Coerced sex IS rape

Having your body invaded, against your will, putting you at risk of disease or pregnancy, quite possibly causing you physical pain and certainly causing you emotional pain, is not quite like having a bag of crisps nicked from your shop, is it?

"real rape"

Ah, that's when a man drags a virgin kicking and screaming down a dark alley, ties her up so she can't fight, gags her so she can't scream and rapes her at knife point, isn't it?

She'll have been coming back from a Bible Studies class, and wearing a a long skirt, a high necked long sleeved loose top and flat shoes.

I'm interested to know what "real rape" is too zippey. Also if someone is coerced to give something to someone else then that is known as theft and you would of course be able to bring the coercer to court. Or do you think it's fine for people to be coerced into giving away things to bullies?

What do you mean by 'real rape', zippy?

Rape isn't comparable to shoplifting.

If you own a shop and someone coerces you to give him a packet of crisps, would the shopowner be able to take the coercer to court? Of course not, unless the coercian what threatening behaviour.

I think much of the discussion on semantics is diminishing the fact that real rape is a terrible crime.

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"The only people in whose interests it would be to blur the line between 'coersion' and 'consent' are rapists."

Absolutely. Exactly.

Yes Cailin, totally spot on :)

It's the situations you describe, quietones, Bertie and chips, that I was talking about. It may be very hard to prove that your exes ever raped you in the legal sense of the term, as it could be argued that you gave your consent and were never actually forced to have sex. Thing is, if you look at it sensibly, you were, definitely forced, not through any violence but through much more subtle ways and your consent was never truly freely given. You didn't have sex for pleasure or to have a baby, you had sex to avert your partner's negativity. You were worn down, made to feel like you didn't really have a choice, bullied, threatened in a subtle way and generally put in a position where having sex you didn't want was easier than putting up with the intimidation.

Women should be brought up knowing what to expect from a partner and not put up with any less than that. That's partly why I object to all the secrecy our society tends to have around sex - we should be talking about it openly with young teenagers, being frank about how great and fun it can be with a good partner but how utterly shit it can be with the wrong person. The first time a man whines for sex, or gets in a sulk the woman should be saying "hang on a minute, you can stop that shit now or this is over" and mean it. Sex is a 100% optional activity. You could go your whole life without it. There is no need whatsoever to ever have it unless you actually want it. A lot of women seem to have lost that notion somewhere along the way, and have picked up the message that sex is their duty, that a man has a right to demand it, that they owe it in a relationship. Our daughters need to know that is not the case- they have absolute and total control over what happens to their body and if anyone tries to take that control away they don't have to accept it.

Cailin is spot on, brilliant.

It can be all a bit more complicated than that.

I remember with horror a time when I was in a relationship with a guy who after the initial at it like rabbits phase turned out to have zero libido. He didn't want sex, he didn't want to talk about it either, but just expected me to put up with it. He thought he had the moral high ground, as I couldn't force him to have sex (and I didn't want to force him, I wanted him to want it)

In the end after wasting way too many months on him I walked out, my self esteem thoroughly destroyed by the constant rejection.

I've got lots of sympathy for this - but I wonder if it would have been the same if gender roles had been reversed

When you have a normal relationship you just know what a normal sex life is like. I think we need to educate everyone and especially kids about healthy relationships and not just sex

"boys will pressure you and you're allowed to say no" stuff but that just didn't stand up to the real life consequences for me in my relationship if I said no to sex.

That's it, it comes to a point when you have to weigh up which is worse, sex you don't want or escalating abusive behaviour.

My abusive ex went in for the sulking, whining, "You don't make me feel attractive any more", jack-russelling, assuming every kiss on the cheek was foreplay, "You don't have to do anything just lie there" "What am I meant to do with this, it won't go away on it's own" and then the nagging/pleading too - "Can we have sex tonight? How about tomorrow? When can we have it then, it's been ages" etc etc until I ended up with a sodding timetable of the days he was "allowed" to touch me and what I would do just so that I got some respite (and even then he used to text me from work asking what day it was..)

