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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
All I could think, rather sadly.
How old is she because this is WAY old school talking.
Boy, for someone who says she is a survivor of domestic violence, she's one hard-hearted person. Accusing women who divorce their husband of lying about rape?
I want to know what "rape used to mean rape." Just because you know your rapist doesn't mean it isn't rape. Just because you may be on a date doesn't mean it isn't rape. Just because you are married to the guy doesn't mean it isn't rape.
A married man certainly could verbally threaten his wife and probably better than a stranger.
How is voting no on this "smaller, smarter government?"
That's why we can't have nice things, like rape laws.
"I am a republican and must therefore vote against common sense and even my own best interests because cognitive dissonance."
I'm mildly uncomfortable asking this question, but what's a usual example of 3rd degree rape? Doesn't force usually come after "no I don't want to" or it simply doesn't happen (if there's no force, she can simple walk away).
I had pictured the passed-out case before @5 [in the previous post] pointed out that's second degree.
It is pretty impressively tortured reasoning that a criminal statute will be abused because the crime will be impossible to prove.
This is the kind of fucked attitude you'd expect in the deep south or something
What this really means is that marriage is truly obsolete.
Dan maintains that people in long term relationships live in a state of "implied consent" where it is permissible to initiate sex without prior verbal consent, and continue unless consent is withdrawn. The statute says that sex is rape if "lack of consent is clearly expressed in words or conduct", which does describe that moment. However, the details of what constitutes "clearly expressed in words or conduct" are murky, and subject to the intricacy of the sexual politics of a given relationship. What if a guy is trying to have sex with his wife and she moves away from him a few times or says something like "you disgust me", but relents and does not resist further? Is that rape? Is language (body or otherwise) that seems crystal clear to the person producing it but ambiguous to an observer enough to make up the difference between a fraught sexual relationship and criminal rape? When it's a matter of strangers a maximalist definition of rape may be appropriate, but between married people things are bound to be a bit more nuanced and complicated.
None of this is to say that the bill should not have passed, just that it's a thornier question than the post and most comments would imply.
The question is whether, for the exact same conduct, a husband should be immune from prosecution but a boyfriend should not. That is the way the statute currently reads. The amendment would put all men on equal footing: if you have sex with a woman despite a clear indication of lack of consent, you will be guilty of third-degree rape, and the fact that she is your wife will not excuse the behavior.
You seem to think that the amendment will introduce hard line-drawing problems into the statute that weren't already there. That is not the case. Consent is defined this way:
"Consent" means that at the time of the act of sexual intercourse or sexual contact there are actual words or conduct indicating freely given agreement to have sexual intercourse or sexual contact.
So as you can see, all these tricky questions about "what did she mean when she said I'm disgusting" etc. are already baked into the statute. Nor could it be any other way. How do you suggest we define "consent" and "rape" so as to side-step these questions of what the people meant, what they understood at the time, etc.?
Abusive partners tend to make their abused partner isolated and dependent on them. Maybe you only have one car, and your partner threatens to not let you use it or to destroy it. Or to destroy your stuff. That's a nice computer you have there, but clearly you like using it more than you like having sex with me. For the sake of our marriage, I guess I'll need to get rid of it, because I care about us, baby.
That would not be consensual sex at all, but you can see how there might not be physical force or any benefit to fighting back. Plus, fighting back physically to someone who has shown that they do not respect your choices or your body is a good way to get hospitalized or killed, which some people don't want to have happen to them. It's not like it'd prevent a rape, anyway, and at least this way you get to live.
Anyhow, you're asking things like how should it be judged. Which is a completely different question to whether or not it should be legal. The standards of evidence are an interesting question, but totally irrelevant to whether or not a particular act should be legal. Also, studies find that men actually do tend to be aware of whether or not their partner wants to have sex. Those who rape just don't care that their partner didn't want to have sex at the time. Accidental rape is extremely rare. (Although there are some interesting cases of sexsomnia where the person initiating non-consensual sex had no control over their own actions, which I feel should be treated medically. If necessary, with some form of physical restraint while sleeping.)
1) A person is guilty of rape in the third degree when, under circumstances not constituting rape in the first or second degrees, such person engages in sexual intercourse with another person, not married to the perpetrator:
(a) Where the victim did not consent as defined in RCW 9A.44.010(7), to sexual intercourse with the perpetrator and such lack of consent was clearly expressed by the victim's words or conduct, or
(b) Where there is threat of substantial unlawful harm to property rights of the victim.
(2) Rape in the third degree is a class C felony.
First degree - use of a weapon, kidnapping, injury or breaking/entering to rape.
Second degree - involving force or victim is not capable of consent either by mental capacity, illness or physical frailty. (this one has the largest range of rape)
Third degree - anything else if victim does not consent
Still, there's a little bit of the logic I can't quite get past. If I tell you to jump out a window or I'll break your favorite pencil, and you jump out the window, did I murder you? Did I remove your consent to not jump out the window?
Again, this conversation makes me uncomfortable as I'm talking about situations outside my experience, and from descriptions above it sounds like there are real people that can be helped by this. But it seems strange you can get all the way to felony sex offender for life for actions that the other party had the power to stop.
First, if there was a threat of substantial harm to the property rights of the victim, then lack of consent isn't an element of the crime (note the "or" between prong (a) and prong (b)). Consent simply isn't relevant. In theory (though of course not in practice), the defense could establish enthusiastic consent, and the prosecutor could still get a conviction.
But return to that word "substantial." I don't think threatening to break a favorite pencil is going to count as a threat of "substantial unlawful harm," so your analogy is potentially misleading.
So let's put it this way. The legislature has decided that if you threaten to harm someone's property rights in order to induce that person to have sex with you, you should be punishable for a class C felony. There doesn't need to be anything metaphysical about this. If you find a similar statute relating to pencils and jumping out windows, then it's time to get worried. But for now, just return to this simple fact: if you threaten substantial unlawful harm to someone's property to induce that person to have sex with you, you better do it somewhere other than the State of Washington.
How does the other party have power to stop those actions? That's the point -- you hold something hostage to force someone into sex. All the power is in the hands of the perpetrator.
I read an appellate court decision that looked at the word "substantial" in the context of the second prong involving unlawful harm to property rights; destroying a pillow by stabbing it in front of the alleged victim did not qualify in that case. That said, clearly there are threats that meet the standard.
Lastly, forced-suicide murder is murder in the first degree in jurisdictions in the United States.
@22 "All the power is in the hands of the perpetrator." And that's all I'm confirming here. I completely agree with you if the case is "have sex with me or I kill your children." That scum bag deserves a felony. But I'm just wondering if that's the typical case, or what else is included in having non-forced sex without consent while awake.
To answer your question: if someone presented you with that scenario (fuck me or I smear you online), would you consider it sexual assault? Would you feel like you had been coerced or pressured into having sex you wouldn't otherwise have consented to? Would you want to see that manipulative scumbag thrown in jail?
The answer to all your questions is yes. My question back is should there be a different penalty for that kind of a-hole than the kind that threatens the lives of your children? If a Facebook smear is enough for a felony conviction, is there a line at which you'd think the law is unfair? How about "I'll do the dishes tonight if I can get lucky?"
@29 I think it's a great time to take a look at our existing laws to make sure they're well written.
If this constitutes third-degree rape, then Dan Savage has encouraged people to commit rape on numerous occasions.