Comment by DoreenMichele
5 years ago
I think you made your wrong turn when you equated this to the heinous crime of rape.
You are no doubt correct, which is aggravating to me for a long list of reasons.
From the article:
Increasing numbers of English-speaking tourists have made a point of stopping in to snap pictures of themselves by the signpost at the entrance to the village, sometimes striking lascivious poses for social media.
The word is not a sexual word in German. It is in English. This is being forced on the village without their consent and it is leading to sexualized behavior without their consent.
When one man does that to one woman, we define it as rape. When a bunch of tourists do that to a town, we point and laugh and act like the town is overreacting and doesn't have a sense of humor.
Over the years, I have tried to think of another example of something where we make this distinction that if we agree to it, it's a good thing and if we don't then it's a bad thing. Rape vs "making love" is the only one I know where we make that distinction and the legal distinction hinges on the detail of consent.
There was a case where a man and woman were getting divorced and she accused him of rape and there was film of the incident because violent sex was her kink. He was found innocent. Violent sex with consent is kink or BDSM, not rape. Rape is about lack of consent, not about the degree of violence.
Rape is not always as clear cut as people would like to imagine. It's really common for women to feel confused about whether or not what happened to them was really rape, in part because people imagine that rape is some kind of violent assault and not simply the detail of lack of clear consent.
The legal definition of rape hinges on the detail of consent and this town is having a sexualized thing forced upon them without their consent. It's unfortunate that people feel I am somehow "escalating" this to a much more terrible thing than it is rather than seeing my remarks as clarifying part of why this is so extremely objectionable to the townspeople.
> When one man does that to one woman, we define it as rape.
The equivalent of these no-contact actions gets called sexual harassment, not rape.
What's the "equivalent" of repeatedly ripping their sign out of the ground and stealing it?
These people feel violated. I've seen people on HN used the word rape to describe how they feel about something done to them against their will by, say, Facebook.
It gets used metaphorically that way routinely because we don't really have another good word for "I feel egregiously violated because of something someone did to me without my consent or against my will." We use it that way without it involving physical contact.
> What's the "equivalent" of repeatedly ripping their sign out of the ground and stealing it?
I thought you were talking about the sexual acts.
Stealing the sign is just theft. The equivalent is also theft.
> I've seen people on HN used the word rape to describe how they feel about something done to them against their will by, say, Facebook.
Yes, but they will readily admit that it is hyperbole, not what they actually think about the act. If they treat it as a serious comparison, that will get strongly argued against.
You are saying that the actual definition of rape is fitting here, which is in a different ballpark from hyperbole.