It seems you're not understanding what I wrote. I'm not concerned about whether you agree with what I wrote or not. You're free to have whatever opinions you want. But you're twisting what I wrote. My point was that the law is simple. THE LAW is not 'sticky'. Very, very simple. No is no. No consent? It's rape. Under age? It's rape. Impaired, drunk? It's rape. The law defines that there are classes of people who cannot, legally, give consent to sex. Who? People who are unconscious, drunk, severely mentally impaired, under age. Yes, sometimes, various rape-culture indoctrinated people don't agree, various rapists don't agree. To me, it is not important or notable that they do not agree. They don't make the law 'sticky'(which actually means open to interpretation by criminals to their advantage). They're criminals and people who support criminals. I am not concerned about what they think, not beyond the way one is concerned about not getting bit by a dog that bites. And sometimes, due to good-old-boy networks, people weasel out of it and go scott free. As I noted. Here's the thing. MOST people do not want to understand laws they plan on breaking. In general, in America, the overall comprehension of laws is very, very poor. People who don't want to follow laws try to take advantage of that.
Well, it's not quite that simple... There are the "Romeo and Juliet" laws that make it legal for underaged kids to have sex with each other, which doesn't really tie in with the idea that neither of them is deemed capable of giving consent. There are also ambiguities in terms of people with various mental challenges - we don't say that people with intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses must remain celibate in all circumstances, do we? And as a general theory, I don't agree that the best way to conduct oneself is to follow the law. If I did, that would mean that people living in the past, or people living in places with different laws governing consent, were right if they engaged in behaviour that was legal but that I find morally repugnant (spousal rape, etc.). Surely the best way to conduct oneself is to follow morality, not legality?
It's sticky. If it was so simple, why the need for a court case? Why the need to bring in a jury? why the need to argue the point? All you need is three people, judge, victim, accused. Judge to accused: Did you have sex with this woman while she was unconscious? Accused: Yes Judge: That's rape, I'm sending you to prison for 12 years. But it never happens like that and I am totally done with this thread now and cannot be bothered to sit and write out twelve pages of excuses that the accused comes up with as to why the rape they committed is not actually rape, and why their solicitor/barrister/lawyer spends a month re-interpreting the "laws" in order to get his client acquitted. You know what? Ask Hilary Clinton about it. And before you ask me any more, I know this because I've been there as the mother of a witness in a case of that nature.
It's not sticky in the law. The law is very clear. This is my point. You're accusing me of writing things I never wrote. I can't help that. Why bring in a jury? Because the defendant can request a jury trial. that's how court works. Most of them would be idiots to do so, but some do. Today, because of the cost of trials to the community, many trials do not go to a jury. They plea out to a judge. Many result in a longer sentence than a jury trial would have. Some result in a shorter sentence. Many are the same sentence anyway. I too have been involved in trials that involved sexual crimes - sexual harassment and threats and sexual assault. The defendant hired some clever lawyers and lied a lot, and delayed the trial til the victims had to return to their own country. He set up a campaign of online intimidation and harassment and lies against the one victim who stuck with the trial. Then the defendant made an Alford plea. The judge was furious, but he put the defendant in jail immediately and for as long as he could. The defendant wound up leaving the country after his sentence was complete. He was able to reinvent himself and lie his way out of complete and permanent ruination, but that is what he deserved: complete ruin. The law remains what it is. How people weasel their way around the law, how they make internet campaigns to change reality and spread lies, those are complicated and go athwart of the law('sticky' I guess is the word you use for that). The law is not complicated. I don't know what you mean by 'law' or even, for sure, that 'it's sticky'. What is sticky? To me when I say the law is clear, I mean exactly that. The law is written in a book. It is words in a book. That's called 'black letter law': what is written in the book where the laws are written down. The law defines the elements required for the charge, very, very clearly. The crime is defined very clearly. The law is the words written in the criminal code. Very simple.