I don't think this was rape, or pretty much all of our sex after the first few weeks when it was actually fun was rape. And I really don't feel like it was. I never felt in danger, I just felt bad. I felt like I was depriving him or like there was something wrong with me - so he emotionally manipulated me into wanting to, just wanting to in order to prove something, not wanting to because I enjoyed it. There was only one occasion with him which felt rape-like and that was when we started and I changed my mind and wanted to stop but was too afraid to say anything in case he didn't stop. I found that really traumatic and we never slept together again - it was near the end anyway.

I guess you could say, well, he should have been aware from my body language that I wasn't into it and had changed my mind but I guess at that point he was so used to just having sex on an unresponsive person (because I didn't care, rather than because I was upset) that he didn't even notice.

It is abusive behaviour without a doubt.

Also I think Cailin is very right in saying that a valuable discussion would be about what should be expected from sex, because I certainly had no idea. I just thought I was weird, I thought I was asexual for ages because I had absolutely no desire for sex at all. When I look back at the sex I was having I understand exactly why! But I just didn't know - I was told all this "boys will pressure you and you're allowed to say no" stuff but that just didn't stand up to the real life consequences for me in my relationship if I said no to sex.

Ex would try the nice approach first and if I didn't want sex he would get more insistent, very whiney, he'd get out of bed in a mood, start slapping his erection whilst complaining that he was 'stuck with this now' and 'what the fuck am I supposed to do now'. He would storm out of the bedroom, slam every door and go for a shower. He would make my life hell (sulking, shouting, getting more aggressive, talking about rape and playing a particular song about rape that he knew I hated) until I gave in, lay there, went off into my head and let him get on with it.
He did hit me a few times and was very emotionally abusive. I normally gave in when I thought that he would 'snap' if I didn't.
I thought that this was coersive sex.

Did you feel that you could say no without things becoming "difficult"? It sounds like you couldn't so I would say that was a kind of rape. Especially not letting you go the bathroom that seems incredibly abusive.

It was definitely an abusive relationship, chipsahoy. Not letting you leave doesn't sound much like free consent either. I'm sorry that happened to you.

Headinhands, you didn't give free consent and he could not have reasonably believed you were consenting freely if you were crying and he didn't stop. So I believe you were raped, yes. I am so sorry.

I was emotionally coerced into a particular act when I was younger and I remember crying during it and he still didn't stop. He said after that it showed him how much I loved him . I don't know if it was rape but it was horrible and was all part of a toxic relationship that I've still not worked out.

Also if a woman came on this board and said she had been raped and in a way that was not always "officially" called rape. We would all believe and accept she had ben raped because she felt she had been. WHo are you to decide for others that they have been if they feel they havent?

Yy Cailin.

EBAL don't you think there is a difference between persuaded and threatened?

If you didnt really want to have sex but were persuaded, threatened, whined or sulked into it, then it is rape

Sorry, but no.

in my decade with dh, we have had ,loving sex, amazing sex, fun sex, lazy sex, angry sex, bored sex "dh, it's ttc time, so get your cock out, I don't care if you are tired, sex" Oh come on it'll help me sleep, and in turn you'll sleep better sex, I know neither of us can be bothered but the kids are both asleep so if we don't do it now we'll never do it again sex, and oh come on pleeeeeeease whiny sex.

I have not been raped and it would be hideously rude and disrespectful of me to claim I had been because I was always in a position of saying no, and felt comfortable doing so. Persuasion to get what you want is part of what makes us human. To assumes we don't have to use some sort of persuasion means we'd never have sex unless we both by coincidence are wandering around in a state of arousal. the end of foreplay as we know it.

if for any reason either dh or I felt we could not say no, due to threats of physical emotional sexual financial violence. that would be rape. Your posts lead me to believe you don't know much about how relationships work and there is a significant amount of give and take in them.