Why women have sex

Most people do not understand the words rape and sex to be interchangable.

Maybe I am not explaining myself very well.

I cannot imagine a woman walking into a police station and approaching a police officer and saying "I have had sex" and him to be expected to understand that she meant she had been raped. Most women would say they had been assaulted, or something bad had happened, or they had been raped. The term "having sex" is used in my area anyway to refer to neutral or positive sexual experiences, not rape.

The definition of rape in law is non-consensual penetration. It does not refer to a person "having sex" and understandably so I think.

SQ - When you do a survey you don't get to leave out the answers you don't like. Why should the experience of the women who answered by saying the reason they'd been forced to have sex be left out.?

Rape, I think should be defined by consent not the extent to which someone is actively participating. What about trafficked women? Women forced into sex in an abusive relationship? I think trying to say that if someone is actively participating then it is 'sex' and therefore not 'rape' (because as you've defined it sex and rape are mutually exclusive...) is really dangerous.

I mean, if a woman says she has had sex with someone, it is not usual for her to mean that she has been raped and recognises it as that.

When people talk about having sex with other people they are not talking about rape. They are talking about consensual sex. That is the norm in the English language and yet the survey above includes rape as a "reason women have sex". The wording is all wrong to me.

Odd and wrong, that should say.

thunderbolts yes in which case they will not have answered the question in the survey "when did you last have sex" by saying they were raped, as they will not see that that is what has happened.

I don't believe that the survey in the OP went into deeper questions to find out whether the sex the women talked about was consensual or coerced as happens in surveys specifically to look at rape and attitudes to sexual violence. They asked them when they last had sex and why - and so the inclusion of people who responded by saying they had been raped and naming it as that and the survey people / headline writers including it as a "reason women have sex" is simply odd.

You're probably more likely to hear about rapes and sexual assaults by asking a group of women about their sexual experiences, than you are by asking women what their experience is of rape.

There's a book here which provides an explanation:

I Never Called it Rape

SardineQueen, lots of women who have been raped, don't define the experience as rape, or take a long time to acknowledge that's that what was done to them.

Who on this thread is saying forced sex isn't rape?

This is a survey from women across the world. There's quite a possbility that there are some women in it who live in countries that do not define marital rape as rape. There's a possibility that there are women in it from this country who got married before marital rape was declared illegal.

Women are brainwashed into not calling rape, rape. Then the law finishes it off by redefining rape as consensual sex (as claimed by the rapist) so we have a miniscule conviction rate. So why wouldn't some women be confused on this issue?

Rape has nothing to do with having sex. A woman who has been raped has not "had sex" with someone. Having sex with someone - it's an active thing, you are having sex, you are participating, joining in. Being raped is completely different.

The law certainly does not define rape as having sex. It defines it as non-consensual penetration.

When normal people communicate when they mean consensual sex, they say having sex, and when they mean rape, they say rape. I would be surprised that a woman who is familiar with everyday english would interpret the question "when did you last have sex" to be asking about experiences like rape. Most women would think of quite a different question - have you been raped.

Sometimes I feel like I speak a different language on here.

How is being forced to have sex not rape. What is the non - patriarchal definition?

Having sex with someone is an active, participatory phrase.

Being raped is entirely different.

For a woman to have sex and a woman to be raped are not the same thing at all. Rape cannot and should not be defined as "having sex" and it isn't in law.

Thing is patriarchal society has always redefined rape as sex, so it's hardly surprising that people's views reflect that.

SQ - I thought the definition of rape was being forced to have sex?

Rape isn't sex though.

A woman who has been raped has not had sex.

I can't imagine many women who would answer the question "when did you last have sex" with "last tuesday - I was raped".

Women do not count being raped as sexual encounters. They count it as being raped.

No wonder there is so much trouble with rape if on this survey and on this thread so many people see rape as sex.

A lot of women don't get an orgasm from penis in vagina sex.

Het is short for heterosexual.

Are TheFeministWife and TheFeministsWife two different people?

I was going to post a reply, then noticed I seemed to already have posted up thread even though I have no recollection of doing so, and the post isn't what I was going to say. [pinches self - must have had an out of body experience]

LRD, bo offence taken!

By machievelian reasons I didn't mean coercion - was thinking more of some of the other reasons given - revenge, to get back at a partner who has cheated on them, to make themselves feel good. To make their partners feel bad, to lure a man into the relationship, to try and keep a man so he is fulfilled and doesn't stray etc...

Still not sure what the outrage on this thread is about.

yeah, it might be.

um no, it means heterosexual.

Looking at the keyboard, it might be 'the' mixed up...

I read it as het = short for heterosexual.

Dworkin - what did you mean to write when you said het? Hot? Had? Her? Pet?