its laws. What's right and wrong should form your laws, not the other way around, and quite often in your country, as in mine and all others, the legislators fail us.

The what and with whom are pivotal. If you consent to a kiss on the cheek, you did not consent to anal penetration. If you consent to sex with one particular individual, you did not consent to sex with anyone else.

 

But what extent of misrepresentation is enough to invalidate consent? Misrepresentation is a very wide spectrum, from using make up, to dying your hair to, to breast implants, to saying you aren't married, to saying you are rich, to saying you are 20 years younger than you actually are, to telling somebody you were born a woman and not telling them you were born with a penis, to so many other things you could say.

 

You're totally obscuring the issue. There was consent to sex. There just wasn't consent to the full details about the person whom they were having sex with.
Or in the case of that marriage, it was the total reverse of that.

You're making a blanket statement "consent to sex". The wife consented to sex with her husband, but just not every specific instance of that sex.
The naive and stupid woman consented to sex with that other person, but just had not consented to having sex with a woman, since she thought she was having sex with a man.

As you can see, this isn't a simple yes or no issue.

 

If a man lies to a woman and tells her he is vegan but he actually eats steak when she isn't around, and she later finds out and regrets having sex with him because she thinks this violated her veganism, is that rape?

 

And this brings up the whole philosophical and legal issue of identity. Did that woman actually consent to having sex with the "identity" of that other person?

Can it really be rape if the "identity" of the person they are having sex with her is an entirely made up identity, unique to the person perpatrating the fraud?

(It's not like the victim got to know one person and then thought that person was the one having sex with them when it was really an entirely different completely separate person)

 

There are many vegans who would actually feel raped, yes.

Absurd as that may sound.

 

I can relate to them if we just change "steak" to "dog meat". My girlfriend is Vietnamese and loves dogs, often trying to rescue them from the dog meat trade there. If it turned out she was lying and she actually eats dog, I think I may feel raped. It would completely change how I see her as a person.

So with steak with Hindu people or with Vegans, I can sort of see where that would be coming from, but it still does sound ridiculous to me as being not what they are.

 

His opinion is not relevant to the decisions others make concerning what sexual behavior they agree to or do not agree to.

In general, I'm fine with that.

But, our laws are pretty darn well thought out.

Specifically, the sexual behavior that two people agree to has to be considered their right.

I'm sure there are places around the world where homosexuality is illegal. And, that is just one of the utterly disgusting legal atrocities that do occur in some places.

If you read my posts you would know I've said exactly that.

 

Sure. And your country still had sodomy laws on the books when mine already legalized same sex marriage. Your country had institutionalized slavery with laws about returning slaves to their owners, while others had long banned it.

Your country is not a shining beacon on the hill that your patriots like to pretend and you should not look to your laws for what is right or wrong. You should look within.

That could be what you meant to say, and you may have said it elsewhere, but it isn't what you actually wrote above. You wrote the opposite. I am glad it was a misunderstanding and we actually agree. I suspect you also agree with Kaz on this matter.

 

Another example might be if a Muslim woman, from another cultural context in a different part of the world, married a man and then found out he had never been a Muslim in the first place and was secretly practicing some other religion.

Many Muslims in other parts of the world would view this as almost tantamount to rape, and they'd probably force him to officially convert or die.

 

True, but the OP scenarios had no such nuance.

Again, if a person has objections to these factors, they need to check it out.

Are you really suggesting that our government should write laws on what must be disclosed before sex?

Or, are you just expressing a social opinion on what others should talk about before they have sex?

Let's remember that the OP issue was what constitutes rape.

Rape is a legal term.

 

Yes. So culture seems to play a role here.

 

If they're so "well thought out", why do so many laws keep getting changed?

Maybe people back in older times knew some stuff that we don't, or have forgotten, and there were sometimes some reasons for the way laws were back then.

Like marriage or consent to sex, once you give your consent to sex, you don't get to nitpick over the details of that sex, so long as nothing about that sex is too unreasonable. That would have been the old view. It was much simpler. Now women can complain about being violated after the fact, when they didn't seem to have a problem during sex.

The matter of consent is not that simple when you make it complicated.

Back in the old days: A woman who is married is consenting to sex. A woman who enters a bedroom alone with a strange man not related to her, gets on the bed and takes off her clothes is consenting to sex.

 

Or maybe we have developed into more moral societies. We used to kill people for witchcraft and homosexuality, we used to think slavery was ok, we used to treat women as property. Times change, I think usually for the better, but admittedly that is coming from a person of my own time and place and people of yesteryear would likely think the opposite.