Frodosmum In practice, men who committed marital rape could be, and were, prosecuted for other offences, such as sexual assault, although it must be said that, in the past, the police were notoriously reluctant to get involved in ‘domestics’ of any kind. That was a different nightmare.
The old chestnut 'in practice' -- lol again. I assume you are joking here too. Men who raped women were and still are as likely to be prosecuted for rape or for any offence as they are likely to be hit by lightning.
It is exactly the same nightmare, and again, exactly the same inability on your part to understand how refusal to take allegations of rape seriously means hardly any rapes are reported, marital or otherwise. I put this in the same category of 'failure to understand' as your inability to see how empathy is meaningless unless shared in some way, and your inability to see that all humans have needs, men and women alike. If anyone has a 'need' to sell their body for 20 quid a pop then let's all do it. Or is it just men who need to be able to buy women for whatever they can get away with spending?
"'Nobody was interested in my complaints, as I was legally a wife."
The quote I used there came from Noori Al Shami, whose experiences are detailed in the article linked below, but this is a statement that any married woman anywhere could find herself making even as late as the 1990s.
Knowledge of marital rape, and this applies to those opinion polls, reflects, in part, the fact that the issue just wouldn’t cross the mind of most people. I regard this as a healthy attribute. We might have stumbled through the centuries with no legislators bothering to take responsibility for this, but it would not even occur to the normal male to force himself physically upon his wife.
I assume you have proof of this benign treatment of women you speak so glibly of, through centuries when it was legal to beat one's wife with a stick as long as it was no wider than one's thumb?
I can't understand how ignorance of one's human rights could ever be anything but a recipe for disaster.
What you are arguing is that an issue that just wouldn't cross the minds of most people and hardly ever happens warranted legislation?
Or is it that legislation was warranted only because recent blinding realisation of the fact that women are humans and as such deserve legal rights, made it necessary to acknowledge that a woman didn't cease to be a human upon marriage?
I don't know if you are aware of the issue of female children being married off to rid their family of the burden of caring for them? Here is one example of too many.