Yeah but you're not understanding how the law works. The written law works together with precedent. Decisions made previously in some courts are binding on that court. The mental challenges of the person have to be evaluated on an individual basis. That is stated very, very clearly. You probably haven't read any of the rules on that or read any court opinions or precedents. There are rules. There is extensive and formalized allowance for individual circumstances. So for example, a man has schizophrenia and is catatonic for 3 months, unable to move, unable to speak, and during that time, unable to give legal consent for sex. A nurse climbs on top of him and has sexual intercourse with him. He REMEMBERS this and when he is again able, he has charges brought against her. She is convicted of whatever charges apply (sexual imposition, assault or rape). Then he goes home to his girlfriend and has sex with her, legally. It would be quite the same if he was unconscious and in a coma after a car accident. That's all very clear. Another example. A young man of 21 is living in a residential facility. He has autism, severe developmental disability, and mental illness. He has a girlfriend, and he has sex with her. At the same time, he is involved in a court case about a caregiver who illegally detained and restrained him and sexually assaulted him. He wins, and the caregiver is put in jail. The mentally disabled person is, in fact, completely free to choose to have sex and they are not expected to be celibate at all. And if a case about that winds up in court, the mentally disabled person is NOT required to understand all of the ramifications of having sex, in order to be entitled to have sex. That's all very clear. Similarly, a mentally disabled person cannot be ASSUMED to be an inadequate parent. Authorities cannot remove a child from the home merely because the mother has a diagnosis of a mental health issue, whether that is a severe mental illness or not.. In fact many parents of mentally disabled people will talk them into getting a vasectomy or hysterectomy because they are, legally, allowed to have sex and parents do not want the complications of a pregnancy. And yes, there is a point at which a person cannot successfully claim that the person consented. The law('black letter law', what's written in the books) + precedence. Your opinion is that it's 'better' to follow one's own moral code than to follow the 'laws of the land' because the laws of the land are - bad. I trust you don't mind if I follow the laws of the land? I don't want to wind up in jail, sued, etc. The consequences of not obeying the laws of the land are not fun. I don't care for them. I also fear that if everyone decides to do what you do, many people's 'moral code' will just happen to include murder, rape and theft, as well as a lot of other very selfish behavior. I've known many people who held themselves above human law and vowed only to follow God's law, their moral code. Let me tell ya. I have yet to find a more dishonest, selfish, conniving group of people. Just about anything was fair game. But you don't actually seem to understand how the law works. I don't see how you can logically come to the conclusion you have, without more of an understanding.
Wow. That was pretty patronizing. And your conclusions about my understanding of the law or what I've read are kinda weird, considering that I have a law degree...? So... I understand how the law works. I have read far too much case law and I understand how precedent is applied (and when it doesn't apply). Try again. ETA: I forgot to ask--where did you earn your law degree? Mine's from the University of British Columbia. ETA2: If you don't have a law degree, that's fine--I don't think anyone needs a degree in order to have an interest in a topic or to want to debate a topic. I just think that, in this as in so many other threads, you should stop assuming that you're communicating with idiots. Just because someone disagrees with you it doesn't mean that person doesn't know what they're talking about.
Most laws are sticky because laws are textbook and people are not. Stealing is illegal. It's also immoral and punishable by a whole range of consequences but if you found yourself living on the street with a four year old child and neither of you had eaten for three days would you break the law by stealing an apple from a market stall for her? And if laws were so simple, then there wouldn't BE extensive and formalized allowances for individual circumstances. (which creates a precedence which in turn, creates excuses for future use.) Stealing would be stealing, whether it's for personal gain or to keep your child alive. Rape would be rape, whether you had the mental capacity to understand it or not. Murder would be murder, whether it was premeditated, in defence, or in revenge.
I am sorry you got upset, but I won't apologize for responding as I did, or for you having a law degree and me not having one. The comments you made about the mentally challenged being celibate as well as other comments, made no sense for someone with any legal knowledge to say. As far as you believing you should follow your own moral code rather than the laws of the land, I sincerely hope you don't actually practice law. Because that is some seriously frightening and disturbing stuff for a practicing lawyer to say.
I didn't get upset. I am getting fairly impatient with you, but there's an easy solution to that if it comes to it. Possibly you aren't good at picking up on rhetorical devices? Is that what's going on? So when I added the "do we?" at the end of the paragraph about mentally challenged people not being expected to be celibate, you read it as a genuine question? I'll try to be more straightforward. Your assertion that "the law is simple. Very, very simple" is nonsense. There are lots of areas in which the laws on consent are, in fact, quite challenging to interpret in a logically consistent way. I gave examples of two of these--R&J laws which seem to violate either the rule of "no sex without consent" or "people under a certain age can't give consent"; and interpretations of the law when it comes to the mentally ill or intellectually impaired, which, again, violate either the rule of "no sex without consent" or "people with mental impairments cannot give consent". I agree that the second example is less philosophically difficult than the first one, since we can look at different levels of mental impairment and make a judgement call about whether any given individual is too impaired to consent at a given time, but it certainly isn't "very, very simple" as you assert. Okay. I tried to express that in simpler terms. Does it make sense to you now?
