I usually put bit of considered thought and time into these blogposts (believe it or not) but today I need to say something quickly, and something so stupefyingly obvious and easy that it doesn’t require much preparation. I want to say this quickly because thanks to the Metro and the BBC, I sense a swelling wave of comments and blogs across the internet saying “OMGZ, in Britain you can be convicted of rape even if you have consent!” So let’s get this out there quickly just on the vague chance it might make someone think twice.
First, the facts. The High Court has ruled in a case where a woman consented to limited sexual contact. To be explicit, she agreed to sex on the specific condition that her partner didn’t ejaculate inside her. The court heard that shortly after penetration – and without giving the woman any chance to object – the man had said he would be “coming inside her” and added “I’ll do it if I want”. The CPS prosecutors had decided not to charge him as it would be “impossible to prove” that the man’s decision was not “spontaneous” and “made at the point of ejaculation”. The woman challenged this ruling and won. The ruling says:
“She believed that he intended and agreed to withdraw before ejaculation. (He) knew and understood that this was the only basis on which she was prepared to have sexual intercourse with him. In short, there is evidence that he deliberately ignored the basis of her consent to penetration as a manifestation of his control over her.”
(Please note, this is not a criminal trial, we have not heard the man’s defence as yet. These are allegations, not accepted facts.)
The headlines in the Metro: Sex with consent ‘can still be rape’ and BBC Sex consent could still lead to rape charge, judges say are dangerously misleading and potentially highly damaging to public understanding of consent and rape. So for the benefit of anyone who struggles with these concepts, let me offer a full and extensive list of reasonable working definitions of consent.
1. If you do something to someone’s intimate bits (or with your intimate bits) which you know s/he has not consented to or is unable to consent to at that moment, you are committing an act of sexual assault or rape.
There. That’s it. In practice this means that if s/he says “I’ll do this but I won’t do that” it means you have consent to do this but not do that. If s/he says “I’ll put this here but I’m not having it there” then you have consent to put it here but not put it there. If s/he says “I’ll do this but only if you wear that” then you have consent to do this, if and only if you are wearing that. (I’m mostly thinking of condoms here, but I guess the same principle applies to the pirate outfit. Whatever pushes your boat, you’re still the skipper.) If you ignore this very simple principle, and proceed with an act which your partner has not consented to, you are committing an act of sexual assault or rape. Oh, and if you do ever find yourself uttering words along the lines of “I’ll do it if I want” then – BIG FUCKING CLUE – you’re a rapist.
That’s what I say. That’s what the law says and it’s what any reasonably functioning moral compass says too.
Please note, before the flood arrives, I quite appreciate that, in practice, attaining prosecutions for rape and sexual assault for incidents like this will often be all but impossible. I fully appreciate the fuzzy boundaries that often exist between seduction, persuasion and consent. I’m not saying the man in this particular case is guilty, his case has yet to be considered and he is innocent until proven otherwise.
I am saying that for all the tortuous debates around the legalities of rape and consent, the principles are really bloody simple. The High Court today has provided welcome confirmation that the principles are really bloody simple. The headlines today gave precisely the opposite impression, and that is hugely irresponsible and very worrying.
(Note to commenters. As usual, I’ll trust you to comment and discuss matters with civility and respect for those who may be personally affected by these issues. But I’ll warn you, I feel strongly about this shit and if you are planning on disagreeing to any great extent about the main points here, be prepared for the proverbial ton of bricks. Thanks)
*applause* You are refreshingly right.
its about time it was recognised that everyone has the right to decide what does and doesn’t happen to their private bits. There are to many people in society who thinks it is ok to overstep such marks, its time the law protected the victims and not the offenders
One more time for the cheap seats at the back….
1. If you do something to someone’s intimate bits (or with your intimate bits) which you know s/he has not consented to or is unable to consent to at that moment, you are committing an act of sexual assault or rape.
The huge difference between doing something TO someone and doing something WITH someone. Sex can be great, when you communicate, when you now what you like and you know what the person (or people) you’re having sex with like and you can bring it all together. If you can do that, and it’s not hard, communicating, verbally or otherwise, it’s a lot of fun in its own right then everyone wants to do it again or at the very least looks back fondly on the experience and feels good about themselves.
^ THIS. It is a SHARED experience that is supposed to be pleasurable for two (or more) people – otherwise, just have a wank.
