Comments Elsewhere

Tlaloc, I agree with you that the question of what the law should be is more interesting, and important, than the question of what the law in fact is. But I do not think that this is nearly as essential to the argument as you seem to take it to be. Here are some quotes from you that I think are indicative of what is essential to the argument:

Tlaloc: This is why intent matter. Make sense now?

Tlaloc: Intention is critical. If the guy keeps the wallet because he thinks I’m thanking him for shooting the maniac behind me he did not rob me.

Tlaloc: I don’t think he should be charged with armed robbery since he had no intention to rob. He should of course be charged with B&E and assault.

Tlaloc: Because he is the one accused of a crime. Frankly this question has me stumped, why wouldn’t you consider the motivation of the kidnapper? Rape is a crime but sex is not. Motivation and action both play a role in distinguishing the two.

Tlaloc: Stating something does not make it true. You believe that consent is all important. I believe that consent is certainly important but that intent is also.

These comments clearly indicate that you are arguing at cross-purposes with the other commenters in this thread. Further that you are arguing at cross-purposes because you have the wrong idea, or a confused collection of ideas, of what “rape” and “consent” mean.

Rape is defined as non-consensual sex. I am going to simply stipulate this without argument, because it is obvious. If you don’t believe me, look it up in a dictionary. It is important to note that “non-consensual sex” does not mean “sex intended to be non-consensual;” it means sex that is, in fact, non-consensual.

Thus, what matters here — and also, incidentally, in other cases of assault and battery, robbery, and other similar crimes — is whether what happened was coerced or consensual.

And, here is the important part: when we say that something is coerced, that’s because of what happened to the victim. Not because of what’s going on with the perpetrator. If sex is coerced under duress (here, through the use of repeated physical violence, threats, and terror), then, under any sane moral standard, that sex is non-consensual, no matter what the coercer had in mind when he did the coercing. It’s non-consensual because the victim didn’t consent; not because the coercer intended for her not to consent. And if the sex is non-consensual, then it is rape.

If you want to argue about whether rapists should be treated differently by the criminal justice system, or in moral discourse, depending on the intent that they had when they committed the rape, then you’re free to do so. What you’re not free to do is make up your own definition for the word “rape” so as to make it dependent on the rapist’s, rather than the victim’s, condition.