I think this is where the disconnect lies. It isn’t a given. A prostitute could refuse to have intercourse with a potential client and if the client forces themself on the prostitute, then it would be rape. If the prostitute doesn’t consent to a particular type of sex but the client forces themself on the prostitute in that particular way, it would be rape. The involvement of money and a transactional relationship seems to cloud the issue for some people, but none of that changes the nature of rape itself. You can’t rape a prostitute and then pay her money after the fact to make it not rape. It was always rape whether you threw money at her or not if there was no consent.
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I’m not sure what you are trying to tell me. I am arguing that hiring a sex worker who is in desperate need of money or under the coercion of a pimp might be considered a form of nonviolent rape (or at least coercion), even if the act was consensual on its face. Are you saying that it is not rape or that it is violent?
- An example would be, imagine a man is driving along a rural highway with little traffic and sees a woman who has been in an accident and is in desperate need of medical attention. If the man offers to give her a ride to the hospital if she performs a sexual act on him, might not one describe that as a form of rape even though it was consensual and, we might say, nonviolent?
Statutory rape is often nonviolent, but it’s still considered rape. Same with rape by deception, as @CarlMud references. So no, it is not forcible and violent “by definition.” That perpetuates the myth that it’s something that’s mainly done by strangers lurking in dark alleys rather than husbands and boyfriends and cops and “nice guys.”
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Holy fucksocks at some of the comments in this post.
SMGDH
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This unfortunately seems to be the norm in any thread discussing rape and/or sex work.
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Unfortunate, but true.
Our ‘civilization’ is so fucking twisted.
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“Sex workers can’t be raped” is not what I’m saying, or even implying. The examples you are citing don’t apply to this situation at all. There is an agreement to make a transaction. “I will do X in exchange for Y”, “I will do W+X in exchange for Z.”
In the case of sex work, sex is unambiguously being provided as a service. It is an entertainment service. It should probably be openly provided to everyone and just be a part of adult human life with no stigma involved. In this case, providing this service is illegal, and the cops are using this in order to receive free service.
Hmm, so I would argue that “consent” is not what is being purchased, it is the act itself. If the sex worker makes the agreement, then decides they don’t want to do it, now consent is an issue. If the client enters the agreement knowing they are not going to hold up their end, and receives the service, I guess you would call this fraud or theft.
I guess I don’t see the equivalence between “tricking a sex worker into providing their services for free” and “posing as someone’s partner in order to have sex with them”. They both involve willful deceit in order to receive sex, but in the former case, sex is explicitly offered as a commodity. To retroactively, when payment is not received, make it an issue of consent that is equivalent with the many other examples given in these comments seems disingenuous to me.
One equivalence I do see, is the rhetoric of the extreme right and the extreme left. They both appeal to base human emotions to make their case. I think it’s a mistake. I am on the side of practically all progressive ideas, but generally can’t stand progressives any more than alt right nimrods. I prefer to think for myself.
Anyway, I made my initial comment because I felt “state sponsored rape” was unnecessarily inflammatory, and hurts the cause more than it helps. This is clearly an injustice. The title of this post “Petition to make it illegal for police to have sex with sex workers before arresting them” is much more effective way of putting it. I’d also like to add that I didn’t realize the word “prostitute” was considered derogatory.
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I’d say “necessarily inflammatory”, but I’m also wary of getting stuck in loop of outrage based politics and virtue signaling one-upsmanship.
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I liked your post because you explore both sides and aren’t stuck in rhetoric. I think any reasonable person would consider this a lesser crime than rape at knifepoint for instance. But…
If consent isn’t at least partially purchased, then why do you think they would consent? Or are you somehow implying that buying the act obviates the need for consent?
Here’s where we strongly disagree. I’ve met several women who have dabbled in prostitution, and believe me they are not commodities and don’t consider their customers to be commodities. They performed very extensive screening of clients and rejected a fair number. Your average drug addicted street prostitute may not screen as extensively, but they still screen out people who appear harmful to their interests. Sex actors are not equivalent commodities.
