What is bothering me in this thread is the assumption that marital rape is not violent.
I mean, am I understanding that correctly? There seems to be an undertone that marital rape is somehow benign, a bit of careless insensitivity and overstepping of boundaries within an otherwise fine relationship. But that is nonsense. No two marital rapes are the same, just as no two stranger rapes are.
The reason marital rapes are not prosecuted is because of power dynamics in society, that men are usually the ones with more money and the better job and the woman is caring more for the children whether she works or not. It is very, very hard to make a rape complaint against your children’s father, for the same reason many women living with other forms of domestic abuse deal with it themselves and not by involving the police. It is nothing to do with the level of violence or otherwise involved.
The predatory men preying on women in an Uber or wherever are NO different to the predatory men who do not respect their wives’ right to consent. The difference is that the wife (or co-habiting partner) has a whole raft of familial and social obligations to contend with, which mean walking out the house with internal bruising at 1am is not an option.
If there is a difference, it is context - and this thread is doing little to dispel it - there is no marital bond or historic ‘right’ for the Uber driver to rape his passenger (hence the assumption this is worse, more violent, more traumatic). There is the marital bond, the privacy of the marital home, ideas about female subservience and historic belonging to their husbands which frame a wife being raped. That is the difference, and it seems to be playing out in this thread in some kind of fuzzy notion that marital rape and violent rape are two different things. It is totally bizarre.