The reason you can't find much is thast it hardly ever happens which is (one reason) why your plot is implausible. Most rapes are committed by men rapes are rarely committed by women and where they are they are usually also commited against women (paedophile rape aside),also most rapes are committed by friends and acquaintances not by strangers - and serial rape is even rarer So you are asking your reader to believe in a female rapist of strangers who targets men and does so serially, whilst also being able to overpower a cop without harming him so badly that hes unable to seek revenge on her and as if that wasnt implausible enough you have her motivation being that she can't get sex because shes not attractive , meaning presumably that she has to force him to have sex with her rather than using objects to violate him with. and then you add to that that she commands a whole crew of similar characters.... and yet she's somehow charasimatic enough to lead this crew of psychopaths and coerce them into incriminating themselves... and then she's stupid enough to store that inciminating evidence somewhere where it can be accessed by third parties I'm sorry but your plot could only be less plausible if the main protagoniost was a fluffy pink unicorn called gerald who moonlights as a CIA assasin when not cooking in michelin starred resteraunts on the planet zog. If you really must write a story about rape (despite all the urging not to) for gods stake do yourself a favour and make the assailant male , and if you want him to be a gang leader make him a gang leader who also commits rape, not a leader of a gang of rapists. And if your next question is "how can i make it more plausible ? " I swear my head is going to explode which will be both inconvenient and messy so please don't (the answer is by following the advice in this and the other 100+ threads)
Yeah I realise that - pleasure isnt necessarily the right word, but there are books that might cover some fairly unpleasant subject matter that one keeps to read again out of interest - the handmaidens tale wasnt like that for me, I read it once , found it very disturbing (as i realise the reader is intended to) and then gave it away as i couldnt see it being something i'd want to read again. The fact remains though that Atwood still handled the rape scenes relatively sensitively, in that they werent graphic and the actions of the rapists werent excused by the narative .. and also that Atwood was already a well known author and thus would get more leeway in pitching this kind of thing than an unknown and unpublished would I was reading the lincoln lawyer (Michael Connoly) last night - that has a a rape as its main subject (in fact two rapes and a murder ) , however the rapes are only described in a fragmentary way and only after the fact in legal reports and such ... and connelly goes ot of his way to show through the narrative that the rapes are not justified by the victims lifestyle or by the attackers motivations .... and again Connely had already wriiten a whole slew of Harry Bosch books before he pitched the Lincoln Lawyer
It makes perfect sense, as it did from the start. What you're insisting I must agree on is something very, very simple, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with you; that's not a TOS. And the whole thing hinges on something very small: you use the word 'law' to mean 'all that stuff' - courts, juries, precedent, the media, and every misunderstanding and misconception about the law, and all the ways people get around it. I don't, and despite you insisting I have to, I don't have to. I use the word 'law' to mean one thing: the black letter law as written in a book. If I want to discuss precedent, I discuss precedent. If I want to discuss the ways people get around the law, then I discuss the ways people get around the law. If I want to discuss problems with court procedure, or copping pleas, ditto. If I wanted to discuss all of it and treat it as one single seething entity - well I wouldn't, because there are too many moving parts, each with different effects and attempting to treat it all the same leads to assumptions, generalities - and conspiracy theories.
No, Romeo and Juliet laws are laws. Statutes. "Black letter law as written in a book." And, honestly, you're getting a bit self-contradictory... you were the one who brought up precedent and mentioned how precedents are binding on courts--your exact words were: Yeah but you're not understanding how the law works. The written law works together with precedent. Decisions made previously in some courts are binding on that court. But now you don't want to talk about precedents because they're not law? What? Get your story straight. All of your interpretations of degrees of impairment, etc., would also be more likely to come from case law rather than statute, so, again, I'm not sure why you brought it up if you don't think it's relevant to the discussion? I mean, really, if you want to talk only about statutes you should probably stop using the word "rape", since many state criminal codes don't use the word at all. Sure, we use it in the "all that stuff" context, but you're sticking purely to statutes, so... you need to use the right terminology. (in case you're still not picking up on rhetoric, that was sarcasm). And if you're sticking with just the statutes without case law to help interpret it, you're going to be looking at strange situations like New York State, where, based on my reading of the statute, the word "rape" only applies to vaginal intercourse, while oral or anal penetration are classed as different crimes. So - no. Rape laws are not very, very simple. Nope. They're not.
