To not understand why people don't understand men cannot be raped by a woman?

[TurquoiseChevrotain]

I've read a lot whenever this comes up on here or elsewhere, that it's 'terrible' and such an outdated view. Why is it? Why can't people understand what rape is? Men can be sexually assaulted by women, but not raped.

My point is that we as feminist don’t need to police the way people speak about rape and we should not act as though a legal definition which can alter with the times is the only acceptable definition. The law has decided in the past that married women can’t be raped by their husbands and in the states that a woman who believed she was having sex with her boyfriend wasn’t raped because she wasn’t married. There is no country where the law is in the side of women. As to the poster mocking a teacher “holding down” a twelve year old. Truly disgusting. A twelve year old boy might ejacukate it does not mean he can give meaningful consent anymore than a twelve year old girl can.

I do think feminists should be attempting to broaden the legal definition of rape. I’m not sure if penile or non penile is the right way forward as the sti/ pregnancy risk would still be there in a female perpetrated rape. I say this knowing that pretty much all rape is committed by men, I’m just not sure that making the point when discussing it in law makes sense. This seems like an answser to the fact that people don’t believe men commit rape almost 100% of the time not women. But I don’t think this would make a difference there.

There have been cases where female teachers have become pregnant by their underage students, btw I didn’t make that up. In fact I’d be prepared to say that is one of the very few situations where women can and do commit rape.

m.newsok.com/article/3743078

All these scenarios which try to argue otherwise seem so tortuous - a whole group of women holding down a man, a teacher who gets pregnant after somehow forcing a twelve year old to ejaculate...

These 'woman-on-man' scenarios seem to be not only bizarrely specific, but also readily prosecutable under existing law. Why is there some push to change a specific legal definition for something which is a vanishingly rare crime?

It’s not about saying women rape too, it’s about not throwing the victims who don’t fall in to the specific definition under the bus. The vast vast majority of whom will be be women. The vast vast majority of perpetrators will be men.

feministcheese that might be the wrong link - it's about a man raping a woman by pretending to be her boyfriend.

QuentinSummers

I agree with that. I was wondering why this was bothering me. And that's exactly it.

Sometimes it's not actually about the idea of something, it's often how that idea is used. And you're quite right, in that MRAs will often say but women rape too. In an attempt to derail discussions about male violence.

The flip side of this, is that sexual assault, does not carry the same kind of perjorative connotations.

It would be useful to change that, without changing the definition of rape.

@Turquoise

"literally like saying someone was kicked, when really they were punched."

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.
You say "literally", do you actually know what the word means?

Ah, I realise it's a link about arcane definitions of rape being unhelpful - I just thought it was going to be about female teachers getting pregnant because of the text above it in your post.

Is a wife forcing her husband to have sex, be it physically or by coercion not rape?
Or does statutory rape not exist?

Overnight saying someone was kicked when really they were punched is the same as saying they were raped when really they were sexually assaulted.

All the things are bad.

but they are not the same as one another.

They are different.

The definitions are different.

Therefore saying someone was kicked when really they were punched is literally like saying they were raped when really they were sexually assaulted.

Does that help?

overnightangel

No, it's classed as sexual assault. It carries the same seriousness and sentencing protocols as does rape. But it's not called rape because you need a penis for that.

If you actually read the thread? This is what is under discussion.

When I say you need a penis for it, you need a penis to perpetrate the crime. Although a woman forcing a man to have sex with her is involving a penis, it's not the penis that is doing the crime.

Is a wife forcing her husband to have sex, be it physically or by coercion not rape?
I don't know how she'd do it physically - by coercion, no. Neither is rape. Because she's not putting her penis inside him.

Or does statutory rape not exist?
That's right - it doesn't.

Link could have been better placed. I went back and added some, also toddler. Also MN keeps switching back and forth to the full site from the mobile and driving me mad

Yes, I get it now - sorry.

Statutory rape is about the age of consent. And of course it does exist even if not defined as such in the UK. Hence the problem with sticking rigidly to British legal definitions. We could never discuss assaults that happen outside of the UK if we don’t know the terminology

It would be nice also if posters realised that there are many non British and non British based users on MN

yeah, I was assuming we were talking about the UK here, which maybe I shouldn't have.

It certainly doesn't apply to a wife in the UK and her husband.

Technically a woman wearing a strap-on could rape a man But yes i get what you mean, a man needs to get a sexual attraction to get an errection, so in essence at the point of errection it cannot really be deemed rape as the man's senses have naturally gone 'yes, we're gonna have sex'.

Or does statutory rape not exist?
That's right - it doesn't.

Sorry I meant marital rape

Claire that wouldn't be 'technically' a rape because it isn't a penis.

Overnight yes, marital rape exists, and men can rape their wives. Their wives cannot rape them, though, as they do not have penises.

@goldenclaire technically, no they couldn't. That wouldn't be rape.

Statutory rape is about the age of consent.

It's also very rarely used as an actual charge, as the crime itself is usually referred to as something different on the statute books.

saying someone was kicked when really they were punched is the same as saying they were raped when really they were sexually assaulted.

The definition of kick and punch don’t vary between countries, cultures and between lay and legal persons though. Rape/sexual assault is unusual in that sense and on the Internet where you have no way of knowing where a poster is from yo cant say their definition is wrong

Rape has always had different legal definitions in different countries.

Why is it so important for people to use the term rape for other sexual assault?

I'd surmise that the issue is that whilst rape has its definition all other types of sexual assult has the same label. So a female forcing sex on a male isn't classed as rape not is someone (of either sex) being penetrated with an object is not rape but sexual assault. Which is the same category groping comes into. Perhaps then there needs to be more legal terms to define different sexual assaults. To make distinction between more harmful and impaction assaults from the 'lesser' ones.

I can't imagine why else it would be important to for it to be possible for men to be raped by women. It's not as if there's a notable difference between the amount of convictions in rape cases, there being a much higher conviction rate for rape than there is for sexual assault.

Nor is it the case that there is a guarantee that because it is classed as rape then the sentence is longer than it is for sexual assault.