What Counts as Rape?
Posted by The Situationist Staff on May 9, 2008
From NPR’s Day to Day story, If Your Neighbor Poses as Your Husband, Is it Rape?:
Massachusetts is the latest state to consider putting a new crime on the books: rape by fraud. Currently, a sex act only qualifies as rape if physical force is used. We talk to a woman who was tricked into having sex with her boyfriend’s brother, who pretended to be her boyfriend — and unable to convict him of rape because of this limited definition.
Under the new law, such forms of deception would be a crime. Some say the law goes too far, however, and could criminalize lies like, “Really, I’m divorced!”
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To listen to the story, click here, and to read a brief Salon article on the topic, click here. For a related Situationist post, see “Unrecognized Injustice — The Situation of Rape.”
May 16, 2008 at 2:14 pm
This is like that scene in Revenge of the Nerds when Louis puts on the quarterback’s Darth Vader mask and nails his girlfriend on the carnival moon. That probably shouldn’t be portrayed so positively in a movie…