I'm fully aware of the current legal definition in the UK, which is why I said in my post about people not using the terminology rape, and dancing around it.
How do you think that makes people who have been raped by women feel?
Basically like people don't believe them, that their rape didn't happen or wasn't real, that it can't have been as bad.
I think it's foul that people would talk like this - to be honest with you I thought mumsnet was pretty much the last place that was actually a safe space to talk. I don't feel that way any more after this thread, and as such I'll be staying off threads to do with rape and not reading them. I did think this was a safe space but it isn't.
I don't really understand why you feel the need to wave the legal definition in people's faces. It's like telling women who were raped by their husbands (pre the law changing) - oh, that wasn't rape. Because legally at the time, it wouldn't have been. So were they not raped, if their husbands forced them to have sex? Answer me that? That someone who was raped by an object... oh your assault wasn't rape. But in California, yes it was. In the past, women had to prove that they resisted physically (legally) - else it wasn't rape. So would you tell all of those women, back then, if they froze, they didn't resist physically - that they weren't raped? Tell them their rape didn't exist? Because you should, if you're standing by legal definitions. You should tell all of those women they were not raped.
How would you feel if you were raped, you froze, and someone told you that wasn't a rape? Because under law in the past, that was perfectly fine, it wouldn't have been classed as rape. Would you have felt invalidated? Because that's exactly what you're doing, by telling women who have been raped by women oh, sorry, the legal definition says you can't have been. If someone tells me they were raped, I believe them. I don't quibble around definitions, or say they couldn't have been. The reason I don't do that is because it's cruel.
What about way back when it was considered that a prostitute couldn't be raped, until the laws were changed?
What about in Dubai where a woman can be raped, but if she reports it she will actually be prosecuted for having sex outside of marriage? She may be put in prison, she isn't legally classed as being raped. Are you telling her, that we must follow the legal definition, and what occured wasn't a rape?
I think, by purposely choosing... which is what it is... to not recognise rapes as such... you have to really question your own motives - and question the damage it does to people, who, if you ask them, will state they were raped - and you are standing there saying no, you weren't.
And I thought we were meant to believe women... if someone says they were raped... what's more important - that or semantics? Telling people how they name THEIR experiences... is wrong?
Imagine if I turned to my friend and told her she wasn't raped. It would destroy her. She chose to call it that. Through history women haven't been believed, and have been told they haven't been raped. Laws have been created with very narrow and incorrect definitions. This is just another instance of women not being believed, and survivors being told... no, you weren't raped. Just like all those that went before.