To, not With. YES. And honestly, things DO change in mid stride, but it really needs to be with discussion. “OMG I want to X that we agreed not to” “No, that won’t work for me.” (no consent.) “Yes, let’s do that. (consent). If you change your mind the next day, that doesn’t change it to non-consent, but coersion to do something you don’t want to do DOES change it.
Did any of that make sense? (Having been in all of the above situations)
How dare you make sense on the internet.
Still. It’s hardly surprising the BBC and the Metro went with the misleading headline.
The Daily Mail comments are predictably depressin. Of course there is more to this story, including
The unidentified university student also claimed her domineering husband forced himself on her for several years. She even alleged the man often woke her up in the middle of the night and asked her to put on stilettos and handcuffs for aggressive intercourse.
She was forced to e-mail her husband to beg him to stop, and one occasion he replied: “I am sorry for raping you. I can think of no other word….I degraded you, humiliated you from the first day and you played along because you felt you had to do it.” – IBTimes article
Thank you
2 blogs in a row that have been spot on. My hat is off to you, sir.
Well, it is clearly wrong. But the issue of conditional consent is not quite obvious. At what point does it stop being rape and become something else instead? To take an extreme example (known from jokes, but supposed to have come up in reality): Somebody has sex in return for money, and the check bounces. Or promises a film role, and the film role never materialises. Is that still rape, or is it theft, or fraud, or obtaining goods by deception?
Braces himself for ton of bricks.
No ton of bricks for that one!
I think those are the kind of devil’s advocate scenarios that test the limits of an abstract theory in a jurisprudence tutorial, but which don’t really matter alter the principles at stake. I’m happy to accept that in most areas of law or moral philosophy there will be cases that throw up paradoxes, and you’ll have the occasional long drawn out court case trying to resolve them.
The law on assault throws up similar paradoxes constantly, but nobody seems to object too much to those.
FWIW my own sense is that the bouncing cheque scenario is fraud, not rape. Sex by deception (eg pretending you’re a fireman when you’re an accountant) is morally scuzzy but probably not rape, whereas I think sex by gender deception (there have been a couple of those lately) crosses a line for me and probably does count as a crime. (it would take me a long time to work through exactly why it’s different)
But while I’d be more than happy to debate those specific cases, it is a logical fallacy to say that because one extraordinary case is difficult to judge, all cases are difficult to judge.
It’s a bit like the old hypothetical moral reasoning tests, if someone kills one person in order to save the life of two others, is it murder? I honestly don’t know, but that doesn’t mean that as a general principle, deliberately killing someone else isn’t a crime or wrong.
Perfect answer. For me, those undercover police who had sexual relationships with women they were spying on is serious boundary crossing, and tantamount to rape, as I am pretty use the police would absolutely have known that these women would NOT consent if they knew the truth. I guess it’s each situation judged on its own – in this case, there was a lot of sexual bullying and coercion throughout the marriage. This was only one example of what went on – the man even admitted raping her in an email he wrote her.
“whereas I think sex by gender deception (there have been a couple of those lately) crosses a line for me and probably does count as a crime. (it would take me a long time to work through exactly why it’s different) ”
What would that be? Does this include trans people not ‘disclosing’ their trans status?
Yeah, that might be part of it. I had this kind of case in mind
http://news.stv.tv/north/216583-christine-wilson-pretended-to-be-a-man-to-have-sex-with-teenage-girls/
But as I say, when we get into those kinds of exceptional cases, you have to make judgments on individual situations. I don’t think there should be a legal obligation on trans people to disclose their gender status in all cases, and the moral complexities there are immense.
Since you ask, in these specific instances I think people have a right to a sexual orientation, and that might include deciding that we only want to do sexual things with people of a certain biological sex or gender status. That seems a reasonable right of autonomy to me.
But I accept that there are diverse views on that and would take an entire thread of its own to debate.
I was trying to get at what the principles are. Rape is a specific and serious crime, with a particularly heavy condemnation, and it is worth being clear what it does and does not cover. And, sorry Deezers, having sex with somebody who ‘would not have consented if they knew the truth’ is not it.
From your answer it seems we agree (?) that going against preconditions (from ‘do not call me slut’ to ‘do not touch my elbows’) is nasty but not in itself enough to turn something into rape, whereas crossing some particular lines is, from bondage to anal to, OK, unprotected sex. As for the rest, some things are scuzzy, and some, like gender deception, are illegal – they are just not rape.
