54 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: How Men Become Aziz Ansari
A scenario where you are signaling that you do not want to have sex (or have that type of sex) verbally and nonverbally, are clearly uncomfortable, but something about the circumstance makes you feel coerced into going along with it, feels really bad and, well, is really bad. It’s not bad in the same way as being drugged or forced into sex at gunpoint or something, but it’s still not awesome.
I’ve been in similar situations too, with both men and women, and I think what you’re describing is a lot worse than not awesome
What defines rape is coercion, not the level of violence. If I don’t want sex and have communicated that I don’t want it but the person I’m with pressures me into it anyway, that sex is no more consensual than it would’ve been under the threat of serious physical harm. We don’t need to have been physically forced and we don’t need to have screamed ‘no’ in anyone’s face or fought back for our withdrawal of consent to matter. That disregard for another person’s physical autonomy *is* violence, in and of itself
The issue here isn’t that we need more granular language to define serious sexual assault, it’s that we - especially us men - need to change our assumptions about rape and stop imagining it as something that only happens in the most extreme, obvious or unequivocal circumstances. It’s much more mundane than that, and coercion can be subtle to the point that it’s barely perceptible to outside observers
There are all kinds of ways to pressure people into doing things against their will, and all of us need to stop expecting ourselves and others to suck up and singlehandedly deal with everything that happens to us up to the point of serious physical violence
Comment by Quinlanofcork at 17/02/2025 at 23:11 UTC
34 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The issue here isn’t that we need more granular language to define serious sexual assault
It's not the only issue, but it certainly is an issue. Our lack of a commonly accepted vocabulary to describe the different ways and degrees to which consent can be violated limits our ability to reach agreement 1) that a wrong was done, and 2) what redress is required. The violation of consent appears to me analogous to wrongful death where intent and premeditation impact the judged severity of the crime regardless of the fact that the harm perpetrated (someone killed/consent violation) is the same.
Comment by badass_panda at 18/02/2025 at 15:02 UTC
27 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What defines rape is coercion, not the level of violence.
I think ultimately, what we're talking about are degrees of coercion. The threat of violence is a very high degree of coercion. The thing is, in other areas we recognize the degrees of interpersonal offense or harm being given by different acts... e.g.,:
... and so on, and so forth. My point is that the richness of the language shows how much we care, societally, about consent *as it relates to property.* The absence of this kind of language and agreed-upon nuance shows how much we do *not* care about consent as it relates to sex. Imagine if we said, "Theft is the absence of enthusiastic consent for property transfer," and then made no distinction between a grudging loan and an armed robbery.
That disregard for another person’s physical autonomy *is* violence, in and of itself
I don't disagree, but I think pretending that degrees of coercion and degrees of violence don't matter makes it much less likely that we'll actually deal with the issues. There *is* a difference between being talked into sex you don't want, and being drugged into sex you don't want. We don't have to believe one of these things is OK to recognize that one of them is worse -- but the binary language of "Is this rape?" forces conversations into a false dichotomy.