Should the UK law on rape be changed?

Yes, it is men as a group who make laws. If lawmakers at any point in history had wanted to make the crime of a woman having sex on a man without his consent called rape, they would have done.

Plus, I read your OP and I answered it. You don't like the answer because it doesn't fit your agenda, fine, but don't tell me I don't understand you. It's patronising and rude.

Why don't you ask your workmates why they don't get off their backsides and campaign, instead of whining that women won't do it for them. Like I said, we're busy.

'The men's rights movement is relatively tiny and useless'

A bit like the coalition for 'bears wanting to shit in the woods' and 'popes aspiring to Catholicism'.

Btw, women can be convicted of rape if they conspire in the rape of a man or woman.

Let's get really feminist here, shall we. Ask why, when men are and have always been the lawmakers, they have not taken the opportunity to criminalise women for sexual crime against men.

The answer, imo?

Men are much more comfortable with the idea that they can rape, than the idea that they can be raped.

It is part of the discourse of power. It is an artefact of the patriarchy that feminists seek to dismantle and men block at every turn

Cry me a river

x-post with Yonic who put it better, and made a good point about how many people think of the words themselves.

You didn't manage to remain neutral

HTH

I don't think it's odd at all to use the right words for the right things.

Some acts are rape, some are sexual assault. They are both terrible, but one has a specific word for a specific act and one doesn't.

How about going the other way, and calling everything sexual assault rather than dilute the meaning of a word?

Your issue is that sexual assault covers a wide range of crimes whereas rape is something specific.

But in that situation (god forbid!) you would probably use "serious sexual assault" or similar to the male.

I am actually pro renaming rape to "grievous sexual bodily assault" or similar because I think lots of people do not see rape as the crime of violence it is but as "bad sexual etiquette" and phrases like "frape" minimise it.

And then Allison Pearson couldn't write an article called "Sorry but not all grievous sexual bodily assaults are the same" without sounding like even more of a twat than she does already.

And damned if I think I should waste my time saving them from themselves, is the conclusion of those thoughts.

Agree with AF, how could you not have been criticising feminists. When I read your original post, it made sense to me and struck me as rather honest

Yes, you were criticising feminists for not campaigning for this

I don't think it's enough to suggest that men bring any legislative discrimination on themselves because a very tiny minority of the countries men are MPs.

Legislative discrimination. It's not as fancy as that. Most of the people in office are men. Certainly most of the people who write and interpret law are men. It is men who are in a position to make the change.

Why don't they? that is the more interesting question.

Imo, because they would prefer to adhere to the macho gender construct that excludes it.

I don't see what this change in the law would achieve in practical terms.

On the subject of women having sex with men without the man's consent, undeniably, this is something that happens. I've had one friend complain that his current partner jumped on him before he'd had the chance to put a condom on; he was pissed off about this because he didn't want to be a dad at that point. An old university friend once woke at a house party to find a vague acquaintance on top of him trying to put him inside herself (I'm not sure where the erection came from though I presume it was morning glory). He was really quite freaked out by this experience but was able to laugh about it a week later.

Both of these situations, to the extent that you were able to reverse the sexes of the parties, would count as rape. Both of the men involved in the situation were very unhappy about what happened; neither was massively affected by it.

I am trying to get my head around the discrepancy between male and female responses to being in situations that would be comparable if the boots were on opposite feet. Whatever the reason for this is, I am wondering if this constitutes a justification for the fact that the converse situation (male on female 'rape') is not treated as seriously as it could be.

Not trying to derail - in fact I think it's at the heart of the matter and wonder if it knocks the stilts from under the OP's argument.

Rape is the insertion of a penis where it isn't wanted, the gender of the owner of that penis is irrelevant, although most people with penises identify as men. It's a word for a specific act.

I don't think that expanding that definition helps anyone, including men who have been sexually assaulted, it just means that the word becomes more ambiguous (and so new words need to be invented to re-introduce the accuracy that you previously had with just one word).

Both men and women can be raped, both men and women can be sexually assaulted, both men and women can sexually assault and both men and women can rape (albeit women with penises*). Just because it is generally men that rape doesn't mean that we need to re-define the word to make it more inclusive. Better that fewer men rape.

note that I'm not getting involved at this point with the trans stuff, just mentioning it as a point of balance to the OP's whataboutary

Feminists - or should I say women - are at fault

Men run the government
Men wrote the law
Men perpetuate the macho version of masculinity that is such an obstacle to discussing or acknowledging sexual crime against men