What do you think of this...(possible rape)

And he might not be angry, he might be horrified, disgusted, outraged, feel violated, any number of emotions.

Being physically sick wouldn't be far off the mark I wouldn't imagine. Psychological harm wouldn't be unlikely, and the victim could end up very damaged.

It would have been exactly the same and I think it is an assault, for sure.

If she had targeting hundreds of men, and succeeded in carrying out the ruse with some, as this man has done, then damn right she should be prosecuted.

Whether a single incident would be enough to bring a prosecution in (France?) or in the UK I don't know, but absolutely it's an assault and the aggravating factors in this case too right it should be prosecuted.

If the man had been blindfolded and the alluring woman he had imagined turned out to be older/uglier than her online persona, would this have been wrong/criminal if he was subsequently angry once the deception had been revealed?

I am finding it difficult that people are trying to link up relationships and what might happen with this case, where there is a criminal prosecution.

Should a woman expect to be allowed to give informed consent to sex? Yes of course.
Should men lie about things in order to get women into bed / lie by omission to continue a relationship? Well of course not.
Should women and men be "allowed" to feel violated or not or however they want to feel depending on what has happened? Yes of course.

Should all cases where someone is less than honest face the force of the law? Well no of course not.

In different jurisdictions different laws are in force and they are applied in different ways and things like case law come in. When taking something to court there are various considerations.

As things stand, this case is quite obviously different to a case where a boy said he was 25 when actually he was 22. Due to all the factors I have repeated over and over and over again.

All this "hypothetical" stuff does - it's quite obviously there to try and minimise and try to "trap" posters who think that men who do stuff like in the OP should be prosecuted. Because it's all "Oh Right well if you don't think that is rape then you can't think this is" blah etc but you know the law recognises severity and aggravating factors and so forth which are apparently beyond some of the posters on here.

In terms of fidelity, wealth etc, then it depends on the level of deception and the number of victims. If we're talking about a prosecution.

If we have to talk about relationships (which this wasn't) then the equivalent would be her agreeing to have sex with the model (who she's in a relationship with) and him tricking her into having sex with someone else. Which most people on the thread have agreed is rape.

I am saying that I don't understand why people are comparing this repeatedly to if he had lied about how much money he had.

How much money you have and what you look like are totally different in the context of a one-off sexual encounter.

If this woman fancied him and he said he was a plumber when actually he was a banker, it's just not comparable to what happened here.

I find it really bizarre that people are so willing to assert that what a person looks like / how physically attractive they are is of the same relevance to a woman as how much money he has - maybe that even how much money he has is of more relevance.

It is an approach that denies women their own sexual desire and paints us all as prostitutes. Which is what a worryingly large number of people think women are like anyway - see PUA. I've bought her a meal, in return she owes me sex. That.

Whirlpool Are you saying that a woman cannot base consent dependent on fidelity or wealth, but can based on looks?

In many cultures past and even now, adultery attracts extraordinarily harsh penalties for unfaithful women.

I don't personally think that the law should be brought to bear in situations like infidelity, or lying about being a plumber when you're a banker. I do however think the law should be brought to bear in situation like this one, due to the factors I went into upthread.

People are always saying "oh but someone can't be a rapist unless they have been convicted in a court of law" and then when you say yes well taking into account the process of the law, this case clearly crosses a barrier which makes it prosecutable under even given the existing constraints around prosecuting sex crimes and you get people saying HA! You're saying this isn't rape then!

I mean for god's sake.

If he had done this ONCE then that's enough, but it'd never get anywhere would it. The reason he is being prosecuted (rightly IMO) is because of the aggravating factors - multiple victims, hundreds of women approached, gross misrepresentation, premeditation etc etc etc

Well maybe if women got to define rape right from the start, adultery would negate consent.

That would set the cat amongst the pigeons wouldn't it!

Thanks to all the posts today, it's been incredibly interesting and thought provoking reading.

carol I think it is up to the individual woman to decide what conditions she places on her consent to sex. Consent with conditions is recognised in law. My consent is totally conditional on faithfulness. I've never considered making my consent conditional on dishes being done, or total honesty. But if I wanted to do that then I am allowed to. I don't see why women shouldn't be allowed to decide what conditions they place on their own consent.

Obtaining money by deception is illegal. Why should obtaining consent by deception not be?

Yy Yonic. It is also a nod at how important it is to look at the man's actions rather than the woman's. More often than not when you look at men who rape there are plenty of other actions they take around the act of rape that tell you who they are.

Ched Evans

Carol, that wasn't whirlpool's point at all. It reinforces what a dangerous sexual predator this man is that he did it or tried it hundreds of times; it doesn't mean that any one time wasn't rape.

I personally am certainly not trying to minimise what he did - however its interesting that many people are pointing out a pattern/plan with a number of women, as though to suggest it is only rape if he does it a lot.

But if Jessica's point holds true, all adulterers and people who 'cross over' partners are rapists.

I imagine there's a whole heap of cognitive dissonance in there too. All of the following statements can't be true:

X is a nice man.
X ignored the conditions his wife placed on consent.
Ignoring conditions placed on consent is rape.
X is a rapist.
Rapists are bad men.

So many people choose to decide that ignoring conditions placed on consent isn't enough to be considered rape. Disaster averted, they can all sleep soundly that X is, in fact, still a nice man.