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Of course that’s rape. But my point is that you seem to divide rape into “violent” and “non-violent” categories. The woman is in fear for her life. How is that not a violent crime?
And why would you call that situation “consensual”?
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I’m saying the exact opposite: just because it WASN’T done by a stranger in an alley, but instead by the affluent, white captain of the football team, doesn’t mean the crime gets to be re-classified as “non-violent”. It’s still considered a violent crime.
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Something like 100 comments got posted in this thread while I was having dinner last night. I didn’t bother to check it, because I knew it couldn’t be good. Then I got to it this morning, and I reallyREALLYreally wish I hadn’t.
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Consent isn’t what is being purchased. But informed consent is necessary for the act to not be rape. The money is irrelevant. If you aren’t a cop and don’t pay the sex worker, it is theft of services or a violation of a verbal contract. Paying or not paying is not what makes it rape. It’s all about informed consent.
Statutory rape is considered rape because a minor isn’t perceived by the system as being able to consent.
Having sex with an unconscious person is considered rape because an unconscious person can’t provide consent (though there might be some gray area if you consented in advance to it, but that’s not the scenario that comes up in rape scenarios that garner charges and trials).
Having sex with someone who thinks you’re someone else because you purposely deceived them (the twin sibling scenario) is considered rape by deception because the consent was not informed. If the victim didn’t know you weren’t the person you purported to be, it was rape.
Are you seeing the pattern? Rape is always (as far as I’ve ever heard) determined by consent or lack thereof.
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The rest of your post makes sense to me, but I’m not getting this. As far as I can tell consent is exactly what is being purchased, but it is a conditional consent that is invalidated by bad faith, by not paying or having no intention to pay in the first place.
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It could be a semantic or conceptual issue. To me consent isn’t able to be purchased. The act of sex is paid for, not the consent.
If you get a massage, you’re not paying for the consent of the massage therapist. You’re paying for the service of the massage. Yes, the message therapist’s consent to provide you with a massage is required, but it’s not what is being purchased.
Nobody walks up to a sex worker and says, “hey, how much consent can I get for $100?”
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Well, this isn’t something I’ve considered at length. I still think consent is exactly what you purchase, but it is conditional and limited. While someone may not say “how much consent can I get for $100?” the consent is implied as a key part of the transaction that they do ask for, especially since different sex acts, not just amount of time, are subject to different fees, at least in part because they are different levels of consent.
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Honest question for you. Consider this scenario:
You tell someone you have a thing for “my doctor says I’m going to die tomorrow and my dying wish is to have sex with you”. They feel bad for you and you two have sex. Afterward you say, “surprise! I’m going to be just fine.”
Rape or not?
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Legally, I think it would depend on the jurisdiction and if this scenario matched available definitions of rape.
Conceptually, it seems like it could be rape to me, but I’d need more details to make a determination.
There does seem to be a clear difference between rape by deception and lying to get laid. And there’s a difference between the moral and the legal issues at play in any scenario.
I don’t recall anyone saying that they consider it rape if someone were to lie prior to a one night stand and say that they were a doctor when they were actually a janitor. Lying about your job isn’t necessarily lying about your identity the way pretending to be a completely different person is (like in the twin sibling scenario).
This hypothetical is very gray, so legally I think you wouldn’t get consensus from a jury about it without compelling arguments from the prosecution. Morally, it seems to be as bad as rape by deception.
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Is lying not deception, though?
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But “rape by deception” is not just about lying.
Plenty of people lie to get laid by saying “I love you,” but we don’t tend to consider that rape.
Most of the examples I’ve seen referred to as rape by deception involve lying about identity. The British woman who convinced another woman she was a man and had sex with her multiple times lied about being a different person with a different sex. Police officers in the UK had sex, got into relationships, and even fathered children with women entirely for the purposes of infiltrating groups that law enforcement had targeted for long term surveillance.
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