Woman claimed her husband repeatedly raped her, jury says he is not guilty

First of all, I think you got your words mixed up. I will presume what you meant was the other way around.

My argument is that if it is less worse than cutting up a dress, then it is not really rape.

Can you be willing to agree with that statement?

 

Yes, it's just as bad. Consent is not forever. Sex without consent is rape. So if consent is not forever and sex without consent is rape, it stands to reason that if you have sex with someone who no longer gives you consent, you are raping them.

Sex in a marriage happens with consent. And when the consent leaves and the sex still happens, that is rape. Being married is not the same as consenting to sex, just like having sex is not consenting to carrying a pregnancy to birth. In each case, those are two separate and distinct decisions.

 

There is some level of ongoing consent because it's in a marriage.

It's not like the woman went out on a date ten years ago with some random guy, had sex with him, and then ten years later he comes back and has sex with her without her consent.

(Even that example would be just a tiny bit less worse than ordinary rape. Because at least at some point in the past, the woman decided this was a man she was willing to have sex with)

No woman stays in a marriage if she absolutely never wants to have sex with that guy ever again.

Now, there is the issue of marital infidelity, and if that's the issue, if the woman just found out about it and that's why the woman doesn't want to sleep with her husband, then it could be a little bit of a different issue.

 

Some of that consent is given when she marries him, in front of a crowd of witnesses. And then when she consummates that marriage on the wedding night. And then further when she has sex with him over and over again.

When she gets a divorce, or seeks a legal separation or restraining order (especially if she moves out) then the consent leaves.

There are different levels of consent. How firmly did she say no, for example? Did she scream and try to fight him off? Was she already naked in the same bed with him?

 

Neither is being married and saying no the same exact thing as rape.

You seem to be making the assumption that if there is not 100% consent, then that must automatically mean it was rape. You seem to have a slightly different understanding of what "rape" is compared to conservatives. For conservatives, "rape" requires a lot of specific and very clear things.

There I kind of have to disagree with you.
In the old days, there was a little bit of a presumption that, if the woman was married, she was accepting of any babies that would happen to naturally come into that marriage, through intercourse between husband and wife.

I don't believe you can seriously believe this. I think you must be stubbornly holding onto that hill to try to make your point.

If a wife doesn't want to have sex with her husband because she's tired, that is NOT the same thing as not wanting to have sex with some random man.
Might there be a little bit of similarity? Yes, but they are drastically different.

 

No, even if a woman consented 10 minutes ago to sex and then decided she no longer wanted to, forcing her to have sex after that is rape. There is no duration of consent. It exists until the very moment it doesn't. And once it doesn't, the history of that consent doesn't matter in the slightest.

Have you ever spoken with women on why they stay in marriages they perhaps don't want to be in or is what you wrote born purely of a male perspective?

 

That may be part of the religious concept of marriage for some folks, but religion is not the law. The legal concept of marriage has nothing to do with sex. And since it is the legal concept that will apply to everyone, judging it by misogynistic religious standards is only done to defend the indefensible under normal human law.

No, there isn't. My goodness. If I ever had any questions about where your anti-abortion views come from, they have been answered. You may not believe that women are entirely property, but you certainly don't believe they are entirely human individuals either.

 

Yes, it is. The legal concept of marriage does not provide consent for sex whenever the man wants it. You're thinking of misogynistic religious marital standards. People try to intertwine those two concepts, and indeed the legal concept of marriage exists because of the religious customs of marriage that came before it, but they are separate institutions.

Then that means those conservatives who hold those views don't value women as autonomous individuals capable of and deserving of making their own choices. They feel women owe them their bodies, which again, explains a lot about anti-abortion views.

And in the past, women had very little power to make their own choices. Do you think they CHOSE that scenario? In many parts of the world, even in some places still today, women don't even get to choose their husband. How disgusting. How absolutely vile.

I do absolutely believe it, and I have since I was old enough to understand the concept. And do you know why? Because I think of women in the exact same way I think of myself. An autonomous intellectual entity with the mental power to make my own choices and to decide for myself what I want and what I don't want and the right to change my mind whenever I want for whatever reason I want.

The reason a wife doesn't want to have sex only matters to those who want to argue with her that she has to, just like the reasons a woman has an abortion only matter to the people who want to tell her she can't. It's ammunition to try and force them into submission.

 

Well, that's not what I claimed. Even if we accepted your statement as 100% true (which I am not sure that I concede), that would still not automatically make it rape.

 

There were some legitimate reasons why people in older times would have been very reluctant to apply the same concept of rape when it was between husband and wife.

The man has ALREADY had sex with her, and since they are married there is the expectation that they will have plenty more sex in the future.