But if you really think it through, that decision means that X's right to sex is more important than his wife's right to decide the circumstances under which she has sex. Which is clearly bollocks.

The YY was to shaska but will probably be to basil as well when I've read her post

YY

In this case, there was no pre-existing relationship, there was a man whose sole aim was to get sex by deceiving women about something entirely and utterly fundamental in the arena of sex, and he targeted hundreds of women.

All these other hypotheticals serve no purpose but to detract from and minimise what he did.

I think it is correct that the authorities are trying to hold him criminally accountable for what he did. I hope that would happen here to. What that crime is, would vary according to jurisdiction. I have no idea if he will get found guilty. That's for the court to decide. But should what he did be prosecutable as something? Yes, I think it should.

Yes I suspect it is.

There's a lot of emotion bound up with this, isn't there? Sexist men tell women that what we say about rape is not valid because we get too emotional about it, because we're too invested in it - particularly if we have disclosed that we have been raped.

But people are very unwilling to confront male emotion about rape; that determination to not recognise it when it happens, that unwillingness to call another man a rapist unless it is 100% certain that he is one because a court of law has convicted him (and even then many men are unwilling to accept that verdict). Lots of men don't like the word "rapey" because it's too close to rape and it's an incredibly useful term because it points to an attitude that they don't want women to call them on. There is an enormous taboo about pointing out when men are talking like a rapist or acting like a rapist, it would be considered deeply shocking to casually say something like "Oh, I'm sure x is a rapist, he talks exactly like one and his attitudes are indistinguishable from one, so I always assume he's one and won't stay late in the office with him, just in case". Can you imagine the horror if women spoke about rape in those terms?

I've sat round the table with friends (male) who have said "well you can't say he's a rapist because he wasn't convicted" and I've said "yes you can, he's a rapist, he raped that girl and he wasn't convicted because the law's been set up to let him get away with it and yeah, if you were on a jury you might have to give him the benefit of the doubt because there may be reasonable doubt, but we here, sitting round this table, chatting about it, we don't have to give him the benefit of the doubt, we're not in a law court are we? We can use our knowledge and our perceptions and our judgement and decide whether we think he's a rapist and if we think he is why shouldn't we call him one? He's not going to be hurt by it, he doesn't know us, it's not a public forum, it's a private party, why can't we call him a rapist?" and they've been stunned by it.

And I reckon that "men need sex" thing is part and parcel of that - must acknowledge men's "sexual needs" but not so needy as to be a rapist because rapist = bad while sexual needs = good and right and reasonable. So the rapist has to be separated from the normal men with reasonable needs.

And it's like the classic argument where people are always 'well if THIS is rape then OMG this other thing must be as well and OMG think of the POOR INNOCENT MEN WHO'LL BE RECLASSED AS RAPISTS ITS JUST THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE'

Whirlpool I am very very much with you on all fronts

But BUT if he had struck up a relationship with one woman, shown her a fake photo, been honest about everything else about himself, and she had been saying please please do this, and he was saying no I don't want to (because of the photo), and she said go on please and he said well OK then

I very much doubt this would be in court.

The fact that this was a deliberate deception on his part, targeting hundreds of women, with the sole aim of getting them to have sex with him when he knew they wouldn't otherwise, around something as fundamental to sexual attraction as age and physical appearance, and that he succeeded with more than one woman, and they were affected enough to report him to the police.

This is all really key and to try and say Oh Well if he's guilty then say my DH says he's washed the dishes and then we have sex and then it turns out he only did half of them and he knows how much I hate that then he'd be a rapist and have to go to prison... Um no. Why attempt to minimise what this man did and draw comparisons with situations which are quite obviously not of the same order at all.

basil, do you think that it's linked to the idea that men 'need' sex and that we shouldn't be making it hard for them? And that this "lying to get sex" is very common, so applying the definition of rape to that scenario means we all know many more rapists than we previously thought?

I find it really disturbing the knots people will tie themselves in to let men off.

This man concocted a plan to trick multiple women into having sex with him. he targeted hundreds of women. He formed relationships with the women based on him being a hot young model. And they agreed to fuck him, on his terms (were these terms that the women came up with or were they introduced, persuaded, cajoled by the man over a period of time). Either way, they agreed based on the fact that he was a superfit young man. This was a total lie, a lie he perpetrated in order to get women to consent who he knew full well would not consent otherwise.

It is a fucking sorry state of affairs when people say, nope nothing to see here, nothing should be done, i mean come on they were stupid, and anyway they were blindfolded so what does it matter that he was a completely different person to the one he said he was, no problem, carry on.

"Also, the partner's actual physical features are not necessarily relevant to the OP case, because she was blindfolded and appears to have found the body she did touch ok

And, more generally, physical features are not necessarily important."

WTF?

The women reported him to the police! If what he looked like didn't matter, and they were perfectly happy, then why would they have done that?

Because women are malicious and like to report men to the police when they don't think they have actually done anything wrong?

If looks didn't matter then he would've been able to show his own photo wouldn't he.

These arguments are utterly ridiculous.

People aren't blindfolded in sex because they don't care what their partner looks like. That's not the point of it at all Have you no imagination? Fucking hell.