Comment by koonsolo
4 years ago
I wonder when is something is legally considered rape. Like what you read in the article, when there was a lot of manipulation, but not really a "no", and a bad feeling during an afterwards.
4 years ago
I wonder when is something is legally considered rape. Like what you read in the article, when there was a lot of manipulation, but not really a "no", and a bad feeling during an afterwards.
> I wonder when is something is legally considered rape.
Its kind of weird that this hairsplitting curiosity about consent always comes up exclusively in the context of rape and not other crimes with the same “without consent” rule, like battery (particularly since rape is, ina sense, just battery where the “harmful or offensive touching” element involves specific configurations of genital contact.)
But its actually pretty simple: if the other party didn’t actively intend for the specific interaction to occur, there was no consent. All the other things people ask about (except to the extent that they involve factors that legally either negate consent if known to or caused by the other party or which create a legal incapacity to consent independent of knowledge of the other party, which can include intoxication , youth, threats of violence, and other factors) tend to be things that play more of a role in the practical ability to convince a jury one way or the other than the ground truth of whether the offense occurred.
TBF, I think a lot of people don't actually know what battery is. Internet definition:
the crime or tort of unconsented physical contact with another person, even where the contact is not violent but merely menacing or offensive.
Most people hear of that only in the form of assault and battery. I always have to look it up because my mind wants to say "That phrase repeats itself. Surely, battery means being battered."
As for when is it legally rape? That depends a lot on the jurisdiction. Different places have different laws and there is lots of debate about the merits of some of those laws.
So basically when a boy makes to first move to kiss a girl, it's already against the law?
edit: Why am I downvoted? This is a real question. Sorry for my european ignorance.
I downvoted you (I've reversed that now). I'm having trouble taking your questions seriously as good faith engagement. It sounds rather like you are asking "How much can I get away with?"
If you really want to know how to reach meaningful consent with a sexual partner, investigating the details of "exactly where does the law draw that line" isn't especially useful and it's hard to try to reply to such a question in a constructive fashion that doesn't implicitly suggest ugly things about the motive of the asker, so trying to reply seemed like an unwise choice.
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> Its kind of weird that this hairsplitting curiosity about consent always comes up exclusively in the context of rape and not other crimes with the same “without consent” rule, like battery
It isn't weird at all. There is no reasonable expectations of getting consent for battery outside of very specific scenarios.
It seems more complex than even what the law says, as in the end it is up to a judge/jury to make the call.
I don't know about Germany or the US, but Poland has (a) fairly strict anti-rape laws, and (b) a number of cases presented in media, where the court's final opinion was something along the lines of "meh, what's the big deal?".
I'm not sure that this is a general characterisation (might be) but certainly illustrates the law vs. decision maker split.
From what I can gather in the instances of other crimes, the same is true in e.g. US. You cannot shoot unarmed people running away from you, but then courts let people get away with it.
At the end of the day, the main sniff test, only somewhat moderated by law, seems to be "does this look like rape to me".