A marriage was presumed to be a closed relationship. So it's not so easy for him to just get his needs met somewhere else. And there is not really any risk of the wife getting a sexually transmitted disease. And then even if she gets pregnant, that was seen as normal. That they can raise that child because it was a child conceived between husband and wife.

The woman is not being violated by a person whom she has not chosen to have sex with in the past. In fact she decided to enter a long-term sexual union with that person. It's not like this is a strange disgusting man whom she cannot stand to have sex with.

 

And now women totally have the power to choose whom they marry. In fact she's under little pressure to marry at all.
So I would think the argument would be even stronger these days.

Do you know what I think this really comes down to? A different concept of sex and marriage.

If you try to imagine a society where the only sex that is permissible is between husband and wife, and where marriages are presumed to be permanent for life, it might be easier for you to see things from the older perspective.

I think the type of views many people like you have about sexual consent today, back then those views would have been seen as only being applicable to whores and prostitutes, and other sexual situations that were not condoned. It would have been seen more as the exception, not the rule.

 

In all your copious threads on minimizing raping women has anyone ever agreed with you?

 

"You cannot rape your wife, there's very clear case law for it" - Trump attorney aide Michael Cohen

"If you can't rape your wife, who can you rape?" - infamous quote from California State Senator Bob Wilson during a committee hearing in 1979

In 1981 there were only 2 states that did not did not have exceptions written into their rape laws in the case of marriage.
(source: But If You Can't Rape Your Wife, Who(m) Can You Rape? The Marital Rape Exemption Re-Examined, Journal Family Law Quarterly Volume: 15 Issue: 1, Spring 1981, pages 1-29, M D A Freeman, 1981 )

A Conservative District Attorney, Ken Buck, in Colorado declined to prosecute a man for rape, even though he admitted to it, because the woman had been heavily drinking before the alleged rape and had a previous sexual relationship with the alleged attacker.
The case happened in rural Weld County in around 2005.

 

FoxHastings said: ↑
In all your copious threads on minimizing raping women has anyone ever agreed with you?

There's misogynistic flakes all over who minimize rape , I guess....and he's WRONG, men have been prosecuted for raping their wives.
Rape is rape whether you like it or not .

Yes, an INFAMOUS misogynist agrees with you....happy?

Sadly for you, times have changed Many men have gone to jail for raping their wives

Wouldn't happen to day....but if you want to try it because you see nothing wrong then go for it

( I noticed the word "rural" in there...clear indication of "backwards"

 

In my opinion, people like you are the ones who are really the ones minimizing rape, when you lump it together with all sorts of situations that are less than rape. (What I mean is less than the old traditional conception of what rape was)
This will ultimately lead to the notion of rape being trivialized, and I believe it very much already has been.

It's like taking a bunch of children who stole a candy bar at the store and putting them together in the same boat with some career criminal armed robbers, and calling them all "criminals".

Rape is wrong for reasons that go far beyond just the woman not feeling like sex at that particular time.

You seem to be trying to create the false impression that it is ALL about the woman's consent being violated at that particular time and place.

 

No, it's people like you who think the "old traditional conception" is right or pertinent.
Rape is rape, there is no "less than" no matter how much YOU TRY TO TRIVIALIZE IT. ( with all your MANY threads on minimizing and defending rape to prove I am correct)

LOL, that is not a "false impression", it is a FACT you don't like

it IS ALL about the woman's consent being violated at that particular time and place.

I am so glad you don't like that fact

 

That statement is meaningless, since people like you have been trying to redefine what rape is.

If it's less than rape, it's not exactly rape anymore.

 

Just admit it, it's a totally different thing if that man's penis hasn't already been inside there during consensual sexual intercourse.

Are you going to tell us that it is EXACTLY the same situation if a man who has already had consensual sex with the woman a couple of times then enters her without her consent, versus a man entering her who has never had her consent before?

Sure, you can call it "rape" if you want, but even you have to recognize it is still not exactly the same, and obviously not quite as bad.

Then add onto that a scenario where she didn't resist at all, where she may have said no, but she put up no other defense whatsoever.

 

Incel anonymous...

 

UH, that would be YOU!!

It isn't me or anyone else who started MULTIPLE THREADS ON REDEFINING RAPE as "nothing much" and not a crime and it doesn't hurt women....THAT WAS YOU...

Rape is rape and if you rape someone you will go to jail

 

Show me in the marriage contract that a woman has to have sex with her husband anytime he wants..

 

Again, where in the marriage contract is sex required?

 

It seems only in ultra relgious households where women are still expected to go down to the well and haul water.

 

And keep their mouths shut.

 

This is frivolous. Like Kaz said, she can divorce him. In the old days, the men from the womans side of the family would straighten him out.