As far as I can tell, most of the people worrying about the legions of poor, innocent men getting sent to jail or — gasp! — not having sex at any time they deem appropriate because us vengeful bitches are going to rat them out don’t actually take rape seriously. Oh, they’ll say that they think rape is wrong and that given the chance they’d kick any rapist’s ass and other tough guy shit. Once you propose actually doing something about rape, however, the mask slips. “Wait, you think we should actually prosecute these rapists? Don’t you think that’s a little rash?” To them, rape is a painful inconvenience that they will most likely never have to deal with*. They don’t see rape as the ultimate expression of patriarchal contempt for women; they see it as some individual dude’s assholery/social ineptitude.

Because they don’t understand the inner workings of rape culture, they assume we don’t either. Of course Twisty’s Law sounds crazy to them! They don’t understand how close they are to being rapists because they’ve managed to separate themselves from the herd. They’re special. Only a handful of sociopaths — of which they can’t be a part, of course! — are truly capable of raping, so tilting the law just to get back at a few crazy people seems ridiculous.

Or hell, maybe they DO know how close they are to being rapists. It’s so hard to tell with some of them. The point that I’m trying to make is that these people don’t understand that women, in general, take rape pretty fucking seriously. In fact, we (shockingly!) take it even more seriously than someone stealing our crap or hitting our car! When some asshole slams into your car, do the cops have to make sure that you didn’t really want a big dent in your car? Maybe you asked this person to do it for the insurance money! When someone walks off with your laptop, do the cops refuse to help you out unless you can provide documentation confirming you had a laptop in the first place? Maybe you’re just looking for a little attention.

Rape is a crime that not only violates a person’s bodily autonomy but reinforces the fucked up idea that Non-Male Persons are the equivalent of a cheap McDonald’s Kids’ Meal toy to “The People”. The fact that it is considered less worthy of justice by society at large is sick. I’m sure some day some rape apologist will find this and try to argue that they DO take rape more seriously than the theft of a laptop, and that I’m just setting up strawmen. Riddle me this, Future Rape Apologist: Why do you not like Twisty’s Law, then? It simply puts rape in the same category as any other crime. It assumes that any person claiming to have been raped is telling the truth unless proven otherwise.

I’m not going to deny that there probably are a few people who would make false accusations of rape to “get back” at an ex-partner. In the same way, some people — even Male People! — will make false allegations of physical assault against someone they feel has wronged them. Strangely enough, I don’t hear anyone crying out in support of the falsely accused in general. I don’t hear anyone fighting against all those laws that assume victims are truthful at the expense of potentially innocent people. The fact of the matter is that rape occurs a hell of a lot more often than false allegations of rape do, just as physical assault happens more often than false allegations of physical assault do. The fact of the matter is that rape victims are the only victims ever considered guilty until proven innocent. To argue that rape cases should be treated differently from murder or physical assault or jaywalking or anything is stupid at best, but most likely misogynistic.

*Bad news for the ladies who agree with this viewpoint, at any rate!

I understand that some of you guys here and on the original thread are trying to make a reasonable point, by worrying about the “My ex will say I raped her to get back at me” kind of nonsense you’re afraid will happen under this kind of change.

What I say is, if the default position is no, if consent has to be proven by the accused, if a man knows he will face consequences for doing what he *knows* is wrong but has been rationalizing ot himself- women will be freer. Our power will not depend on sex- if it ceases to be a commodity, and becomes a form of communication, it is no longer a tool to be used for revenge or anything similar. Women will have fewer assholes troubling them, and the tiny number who might be crazy revenge-seeking exes will not develop that type of screwy personality. It takes away the “I have to say no so you don’t htink I’m a slut” AND the “I have to say yes or you won’t like me” and makes it “Well, I’m interested so I’ll just TELL him” and “I don’t have to put on an act. He has to interact with me in such a way that will make me want him, AND HE KNOWS THIS.”

Basically, when you know you don’t have to worry to begin with, all those little patriarchy-induced neuroses disappear.

On an unrelated note, these discussions make me grateful for my boyfriend- he gets it, and he gets it better than I do sometimes.

You’re relying a lot on the fairness of the woman, and that’s kind of stupid in my opinion.

I thought we were fighting for equality, and this doesn’t sound like it at all.

Secondly: The patriarchy informs our reality, it doesn’t control it. Your analysis seems to rely on interpreting the fact that the patriarchy and our culture’s misogyny both inform our social framework (and thus our basis for constituting events and forms intelligibly) as meaning that every sexual encounter between a man and a woman is - having been informed by misogyny - abusive. This analysis is flawed in two serious ways: First, it takes the general (patriarchal privilege and hierarchy informs our self conception and comprehension of interrelations) and applies it uncritically to the particular (this man is given patriarchal privilege, the patriarchy is violent, therefore all of his actions in relation to women are violence). And, second, it superficially accepts this leap without following it to its conclusions. If the framework of our society can be applied in terms of culpability to the actions they inform on no greater basis than that they are so informed, then the location of those individuals’ genders would not be mitigating factors. Sex, whenever it occurs in our society - no matter who it occurs between - is located within a patriarchal society, and thus it would all be rape. Lesbian sex would be a form of heterosexual rape. Similarly, all speech would be misogynist vituperation. And of course we are also informed by white-skin privilege, so all interactions would also be ethnic hate crimes.

Privilege is not a de facto abuse of privilege. The one delineation (which you didn’t draw, but I’m guessing is there) that would make your given scenario separate from “all actions informed by the patriarchy” would be the allocation of privilege. In any person, those aspects about them which can be located as “male” will allow them more privilege, and in an interaction between someone whose gender performance is socially coherent as “male” and someone who is equally intelligible as “female,” their degrees of privilege will be at markedly disparate levels. However you have skipped straight from “the patriarchy exists” to “everything which the patriarchy endorses is irredeemable,” which lays a culpability on the wrong party in that exchange. “The Patriarchy” is not an alien force exerted by “The Patriarchs,” who can be identified by the fact that they have been endorsed by “The Patriarchy” (how circular is that?), it is that facet of our society as whole - constituted from people of all points in the gendering spectrum - which recognises and endorses that definition of privilege. It is the very fact that this privilege, this recognition, and this endorsement are meted out on the basis of features which are not themselves meriting of it and which have taken no role in earning it which defines their perpetuation as bigotry, and to lay culpability for their existence on those who receive that privilege would deny that dislocation.

You have also legitimised your position in two ways which I find rather underhanded: by initially framing it as being an argument for a system whereby “lack of consent were the default.” Which is - when it is functional - what we already have, and is certainly our current ideal. If one person were to initiate sex with someone else while they were unconscious, that person would certainly never make any statement barring the rapist from proceeding, but it would still be rape since lack of consent is the default, and it is only by giving that consent that it becomes permissible.
You also draw a false connection between your own definition of all consent as illegitimate and all (heterosexual) sex as rape with the spectre of childhood sexual abuse, since children often give consent and then are faced with having to “rescind” that consent years later. However that connection would only be legitimate if adult sexuality and child sexual abuse were themselves equal, since what makes child sexual abuse so horrific is specific to the issue of consent: a child’s consent - having no perspective, being too young and immature and presexual to understand the consequences and meaning of the situation - is not informed consent. To use child abuse as an argument for this model puts the sexualisation of children on par with the sexuality of a mature woman.