More on rape by deception

[Anakin McFly]

I found this which at least assures me that the issue is not that black and white: http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogs ... y.html?m=1

Someone else suggested it should only count as rape by deception "if something directly linked to sexual activity is lied about that can have serious consequences". That seems an okay definition, though as the article says it would also mean that teenagers who lie about their age to have sex with adults would then be guilty of rape - as would the adult, which is counterintuitive.

Other things:

1) If someone feels that they were raped, does that mean they were? It's a thin line between dismissing victims' experiences - which happens far too often with rape - and risking subjectivizing rape to the point of meaninglessness: "I only consented to sex because I found her attractive, but it turns out she'd had plastic surgery, therefore she raped me".

2) Or it might be a case of things cancelling out: e.g. if a racist has sex with someone who didn't tell him she was partly black because she knew that he'd never consent to sex if so, and he finds out and feels violated, arguably her 'crime' of knowingly hiding information that might prevent consent only mattered because of his racism, thus the fault lies with him rather than her.

3) But then the generic moral question of: if something isn't objectively wrong but you know it will hurt the other person, is it still wrong? I'm leaning towards it being wrong but not criminal.

4) As others have pointed out, rape by deception laws would disproportionately harm minorities. It would vastly increase the number of women who would be considered rapists because they claimed to be younger than they were, or to be virgins when they weren't, or gays and lesbians who conceal their orientation when having heterosexual sex in an attempt to turn straight, and it doesn't seem at all right to put this on par with clear-cut cases of rape, especially if the 'deception' is motivated by personal safety rather than violating another.

5) One deceptive scenario I have trouble with: siblings separated at birth; they meet, one knows they're related but the other doesn't, and wouldn't have consented if they knew. They have sex. Assume they're either the same sex or the instigator is infertile so children are not a possibility. The only potential harm is thus the ick factor, similar to with some straight men and trans women. Would this be criminal, or rape?

Perhaps one problem is using the term 'rape' for such cases, given how loaded it is, when instead a lesser sexual crime might have been committed. Giving it another term would thus avoid potential questions like "is rape still bad if the other person consented and enjoyed it?" or how I spent a good few hours wondering if I might end up accidentally raping or sexually assaulting someone against my will, e.g. if they're very insistent about physical intimacy or sex and I go along but am too terrified to tell them that I'm trans - in such a situation I'd probably feel more violated, but if not disclosing one's trans status = rape, then it would mean I'd have violated them, which doesn't seem fair.

Or we could go back to that other thread where we were discussing consent with regards to drunk people, and I think Cassius said that we need to keep the definition of rape strictly to sex without consent, rather than make rape into a subjective thing.

Someone gave the example of how they would never consent to sex with a serial killer, but if they'd had consensual sex with someone for years whom they later discovered had been a serial killer all that time - and presumably knew their partner wouldn't agree to sex with a serial killer - it wouldn't retroactively turn all that sex into rape.

[Islandmur]

Hu?

Even if you have sex with an person that has AIDS and didn't tell you it's not rape, it's abuse, it's a crime, it's deception but it's not rape.

[Anakin McFly]

Some laws would consider such cases to be 'rape by deception', which is the problem. Maybe not for STDs per se, but there were cases where someone lied about being Jewish when he wasn't so that a Jewish woman would have sex with him, and it was ruled as rape, or when someone pretended to be a government official and promised state benefits if she had sex with him.

[RedRuth1963]

There was a case recently here (UK) were a woman pretended to be a man to have sex with a female friend. She was eventually convicted of sexual assault, not rape. It was a very odd case but I don't think she was guilty of rape, I don;t think you can retrospectively withdraw consent because someone lied to you.https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... having-sex

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

I'm possibly tired, but I'm not really getting this thread. Where would you draw the line with this line of reasoning? If you slept with someone cos you thought they were really rich (and they had openly given the impression they were really rich to try to impress people) but you later discovered they'd only borrowed the flashy car, they didn't really own their own company and they weren't going to be in a position to give you lots of money later if you could get them to hook up with you... could you accuse them of raping you?

Or take a less extreme version of events - they tell you that you're "the most amazing person they've ever met". And then next week they say the same thing to a completely different person. Someone's obviously lying to someone else. Just to have sex.

Lots of people lie (to one extent or another) to get people to have sex with them. If we required everyone to pass lie detector tests before there was any casual sex it would probably kill the mood a little...

I think the "rape" has to be a little bit more than someone just lying or misrepresenting something and the other person later finding out and taking offense at it. The final example is a better one, where one person knowingly entices the other to commit incest.

[Anakin McFly]

Yeah, that's the problem with this. It's a slippery slope to ridiculousness - if someone said they were 6' when they were actually 5'11", was that rape? But then on the other extreme you have cases like a woman who wanted to get pregnant and was looking for a man to help with that, and this guy was infertile but he lied just so he could have sex with her. One could argue it was rape because he knowingly deceived her to get her consent. Though 'would not have consented' isn't the same as 'did not consent', so maybe that should be the determining factor.

I don't envy lawyers.

[Gendo]

In my opinion, the only thing that should really be considered rape by deception is if you trick a person into thinking that you are a specific other person that they know. Like in that TV show a while back where a guy with the power to shape-shift pretended to be some girl's boyfriend. Or in real life, it could be done either by a twin, or by simply sneaking into someone's bed when it's dark and imitating their voice.

[Cassius Clay]

I've haven't really had the time to read this, but I'm pretty much with Gendo on this one. As I've stressed before, I strongly believe that we need to be able to talk about consent in the most straightforward/simple/common sense way possible. I fear that when we define it in ways that lead to some ridiculous slippery slope - opening up a pandoras box that makes it harder to pin down what rape is - it makes it more difficult to hold rapists accountable(even when it's well-intentioned). And I think it also gives rapists even more confidence that they can rape and get away with it.

[Anakin McFly]

Yeah. One working definition is to only consider it rape by deception if the culprit pretends to be someone else, rather than something else. Though that too has its limitations - if someone pretends to be a celebrity to get gullible people to sleep with them, I don't think that's rape.

It's disturbing that there's no clear legal guidelines for this, and lawyers have a lot of room to argue it either way. I've also seen it brought up that we need more attention on crimes that involve sex by coercion, where consent is reluctantly given (out of fear of violence, blackmail or other consequences).