I mean, I did say that for me it is tantamount to rape. That’s my opinion. Yours differs. You don’t really get to tell me mine is wrong.
Oh, and I am not just talking about ‘somebody’, like a guy saying he’s a doctor when he’s really a… chimney sweep, or whatever. I am talking about a man who is there to infiltrate, spy on, and possibly imprison the woman and her close friends. Just to be clear.
Are people oriented to my appearance, my personhood or my genitals? It’s not universally agreed upon.
TERFs will say genitals, and that I’m a man, male, and that any woman having sex with me makes her not-a-lesbian, but they’re an extreme fringe. And proud of their bigotry to boot.
Hear, hear! *applauds*
Great piece, Ally, thank you.
Here’s a link to the judgment, for those interested:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2013/945.html
1. If you do something to someone’s intimate bits (or with your intimate bits) which you know s/he has not consented to or is unable to consent to at that moment, you are committing an act of sexual assault or rape.
Yes.
“She believed that he intended and agreed to withdraw before ejaculation. (He) knew and understood that this was the only basis on which she was prepared to have sexual intercourse with him. In short, there is evidence that he deliberately ignored the basis of her consent to penetration as a manifestation of his control over her.”
In other words ‘consent’ is not a one-time agreement, and therefore a licence to ‘have sex’ (which may mean different things to different people) does not mean ‘anything goes’. I always thought that the reform of the Sexual Offences Act would lead to exactly a case like this: my understanding is that the law places emphasis on ‘consent’ but doesn’t define exactly what is being consented to in any detail.
On the other hand, the need for (further?) consent regarding specific and separate sexual acts is a good thing (and one familiar in the context of BDSM), or alternatively you have the kind of arguments that surrounded Antioch College’s policy on sexual offences, in which consent had to be ‘reiterated for every new level of sexual behavior’ which sounds unnecessarily ‘bureaucratic’ on an initial impression.
Reblogged this on Activism and Agitation.
The issue is not what was read in the ruling but what was not said in it. The High Court has basically ruled that judicial review is needed due to the fact explicit consent is required to have sex but there need not be explicit revocation of consent for sex to become rape. At no point did the alleged victim explicitly revoke consent.
This is dangerous because experimentation is the basis of all sexual activity and looking at the background for the judgment, it is clear they experimented in different ways. Yes what the alleged rapist did was wrong, yes it was non-consensual ejaculation. He deserves to be punished for making her pregnant against her will, but is it rape? Based on the background from the judgment – it’s not as black and white as people like to claim.
The assumption that she may not have consented had she believed that the alleged rapist would have ejaculated inside her is an issue, yes, but that does not exclude the fact she did not revoke consent to sexual penetration and rape is penetration without consent.
Yes, and consent to penetration was explicitly conditional, in that he was NOT to ejaculate inside her. He agreed, penetrated her, said “I’ll do it if I want” (i.e. have the sex that she explicitly said she didn’t want).
It’s not about revoking. The consent was never there for him to ejaculate, she specifically refused to do that. He did it anyway, and purposefully. The moment he starts ejaculating inside her, he is have non-consensual sex. Which is rape.
Reblogged this on Danielle Paradis.
wow ally you wrote a ‘threat’ to people who may disagree with you!
I am not scared of your ‘tons of bricks’ so here goes:
I do not find ‘consent’ a simple issue. And the fact that people in the 21st century western world argue about it so much I dont think many of us do.
I for example am not very good at asserting my very strong feelings about not wanting to get pregnant, when in the throws of ‘passion’. so I have had a few incidents involving condoms and their use or lack of it, that make the question of my ‘consent’ to sex in those circumstances not a clear one. I do not think I have ever been ‘raped’ or ‘sexually assaulted’ but maybe someone who had the exact same experiences, or someone hearing about them might think different. And in describing my experiences I have been told by feminists that I was raped I just didn’t know it(!)
also I am very fond of sadomasochism. and I find this makes consent complex. once one is tied or chained up, ones consent is not so easy to express or understand. and the feminist s and m’ers who go on about ‘enthusiastic consent’ or asking and giving consent during s and m sex, I find disingenuous. its just not possible to keep asking for and giving consent during acts of violence. Believe me. and for me, to do so would ruin the occasion. So does that mean I’ve been raped? I don’t think so.
and also I have been in a non-consensually violent relationship which I do not believe included rape, but if the whole power dynamic was f*c*ed up then maybe I wasnt able to ‘consent’ to sex as normal, healthy, people like you ally do.
