To use a metaphor: say I’m a doctor and I tell somebody that they need surgery to remove a growth from their liver. During the surgery, I decide to remove one of their kidneys so I can sell it on the black market. Did they consent? No, because they consented to the liver surgery, not to having a kidney removed, nor to a handwavy “surgery in general”.

And the thing is, he’s not wrong. Sex with an unconscious person is considered to contain the element of force, as does a woman pressured into having sex to keep her job.

Mistaken identity is trickier, because the woman is consenting to sex with someone. And unfortunately, the court has found in the past that consent transfers, essentially. I’m not sure of the current state of the law, (I think it depends largely on statute) but it’s not really fair to demonize him for expressing an unpleasant legal reality.

At least he does admit it’s a deplorable act. But he’s right that it might not be prosecutable.

Email would have worked. You have her address.

Aha. I had no idea that Skud was someone I already knew by another name until you pointed it out.

Coercion of any kind makes it rape, whether overly physically violent, with drugs, with deception, or merely the threat of of violence, which, of course is always there in the condition of slavery. That is what slavery IS! Without the implied violence, sanctioned by law and community, you don’t have slavery.

This is why we now can speak of spousal rape in courts. Such rape is no longer legal within our laws. However, not long ago it was.

I also don’t have the option of changing my mind in order to conform to the group consensus. (which is different than saying my mind is closed..there are many things I wish I could believe in that I cannot without further evidence or introspection)

Precisely because it’s not about me, I’d like to let it drop and avoid further derailment.

It’s been said that if I say that I “don’t care to continue the conversation” that this is further evidence of my “bad faith”. But given the above, it seems to me that taking the conversation elsewhere is the least-bad option.

In the unlikely event that anyone wants to hear further from me on the topic, you can contact me at paul at prescod dot net. You can also contact me if you want to educate me or express your own opinion but would rather not hear a response back. I am still interested in communication on this topic, but just not here (and probably not in any public forum).

For the Nth time, Van Lente said:
“My understanding of the definition of rape is that it requires force or the threat of force, so no. Using deception to trick someone into granting consent isn’t quite the same thing.”

In other words, he said that something that legally is rape isn’t rape. That’s defending rape. That is narrowing the concept of rape so that, for instance, slipping a roofie into a woman’s drink and then having sex with her is not rape. He is defending one particular class of rape by claiming that it isn’t rape.

You are saying that any discussion of this discredits the entire class of women in software. If we talk about issues that are relevant to us as geeks, it discredits you.

It isn’t about you. It’s about us.

I’m not sure whether it is by design that it is difficult to post private messages — perhaps to deter bullies. Or perhaps just a side effect of the software. Anyway, if it were available, and I were wise enough to use it, and careful enough to choose my language properly … then it would have been a useful feature.

Boxofdelights said: “So, this conversation here, is this not in real life?”

The phrase “IRL” is a standard idiom meaning “not in an online forum”.

What I meant to say, but did not say clearly is: “I do not remember having those conversations with anyone in a face-to-face conversation, but I am in danger of having one of those conversations online if I continue down the path of trying to express and justify my opinion.”

The first half of that sentence was probably not of interest to anyone except me, and is, in retrospect not entirely true (since rape is not the only issue that one must be very careful about discussing with an appropriate tone).