Proposal to make rape 'agender'- content warning

What a bizarre article.

Firstly, rape isn't a gendered crime, but a sexed one. That's why we now have woman rapists who identify as women whilst using their female penis to rape someone.

Is it just me or is quite a lot of this word salad complaining about the gender identities of actual or potential rapists not being respected?

The requirement for a penis to commit rape isn't the same in all countries. Indeed, in France a woman can be found guilty of rape, and this has on at least one occasion included a female gynaecologist performing vaginal exams without the patient's consent. Whilst obtaining consent before performing a vaginal exam is of course important, I'm not sure it is all that helpful to lump performing a vaginal exam without consent in a medical setting in with rape. These are two different things.

No one is saying that it isn't terrible if a perpetrator penetrates a victim with something other than a penis, for example, a glass bottle neck, or an iron bar. Depending on the circumstances and the object used it may even cause greater injury.

But maintaining the requirement for a penis to commit rape is more important than ever, now we are all being gaslit about it being possible for a woman to have a penis. If, several years from now, the statistics were to show that 5% of rapes were committed by women, we would all know what kind of "women" these were. If the requirement for a penis for the crime of rape were to be removed, certain people would try to gaslight us even further by claiming that women are just as dangerous as men.

As for the issue around the "gender identity" of the perpetrator, I have a much better solution. Don't allow rapists to change their gender, either officially or unofficially. Let's have a rule that if you use your penis to rape someone, you cannot claim to identify as a woman. Ever.

In fact, if we extend that to all sex offenders, we'll be able to accurately the sex of people who commit sexual assault by penetration using other objects as well. Because I'm willing to bet that nearly all those people are male too.

Agree. Rape with a penis carries with it the additional consequence of unwanted pregnancy, which sexual assault with any other body part or instrument does not. It needs to be a separate offence. That rape as defined and sexual assault are in law considered equally serious is clear in that they carry the same penalty. But changing rape law to include penetration by anything will cause far more problems than it solves and removes the unique horror for a person that is being unwilling penetrated by a penis.

I would think statistics would also show a very tiny amount of rapes committed by men with penises who were biologically female compared to men with penises who were biologically male. As with rapes committed by women with penises who were biologically male.

This would be because the relevant sex class here is male, not any gender category. And the only reason to pettifog it is to avoid people being reminded that they do in fact have a sex, which is a fixed fact and cannot be identified out of.

It's interesting because if self-ID exists and rape is penetration with a penis, you have a pretty perfect way to measure a couple of things which are obscured by the self-ID. If the number of rapes committed by women starts a stratospheric rise, you can form some statistically robust conclusions from that.

You can get the same sentence for sexual assault - it isn’t a lesser charge.

The answer probably is more words, and terms, and awareness so that 'sexual assault' stops being such a broad spectrum of crimes lumped together.
I think that really is the answer, because so many people seem to minimise it to 'groping'. And imo that's because they think of 'rape' as a form of sex, and assault as 'just foreplay'.

Interesting posts, that clarify 'rape' is a word specifically referring to a person with a penis penetrating a non consenting person of either sex, orifices listed.

98% of perpetrators of sex crimes being male it is relevant to have a word specific to this one particular form of sexual assault and sexual violence. There are sadly many other forms of sexual assault, but this is just one specific form and quite a high frequency form.

The benefit of changing the meaning of the word 'rape' would be simply to remove it from being a crime that can only be committed by a biological male with a penis. Which would benefit male people in removing them as a focus, or making rape a specifically sex based crime, and I suspect people are innocently buying into this through a mix of NAMALT/its sad for men to be faced with unpleasant realities and so we have to remind everyone virtuously that women do the same thing even if they don't, and through a concern that 'rape' is the only word that carries the sense of severity, horror and impact, and someone told 'you weren't raped, you suffered a sexual assault' may hear and feel that what is meant is, 'what happened to you wasn't that terrible'.

The answer probably is more words, and terms, and awareness so that 'sexual assault' stops being such a broad spectrum of crimes lumped together. Rather than bastardising the current words, stripping them of meaning in unhelpful ways with unintended side effects, and playing into the hands of manipulative and misogynistic political lobbies.

Just to be precise, rape in UK law doesn't require vaginal penetration. It covers penetration (by a penis) of anus and mouth as well.

@Chersfrozenface interesting

Indeed.

And Scottish law takes it even further,.

Under the Sexual Offences {Scotland) Act 2009, a transman could be charged with raping a transwoman.

After defining rape
"(1)If a person (“A”), with A's penis—

(a)without another person (“B”) consenting, and

(b)without any reasonable belief that B consents,
penetrates to any extent, either intending to do so or reckless as to whether there is penetration, the vagina, anus or mouth of B then A commits an offence, to be known as the offence of rape"it goes on to say

"(4)In this Act—

• “penis” includes a surgically constructed penis if it forms part of A, having been created in the course of surgical treatment, and
• “vagina” includes—

(a)the vulva, and

(b)a surgically constructed vagina (together with any surgically constructed vulva), if it forms part of B, having been created in the course of such treatment."

It’s on the website of a charity that claims to be a sexual trauma and recovery service covering the whole of Dorset. It’s not just some student’s blog.

I thought the 2003 changes meant men could also be raped. The definition being changed to penetration by a penis anally, orally or vaginally.

Honestly, with the greatest respect, I wonder what the value is of magnifying this article by posting it here. I can't be the only poster who had a spasm of shock and miserable despair just reading the thread title. And it is only once you click into the thread that it becomes clear that this proposal comes from a very little voice - rather than, say, any public body or political party.

I know we need 'more light', but when does 'more light' shade over into endlessly pulling little extremist actors into the limelight so that online discourse centres more and more on their views and the horrified responses to them?

I see a gulf between talk on here and talk 'out there in the real world', which is characterised mostly by a basic ignorance/misunderstanding of the issues, rather than by the active embrace of absurdity. I think that sometimes we are traumatising and retraumatising ourselves unneccessarily by ruminating on extremism.

There was a period when these extreme voices were uncritically sucked into the mainstream by ill-judged embrace of poor-quality Stonewall (and Stonewallesque) corporate training, so that we had to address them. But I think that tide is now turning and we risk the possibility that it is we ourselves who are amplifying them by our horror.

The best response to much of this bullshit may now be to ignore it and focus on mainstream actors such as govt and political parties.

I'm sorry to hear this, but lesbians can't rape people. Sexually assault them, yes, and I'm so sorry your friend was a victim to this

Their mistake was not getting this through before going so hard on all the rest of this nonsense. It's unlike the trans movement powers that be to not have ensured it was slipped through before most of us knew the craic.

Yogyakarta written 2006.

All this was being steered and planned for back in 2003, the wheels were in motion.

No, what that lot of pomo burble mostly wants to achieve is to silence horrible people from being able to point out that a rapist has a penis and is a man.

Which is far far more vile than the man having raped some service human. Which of course was definitely not his fault. (See more pomo burble.)

This whole decade can fuck off.

Penetration with a penis can also result in pregnancy and can transmit STDs. Nothing agander about that

Well, we can't be let have accurate stats on a crime where it's impossible to pretend male perps are women. Like, currently we can tell that there are in fact males raping females in hospital wards. If this change happened it would obscure that and we'd have no proof that the "not a single complaint about a trans person happened" narrative was utter bullshit as the perps were recorded as a bepenised woman. I will fight against this harder than anything. It's the last bit of truth in this whole mess, and it's unique to UK.