Am I right in thinking that R&J laws are only a defence to charges or statuatory rape (or ULSKAM type offences) , not to actual rape ? that is that a 17 year old who has consexual sex with his 15 year old girlfreind is not commiting an offence under R&J , but its not a defence if he forces her to against her will ? And if that is so how do they deal with the fact that a minor can't generally give consent ? (like you said its a mess - no piece of statute law is simple, if it was we wouldnt need lawyers)
Yeah, it's only for statutory rape. I don't think there really is a philosophical justification for it, at least not one with which I'm familiar. To some extent I think it's an extension of a practical recognition that is sometimes made of a sort of mutual impairment - if two mentally challenged people have sex, even if there are questions about their capacity to consent, it doesn't make sense from a practical perspective to call it rape, since they'd both be raping each other, really, and there's no benefit to criminalizing people who are simultaneously victims... But we don't seem to see a similar reluctance in some cases where two parties were both drunk, and one of them says she (yes, usually she) hadn't been able to consent due to impairment. Even though the other participant may have been impaired to a similar degree, we don't seem to worry about his (yes, usually his) lack of ability to consent. We can argue that because the accused was voluntarily impaired he should lose the protection of hiding behind his impairment, but the victim was often voluntarily impaired as well, but we don't seem to want to take that into account? I mean, I understand the motivation behind the arguments that are made--date rape, rape culture on college campuses, the PUA bullshit--it's all disgusting, and I absolutely think our laws should try to shut that crap down. But it's really not philosophically/logically pure. Not simple. There are other weird exceptions that have to be looked at as well - it's usually wrong to have sex with an unconscious person, but if there was prior consent (eg. if a man says he'd love to be woken up with a blow job) is it still illegal? How do alternate forms of sexual expression fit in - BDSM activities can be covered by the understanding of prior consent, but some full-time master-slave relationships seem to be blurring the lines significantly - is the sub in those relationships truly able to give or withhold consent when s/he has lost so much mental autonomy? What about a prostitute who's so overwhelmed by addiction or poverty that s/he can't truly refuse? Is the consent meaningful in those situations? The statutes aren't clear in and of themselves, and then when we try to apply them to real-world scenarios everything gets muddied beyond belief. Blech.
I suspect that thats because, as i mentioned to the Op much higher up its much harder (no pun intended) for a woman to rape (via normal sex at any rate) a man who's totally incapable through alcohol - my experience at least of being a complete pisshead when younger is that if you are so pickled that you don't know what you are doing the chances are high that even the most skilled partner isnt going to be able to provoke or sustain a convincing errection anyway
I think it depends on the individual's physiology, but also on the degree of impairment we're saying is necessary before we lose the ability to consent. We could also be looking at drugs other than alcohol, I suppose. Did you ever combine alcohol and Viagra? The consumption of the Viagra, assuming you knew about it, would suggest you were interested in having sex, but possibly the situation would change as the night wore on, before the drug wore off...
Not as such - I did V&E on one occasion (which lead to some very ill judged behaviour but i'd still say it was consensual because i had a fair idea of the effects going in), alcohol in large quantities is a depresant so i'd expect it to counteract the effects of the V, depending of course on how much of both you took. I get what you are saying, but the point i was making is that a man can penetrate a woman while shes completely unconcious and/or unable to function -which is the basis of many date rape drugs including spiking drinks with spirits and so forth. Its more difficult (although granted not completely impossible) for a woman to rape (via normal sex) a man who is in a similar condition. One of the many problems with the OPs plot is that sheer terror would have a similar effect on knocking down an errection, and also that a sexually inexperienced assailant (because lets not forget shes doing this because she can't get laid *bangs head on wall in frustration* ) isnt likely to be able to stimulate a man in that condition sufficiently to 'consumate' the act (thats not to say that she can't violate him in other ways - but doing that isnt going to satisfy her alledged urge.
Even though the assailant in my story is sexually inexperienced, when it comes to getting consensual sex, do you think that maybe she could be more experienced in the rape department? Like maybe she tried raping guys at first, but was not able to, and she had to practice at it over the months, and got a lot better at it? Then she knows how to rape before getting to the MC? So this makes her more experienced in raping a man, than being able to seduce one, consensually?
No - because a female rapist of men is unlikely, a serial female rapist of men is incredibly unlikely ... added to all the other stretches of plausibility in your story and its completely implausible also 'men are dogs' (well some are) so the whole premise of an ugly girl not being able to get sex is ridiculous to the point of absurdity - ugly girls get laid all the time (not least because of beer goggles if we want to be sexist about it) Then we have the premise that because she couldnt get sex she became a rapist which is also deeply implausible and so on .... as i said before with the blood ins etc you've got an interesting story line but you are destroying it with this implausible nonsense, if you really must have a rapist make him male (and come up with a better motive than 'couldnt get sex' - violent rape isnt about sex per se its about power and control)
I've heard a lot of stuff that rape can cause erections. Even if you stimulate a gay man's penis enough it will get erect, it doesn't mean he's attracted to you. It's just how easy it is to stimulate, and how fulfilling the orgasm is where it matters, but you can push through. Heck, the penis can get somewhat erect from heat, it comes in or out based on temperature as a protection mechanism from freezing which the sperm are vulnerable to damage from. But if he's under sedative drugs yeah, maybe he wouldn't.