QRG/Elly
In my definition of consent, I used the words “which you know s/he has not consented to”
If your sexual partner has a genuine and reasonable belief that you are consenting to whatever is happening, there is no offence (morally, never mind legally) If a sexual partner does not know that you want him to use a condom, and you do nothing to clarify that, I think we have to chalk that up to misunderstanding.
In BDSM it is encumbent on both partners to know very well about agreed boundaries of consent. IME people who are into BDSM are much, much better with issues of consent than most people, for exactly the reasons you describe. If someone wants to have an unrestricted Taken In Hand relationship or whatever, that’s fine, so long as they have the power to end or change the basis of the relationship at any time.
As I said in the article, and several times in the comments, I quite agree that there are complex and often ambiguous issues around individual cases, but I don’t think they require any change to the principles at play.
and what about the non-consensually violent relationship? How can you say consent is clear there?
also you make BDSM relationships sound like legal documents.whatever turns a person on I suppose
and what about the non-consensually violent relationship? How can you say consent is clear there?
I’m not for a moment saying it’s clear. I’m saying the principle is clear, the practical appliication might not be.
By analogy, there was a lot of discussion recently about the level of criminal responsibility of Mairead Philpott, who was convicted of helping her husband to kill their kids in a fire. From what we know, she was at the sharp end of a horribly corrosive, abusive, controlling relationship. So to what extent is she responsible for her actions?
There is no clear and easy answer to that question (I certainly won’t offer one) but that doesn’t change the fact that burning down your house with your kids inside is – very simply – morally wrong and illegal.
also you make BDSM relationships sound like legal documents.whatever turns a person on I suppose
Ha. Solicitor fetish a-go-go
@QRG/Elly
It’s interesting you say this. As someone not into BDSM byself, it has always seemed to me that there is a disjunct. There are those people who identify themselves as such and advocate for it as a legitimate preference, who do give the impression of it being a highly regulated practice (safe words, consent before acts etc) and that this level of regulation is necessary because of the nature of the acts involved to avoid exploitation and abuse. These are the people you hear talking about BDSM, which gives the impression that this is how it is practised.
However, it has always seemed to me that if there are people whose preferences run to sexual violence, either giving and recieving, there will be some who do not go in for this sort of formalisation, who do not treat the violent sex acts as a kind of roleplay where the roles and their limitations are choreographed before the fact – that surely some people ‘fond of sadomasochism’ must simply be getting down to it, as it were, in an unregulated and spontaneous way.
If this is the case, I find it hard to imagine how this could avoid resulting, ocasionally, in assault, as inevitably partners will have different ideas of what is ‘too far’, and without discussing these boundaries either beforehand or in the process (which could, I can imagine, spoil the desired mood of dominance/submission). Unless the submissive party simply hangs up their right to say no in any way at the door, and agrees by default to anything, how could it be otherwise? I would be interested to understand…
@lelapaletute
Very interesting question. I hope someone better qualified than I will answer. Meanwhile:
You do read some apparently expert and extreme practitioners who say that
1) Safewords are unreliable because people may be too stressed to use them when they need them
2) Agreements are unreliable because people may suddenly flip even at things they have agreed to and tried before.
3) The only safe practice (they say) is a duty of care from the dominant, thourough knowledge of your partner and his/her issues, and a lot of skill and understanding in reading people.
Then, choreographing everything too precisely beforehand (as opposed to knowing each other), could make it all predictable and rather boring.
I do not know how safe it sounds, but then without good will and skill, no agreements will suffice anyway. Maybe it is a bit like mountaneering? A duty of care, staying within your skill and limitations, preparation and talking beforehand – and accepting that this is risky and may sometimes go wrong anyway.
There’s plenty wrong with rape law in the UK – constructing the law so that women are immune to being charged with actual rape is probably about as retorgrade as it gets in the Anglsophere – but this law and this decision was 100% correct.
Now that was a pretty unaccpetable and dehumanizing condition to impose, on the order of insisting that she not orgasm do he would call it rape, but the fact is he did accpet it.
I’m just checking in to say I agree. The Metro in particular boiled my blood this morning, as the headline so directly contradicted what was written in the actual article. “Sex with consent might be rape!” it screamed. Before going on to describe the case in which the judgment clearly stated there was no consent. So whatever case the headline was talking about, it certainly wasn’t the one in the article.
