6 ms·

By calling everything and anything rape, one debases the word's meaning, and the claims of actual rape victims. Words have meaning, and rape is forcing someone

by fab13n 11y ago

By calling everything and anything rape, one debases the word's meaning, and the claims of actual rape victims. Words have meaning, and rape is forcing someone to have sex with you when they don't want to have sex with you. She wanted to have sex with him, although he deceived her about some of his key features. Is it rape when one discovers afterwards that their partner is a closet alcoholic? No it isn't. What about if they're chronically unfaithful? Neither. If a golddigger has sex with someone who made them falsely believe they were rich, the former hasn't been raped, merely deceived. Even if they're HIV+, it's not rape. It might be poisoning, or homicide attempt, it certainly is awful and punishable, but it's not rape. Concealing that you're a cop on duty is despicable and might be (at least ought to be) illegal, but rape it isn't; pretending otherwise is unhelpful and insulting to rape victims.

DanBC 11y ago
> forcing No, rape is sex without consent. Force isn't required for something to be rape.
- Natanael_L 11y ago
  Then this would rather be fraud, because consent was given but based on deceitful information
  - danlindley 11y ago
    Actually, consent for sexual intercourse obtained through lies or deceipt is unequivocally considered rape in common law.
    - fab13n 11y ago
      Can you provide a source? I'd be surprised if, for instance, seducing someone and getting laid by pretending to be substantially wealthier than you are was considered rape. Even pretending that you aren't a convicted felon when you are one would probably not constitute rape. I'd also be surprised if a woman who lied about being a virgin (and maybe had hymenoplasty) was prosecuted as a rapist by her devout husband. My guess would be that it's considered rape if the deception made the victim believe they had to have intercourse with the liar. If the lie merely made the liar more desirable, it's (possibly unethical) seduction. This hypothesis would mean, to come back to the original case, that: * telling you're not a cop when you actually are one is not rape; * telling that you're a cop when you aren't, and hitting that a sexual favor would buy you some leniency, does constitute rape.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        There's several links in this thread to a recent UK case where a woman pretended to be a man, and seduced her friend and had sex with that friend. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland-sentenced-eight-years-prison-duping-friend-having-sex http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland... There are other coses from different places. A Jewish woman was told by a man that he was also Jewish. They had sex. He was in fact not Jewish, and he was convicted. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7901025/Palestinian-jailed-for-rape-after-claiming-to-be-Jewish.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/... I think the law is looking at what consent actually means.
      - danlindley 11y ago
        There was a case in Australia where an individual consented to intercourse on the basis that their partner would agree to marry them. Afterwards, when the partner refused to get married and the case was taken to court, the court determined this was rape due to the fact consent was only obtained on the basis that they would then be married.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
vacri 11y ago
Concealing who you actually are can be legal rape. There was a case (in NZ, I think) where one brother of a pair of identical twins had sex with the other brother's girlfriend. She had consented to the sex itself, but had thought it was her boyfriend, and the man had wilfully misrepresented himself as his brother. It's pointless to hang on technicalities though - regardless of whether this is legally 'rape', it is undoubtedly severe emotional trauma.
- fab13n 11y ago
  > It's pointless to hang on technicalities though I don't think you'd consider it a mere technicality, if someone called it "murder", or "extortion", or "battery", although all of those are crimes, which generally entail severe emotional trauma. You can stay general and just call it a "crime", if you don't think the specifics are relevant, but it's not a rape. This sloppy thinking, "it's an hideous deception and it's related to sex, so it must be rape", is the same kind of sloppy thinking that makes citizens accept things they shouldn't, for the sake of "homeland security" or "the war against Terror". So it does matter. As for "Concealing who you are", if you pick an open / vague interpretation of what "who you are" means, you're creating an awful lot of legal insecurity. How many estranged spouses have you heard describing their ex as "(s)he wasn't the person I though (s)he was"? I've heard that one more than a couple of times. That is no basis for rape accusations.
  - vacri 11y ago
    Rape, fundamentally, is a clear violation of a person's intimate life. That is what happened in the article, sponsored and directed by the state. It wasn't the "oh, they changed over time" story that you're making it out to be. In both the article and my twins comment, the bad actor premeditated the duplicity, and was intentionally dishonest from the start. The woman in the article has had her intimate life violated, funded and directed by the state, no less. That violation is the essence of rape. Whether or not it fits the relevant legal definition (which varies wildly between jurisdictions), what has happened is functionally the same. It's just like it doesn't actually matter to the victim who comes home to find their house ransacked, whether the law terms it 'robbery' or 'burglary'. And when the victim says "our house was robbed yesterday", the person who corrects them with "actually, you mean 'burgled'" is missing the point.
erdojo 11y ago
I'm pretty sure I know the definition of rape at least as well as you if not more so, and I stand by the use of the word in this instance.

by fab13n 11y ago

DanBC 11y ago

> forcing No, rape is sex without consent. Force isn't required for something to be rape.

