Rush Limbaugh complains about nonconsensual sex being called rape

[nimelennar]

@GlyphGryph

I don’t by the argument that there’s consent inside of a power imbalance is inherently immoral, or is even immoral at all. Consent can absolutely exist in all these situations, and Limbaugh is actually (ugh) right in that consent is not enough.

This is why I qualified “consent” with “meaningful.” In allmost of the situations that I describe¹, I believe that both parties might be able to initially consent, but that the power imbalance applies massive disincentives to the less-powerful person’s ability to withdraw that consent, to the point of coercion. Even if the more-powerful person has absolutely no intention of using that power if consent is withheld. Consent cannot be meaningful without the freedom to revoke it.

¹ struck out “all” and replaced it with “most,” because I don’t think that “consent” can apply to those who don’t fully understand the situation. We don’t have sentient chickens yet.

@GlyphGryph

As an example, let’s take the employer-employee situation. If a woman and her husband both work in the same company, and she is promoted to management, should we consider her initiating sex while they are home to be inherently immoral because he now works for her? Should it be illegal? Even if we agree that in general there should be limitations on power imbalances like this in relationships, we might agree that we should create exceptions for situations like these where the relationship existed before the power imbalance.

I think that it’s a very bad idea to have a manager placed in a position where a spouse (or other relationship that might create a conflict of interest) is reporting directly to them. It can affect the situation at home, it can affect the situation at work, human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together… Mass hysteria! If spouses are working together, and one of them is to be given a promotion, then one or both of them should be moved laterally within the organization, to remove the conflict of interest. If there’s no way to leverage the power imbalance, then it might as well not exist, and it removes all possibility of coercion.

As for whether a direct reporting position actually affects the consent within a spousal relationship… I would say that, as before, it can affect the less-powerful member of the relationship’s ability to withdraw or withhold consent, if they believe — even falsely — that their professional career might be at risk if they do so. I might not say that it’s inherently coercive, the way it would be if the professional employer/employee relationship existed before the sexual one did, but I still see it as a very bad idea.

@GlyphGryph

We need to be alright as a society with saying “we are okay with restricting the right of certain people in certain situations from freely consenting, while admitting doing this is bad, if in doing so we think we think it reduces the risks of other bad things, specifically situations where individuals may appear to consent but do not actually do so, from arising as often”.

That’s the honest way to approach the topic, and personally the better way, because it gives us the ground to make reasonable and acceptable alterations to policy where possible to minimize the harm we are causing (and it’s important to admit with these policies that we often cause harm, hurting people who have done no wrong) while maximizing the benefits (preventing people from doing wrong).

I agree. Separate from the whole question of “Is a power imbalance inherently coercive towards the continuation of a sexual relationship?” is a question of whether we should be okay with restricting some truly consensual relationships because those relationships present too high a risk of not actually being consensual. And I agree that we should be making laws practically, and perhaps even scientifically, in such a way to create the greatest good and the least harm.