I also think people in long term monogamous relationships don’t know much about the ‘negotiating’ that has to go on during a lifetime of sexual activity for those who don’t settle down with one person forever
And I think that’s incredibly patronising… just because people are in a long term monogamous relationship does not mean that they do not still have to negotiate their sexualities and the sex they have, which may change (either as a natural evolution or asynchronously, requiring renegotiation of boundaries etc). It’s not like ‘settled down’ (horrible term) couples automatically just have one kind of sex on a rota for the rest of time. Don’t make assumptions about how other people live.
Yes, because we are all so vanilla and boring and once we have “settled down” it’s missionary position sex with the lights off forever, no change sought or required.
News for you here: what you say is, frankly, nonsense. Negotiation never stops, nor should it, in bed or outside. It’s what keeps long term couples together. JSYK, if you don’t understand monogamy, best not pontificate about it.
I thought the law was clear on the issue of consent. If, at any point, someone says ‘No’ to something, then its no longer consensual sex and becomes assault.
It sounds like most of the media went with the sensational headline and didn’t bother to read on.
I thought the same thing when I consented to having sex with a condom and the guy tried it without a condom. I would have considered that sexual assault / rape if he had.
This is stupid, and it totally trivialises rape.
Ironically, you just trivialised rape.
NO U.
Rubbish. Oh, you’re one of those “real rape” idiots. Has to be a stranger in a park with a knife and screaming. WRONG.
Can anyone explain to me how the conviction rate for rape is demonstrably wrong? What, exactly, would be the correct rate? And why, exactly?
That a woman has had a most unpleasant experience of this kind, the far greater likelihood of which is a direct consequence of the unquestionable Sexual Revolution, does not necessarily mean that she has experienced the offence of rape as the law defines it. Either that, or the real scandal is that there are so few prosecutions for what is clearly very widespread perjury, attempting to pervert the course of justice, and making false statements to the police. Not that those two possibilities are mutually exclusive.
Far from abrogating in any way the principle of corroboration in Scots Law, that principle needs instead to be extended throughout the United Kingdom. Just as there must be no reversal of the burden of proof or abolition of the right to conduct one’s own defence in rape cases, changes frequently demanded by certain campaigners, so there must be no extension of anonymity to adult defendants. Rather, there should be no anonymity for adult accusers, either. We either have an open system of justice, or we do not.
The specific offence of rape only serves to keep on the streets people who should certainly be taken out of circulation. Instead, we need to replace the offences of rape, serious sexual assault and indecent assault with an aggravating circumstance to the ordinary categories of assault, enabling the maximum, and therefore also the minimum, sentences to be doubled, since every offence should carry a minimum sentence of one third of its maximum sentence, or 15 years for life.
That way, those poor women with broken bones and worse, whose assailants were never convicted of anything, really would have received justice.
Do try to distinguish between the issue of consent (what is and is not rape) and the issue of legal procedure (how you should prove it). All this stuff about burden of proof and anonymity is off topic, and makes you sound like you have some kind of hidden agenda.
Well said – I found that comment a little o/t and odd too!
Thanks, Gjenganger, my thoughts exactly.
“a most unpleasant experience of this kind, the far greater likelihood of which is a direct consequence of the unquestionable Sexual Revolution, does not necessarily mean that she has experienced the offence of rape as the law defines it.”
Translation: the slut had sex, she deserved it.
“That way, those poor women with broken bones and worse, whose assailants were never convicted of anything, really would have received justice.”
Translation: women have to be battered to a pulp to prove that they didn’t consent, all the rest are sluts who deserve to have their consent and bodily autonomy overridden for being sexually active at all.
Ugh, you’re repulsive
Agree entirely.
I’ve always said Julian Assange would be convicted of rape had the incidents (with the two women) he was involved in happened in the UK.
The court also said that a man not adhering to an agreement to withdraw before the critical moment (“Vatican Roulette”) is unlikely to be rape, as ejaculation cannot easily be controlled. The issue here would be intent.
If a man cannot control his ejaculation in the heat of the moment, he shouldn’t agree to have unprotected sex on the condition that he do so, surely?
Good point, and just the request itself that he agree to it is a big red flag. Time to DTMFA and avoid the whole mess.