Natanael_L 11y ago
Then this would rather be fraud, because consent was given but based on deceitful information
- danlindley 11y ago
  Actually, consent for sexual intercourse obtained through lies or deceipt is unequivocally considered rape in common law.
  - fab13n 11y ago
    Can you provide a source? I'd be surprised if, for instance, seducing someone and getting laid by pretending to be substantially wealthier than you are was considered rape. Even pretending that you aren't a convicted felon when you are one would probably not constitute rape. I'd also be surprised if a woman who lied about being a virgin (and maybe had hymenoplasty) was prosecuted as a rapist by her devout husband. My guess would be that it's considered rape if the deception made the victim believe they had to have intercourse with the liar. If the lie merely made the liar more desirable, it's (possibly unethical) seduction. This hypothesis would mean, to come back to the original case, that: * telling you're not a cop when you actually are one is not rape; * telling that you're a cop when you aren't, and hitting that a sexual favor would buy you some leniency, does constitute rape.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      There's several links in this thread to a recent UK case where a woman pretended to be a man, and seduced her friend and had sex with that friend. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland-sentenced-eight-years-prison-duping-friend-having-sex http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland... There are other coses from different places. A Jewish woman was told by a man that he was also Jewish. They had sex. He was in fact not Jewish, and he was convicted. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7901025/Palestinian-jailed-for-rape-after-claiming-to-be-Jewish.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/... I think the law is looking at what consent actually means.
    - danlindley 11y ago
      There was a case in Australia where an individual consented to intercourse on the basis that their partner would agree to marry them. Afterwards, when the partner refused to get married and the case was taken to court, the court determined this was rape due to the fact consent was only obtained on the basis that they would then be married.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

vacri 11y ago

Concealing who you actually are can be legal rape. There was a case (in NZ, I think) where one brother of a pair of identical twins had sex with the other brother's girlfriend. She had consented to the sex itself, but had thought it was her boyfriend, and the man had wilfully misrepresented himself as his brother. It's pointless to hang on technicalities though - regardless of whether this is legally 'rape', it is undoubtedly severe emotional trauma.

fab13n 11y ago
> It's pointless to hang on technicalities though I don't think you'd consider it a mere technicality, if someone called it "murder", or "extortion", or "battery", although all of those are crimes, which generally entail severe emotional trauma. You can stay general and just call it a "crime", if you don't think the specifics are relevant, but it's not a rape. This sloppy thinking, "it's an hideous deception and it's related to sex, so it must be rape", is the same kind of sloppy thinking that makes citizens accept things they shouldn't, for the sake of "homeland security" or "the war against Terror". So it does matter. As for "Concealing who you are", if you pick an open / vague interpretation of what "who you are" means, you're creating an awful lot of legal insecurity. How many estranged spouses have you heard describing their ex as "(s)he wasn't the person I though (s)he was"? I've heard that one more than a couple of times. That is no basis for rape accusations.
- vacri 11y ago
  Rape, fundamentally, is a clear violation of a person's intimate life. That is what happened in the article, sponsored and directed by the state. It wasn't the "oh, they changed over time" story that you're making it out to be. In both the article and my twins comment, the bad actor premeditated the duplicity, and was intentionally dishonest from the start. The woman in the article has had her intimate life violated, funded and directed by the state, no less. That violation is the essence of rape. Whether or not it fits the relevant legal definition (which varies wildly between jurisdictions), what has happened is functionally the same. It's just like it doesn't actually matter to the victim who comes home to find their house ransacked, whether the law terms it 'robbery' or 'burglary'. And when the victim says "our house was robbed yesterday", the person who corrects them with "actually, you mean 'burgled'" is missing the point.

erdojo 11y ago

I'm pretty sure I know the definition of rape at least as well as you if not more so, and I stand by the use of the word in this instance.