Ginkgo, he was sexually abusive towards her. They were husband and wife. He admitted, in writing, to raping her. She did not want to have another baby. He refused to wear a condom. I really don’t think her request is that unreasonable? From the ruling…
After a disagreement but following an apology from the intervener, the claimant put her arms around him. When she did so, Miss Levitt describes how the intervener: “turned her around over the basin and pulled her pyjamas down, penetrating her vagina with his penis”. Although this form of sexual intercourse was disappointing to the claimant, she did not object, provided he withdrew before ejaculation. Miss Levitt accepts that the claimant did not consent to the intervener ejaculating inside her, and further, that he was aware that she did not want him to do so. However shortly after penetration, and without allowing her any chance to object, the intervener told the claimant that he would be coming inside her “because you are my wife and I’ll do it if I want”. He ejaculated before she could say or do anything about it. As a result she became pregnant.
“She did not want to have another baby. He refused to wear a condom.”
This opens a huge can of worms. Now every woman who sperm jacks a man is suddenly a rapist.
“He admitted, in writing, to raping her. ”
What does that or any other part of your comment have to do with her request being a red flag?
You have said she was the one who did not want a baby. Her body, her responsibility. (And no whining “Why is it always the woman…? Thisn isn’t always, this is this specific instnace.)
If she agreed to sex on the condition he not ejaculate, he either should have ejaculated or not had sex.
Actually he should have done neither. He should have just divorced her – Dump The Mother Fucker Already -as I said in my comment above yours.
If she doesn’t want to gegt preganat but wants to put the responsibility on him, she’s too immature to be in a marriage. And the same goes for a man who expects the woman to do all the birth control.
@lelapaletute – If a man cannot control his ejaculation in the heat of the moment, he shouldn’t agree to have unprotected sex on the condition that he do so, surely?
True, but by the same token, the woman – knowing that the man might be unable to control his ejaculation in the heat of the moment (and it happens to all of us sometimes!) – shouldn’t have agreed to the conditional arrangement either.
That said, if he deliberately chose not to honour the agreement (which he is alleged to have done), that’s a different matter. But trying to prove that the arrangement was mutually agreed upon, and that he deliberately neglected the agreement sounds like a tough act for any court.
@geronimo:
No, not really. We’re all responsible for our own actions. The woman didn’t want him to ejaculate inside her, so she made reasonable steps to ensure this wouldn’t happen – she told him he could not have sex with her unless he committed not to do so. He gave this commitment and then violated it. If, as you say, no man can make that commitment because it might just happen, then the man shouldn’t have given the commitment – it’s not her who shouldn’t have asked for it. In the same way that some cheaters say they ‘couldn’t help’ cheating, some even say it is ‘in their nature’ – does that make the partner who requested fidelity, and was promised it, in some way responsible for their own betrayal?
“Ginkgo, he was sexually abusive towards her.”
I missed the part about him being sexually abusive to her. Where was that.
In the judgement:
Click to access f-v-dpp-judgment.pdf
Thanks. What a snakepit it that marriage must have been.
Apart from the fact it’s not quite that simple. If one of the individuals involved is trans, the cis partner can later legally revoke their consent. They can, in a court room, admit that the actions were completely consensual at the time, but retrospectively revoke their consent in court, and get a conviction for a sexual crime. Please don’t ignore this, it also chips away at the notion of consent!
If this was treated as rape, it would indeed be very messy. But it is not. In the link Ally gave, the crime was given as “obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud”. Consent should not be an issue here, so the notion of consent remains safe.
Well, if you’re being technical, the only thing treated as rape in British law is penetration of a vagina, mouth, or anus with a penis. The fact that it was treated as a sexual assault and the individual was placed on the sex offenders register, and that consent was defined as revokable if one of the parties didn’t know something they felt was necessary when they gave consent, does do damage to the notion of consent. It makes it an epistemic state, which makes it much harder to argue about its presence. You don’t get “yes means yes and no means no” anymore.
Tangentially related case: I remember there was a case in the news a year or so ago about a woman in Israel (I think). She had consensual sex with a man, on the understanding that he was of one particular religion/ethnicity/background (can’t remember which). But it turned out, he had lied about his religion/ethnicity/background in order to gain her consent. When she found out he lied after the encounter, he was accused of rape.
Can’t remember how that one panned out. But I’m not sure I entirely like the idea of “obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud” as a crime…it seems like it would open up way too many cans of worms.
Sure, but it depends where you draw the line. I like the idea that rape is only a matter of having or not having consent at the time – that it does not turn into rape because somebody was lying or breaks his promises later. At least this is a different crime – we just need to agree about the limits and the appropriate punishment. AllyF proposed that falsely pretending to be a man (woman) should be a crime, but falsely pretending to be a firefighter (or rock star) should not. Does not sound unreasonable as a starting point.
Regarding trans* people disclosing their trans identities, someone (I forgot who) laid down a good rule- if you don’t want to have sex with a trans person, you have a right to that (even if I don’t get why you care), but it’s your responsibility then to ask your partner, rather than it being their obligation to tell you.
This premise could really apply to anything: someone could not want to sleep with me because I’m pansexual. I may find that to be kinda bigoted, but if they ask, I should tell them the truth and respect their choice to reject me. But I don’t have to make a point of telling someone I’m not straight before we have sex.
I disagree. For things that are rare, but many people would find important, you should expect your partner to tell you if there might be a problem, For things that are common (so you cannot assume) or few people would worry about, you would have to ask. I would expect to have to ask if somebody was married, or used contraception, but to be told if somebody had a habit of losing consciousness for an hour after orgasm, or a jealous husband gunning for her with a Kalashnikov.
You have to accept that many people find it a big deal to be with a trans rather than a cis sexual, whatever you yourself think about the matter. Trassexuals are rare enough, and important enough for people, that you really need to tell. Certainly somebody who dresses like a woman and comes across like a woman, but has male genitals under her skirt, needs to say so up front.
As an apropos to consensual sex and rape, Is there any awareness in the UK that the CSEW does not count victims of Sexual Offences Act 2003 Section 4?
While I don’t normally agree with feminist theories, this is a clear and concise post. The only thing I would like to add is that this situation could easily be reversed (for example: a woman with a child-wish having intercourse with an oblivious man).
Where there is life, there is hope
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So if a woman lies about birth control is that rape as well?
Would it be considered rape if the woman consented for the sex but only protected sex and the man penetrating the woman unprotected? …. what if even though she continued to have sex after he penetrated her unprotected. (They were both under the influence when this happened.)
Hello i can relate i recently started talking to someone that i knew for eight yrs we had sex for the first time nd he pulled the rubber off now im pregnant he screaming abortion abortion abortion but i have not decided yet he’s even harassing me texting bad things too i don’t know what to do
Exactly! If she says use this condom and he says I’d rather not, it ruins it for me. And then she says then you absolutely have to pull out and he agrees and then doesn’t pull out….. Then the child produced was a product of sexual assault!
Exactly! If she says, “Use this condom.”
and he says, “I’d rather not, it ruins it for me.” And then she says, ” then you absolutely have to pull out.”
and he agrees to pull out and then doesn’t pull out…..
Then the child produced was a product of sexual assault!
Hi hetpat,
I wondered your opinion on a man continuing to have sex without the condom (presumably aware it came off) but not purposefully removing it?
I am in a situation where four weeks ago I slept with someone I would have called a friend who I have a history with, he is a Tanzanian man (I am English) and I have known him for a few years but we are not in a relationship. We had sex just once-and I asked him to put a condom on, at some point the condom must have come off, I didn’t realise until quite a lot later in the day and even then I wasn’t entirely sure. I asked him by text message the following day what had happened and if I should be worried about pregnancy, despite knowing it wasn’t possible as I have other methods of contraception fortunately- but I figured I was most likely to get the truth this way. He replied that it hadn’t worked properly and said didn’t I count my calendar and told me I could get a morning after pill ill if I was worried. He also said he didn’t remove it purposefully which I am inclined to believe. Anyway, to be honest, my concerns were much more to do with contracting HIV as sadly it is very prevalent in Tanzania and I am not aware of his sexual history or whether he practices safe sex usually. I have been too ashamed to tell anyone but have recently looked more into the issue of continuing sex without a condom and have grown more and more angry at the violation of my desire to have safe sex not to mention his complete lack of respect in not even telling me until I asked. While I didn’t explicitly say I am only having sex with you if you use a condom, I feel my asking him to and him putting it on surely shows that safe sex was what I am consenting to and it coming off, whether purposeful or not should be grounds to stop and tell me and to get another one or to stop altogether. It’s left me an anxious wreck to be honest and I feel there should be much more awareness for women and girls that if a partner removes a condom, or it comes off accidentally and they don’t inform you, but continue , this is assault and a complete violation of your rights. I will continue to be tested for HIV but I don’t think I, or any woman who believes they’re having safe sex, deserves to be made to feel so anxious by the selfish actions of their sexual partner.