Married Women Can't be Raped
Offline I've heard this bullshit from FEMALE Muslims and Christians before, that if you're married you cannot be "raped" because you agreed to sex. Part of me wants to take them to a home for battered women who have escaped their abusive husbands and shove it in their face. Some people need a serious wake up call, because this kind of distorted logic is sick.
This should be added to the precepts because it's not only irrational, but a tactic of religious leaders gaining more power over women. Rape is rape, with or without a concept or certificate behind it. Marriage does not equal sex. That's another reason why the pressure to wait until marriage can be dangerous, since sex/marriage get confused for one another and people lose track of their obligations and rights.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
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OK, I can play this game.
I have been with the same woman for over 20 years. She doesn't want to fuck. She has made that her life.
So my choices are:
Force her to fuck me. I don't want to rape her.
Discrete mercy fucks. They are fun but not common.
Friends with benefits. I wish. Even so, they are a risk.
=
AIGS, you might want to expand on your point a bit more. Are you trying to say that the condoning of rape within marriage is just part and parcel of the whole sexual dysfunction promoted by the religions the OP mentioned? If so, you haven't convinced me yet. Telling someone to not only subject themselves to physical and sexual harm, but to embrace that seems to go beyond just sexual harm. And sexual harm from frustration does not seem the same as sexual harm from force. But, please, if you have an argument that you think would help me better see what I think you are trying to say, I'd love to hear it.
Peppermint, helping people stand up for themselves and demand their inherit rights as humans can be a maddening process. There are so many subtle ways of getting a person to give up their rights to their own life. It's hard enough to clearly see your own rights that trying to shift this same perspective to someone else sometimes just doesn't work. When you get frustrated, try examining why you are frustrated. Remind yourself that you are not a savior, you are just another person, and that while you may help who you can, it will never be everyone. Although at first this sounds really rude, quite frankly, you're just not that good (no matter who you are) .
If you expect yourself to be more than just another person you will lose your effectiveness - and drive yourself insane. Good for you for trying to help.
"I am that I am." - Proof that the writers of the bible were beyond stoned.
I get very passionate about things even though of course none of us are superheroes. Still, for what it's worth, it's important to reach out and educate and give support.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
Issues like this one are one of the reasons I feel so passionate about explaining the human condition scientifically. Sex is one aspect of human relationships, and it is not equivalent to reproduction, marriage, or intimacy, although it certainly plays a part in all three.
I feel really bad for people like AiG -- and there are a lot of them -- who still have many of the bonds involved in marriage, but no longer have the sexual bond. Our culture carries myths about fidelity that would be best left behind. Marriages don't have to be doomed to failure if the sex is gone, but most people don't believe that. If nothing else, the existence of healthy and long lasting "open marriages" proves that it's possible to separate sex from the long term intimacy and friendship in marriage. Jealousy and myth are mutually reinforcing. We believe sex with anyone else means the marriage is over, so jealousy is stronger than it ordinarily would be, which pretty much spells the end of the marriage. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
As to the OP, I'm just going to give my opinion rather than try to make a case for a verifiable correct answer. It seems to me that when two people agree to be exclusive sexual partners in marriage, each owes it to the other to make good on the promise. That is not to say that they ought to be "sex on demand" machines, but rather that on balance, they accomodate their partner's sexual desires as much as possible. This doesn't really have much to do with rape in marriage, of course. Forcing sex on someone is rape regardless of a marriage certificate. I don't even think there ought to be any question of that. However, in the case of women who have refused all sex to their husbands for a long period of time, we can at least understand some of the frustration felt by a man who is forced into celibacy by someone who promised to be a sexual partner. It's unfortunate that many men feel that raping their wives is the only way they can get sexual satisfaction. I wish religion hadn't forced permanent monogamy in marriage upon us.
Basically, I don't condone or excuse marital rape. However, I do think we ought to be sane about preventing it whenever possible. Men who can't get sex become angry and frustrated. If a wife who has sworn a husband to fidelity creates a sexually frustrated angry husband, this is a problem. She certainly has the right to not have sex if she doesn't want to, but it is unfair of her to force celibacy on her husband, particularly when she has sworn otherwise.
To be clear, I'm not blaming women for being raped. That's certainly a no-no in pretty much all circumstances. However, if we can take the concept of blame out of it and just think of things as facts of nature, perhaps we can actually accomplish something. In egalitarian society, no woman should ever be forced into sex. However, regardless of the society, sexually frustrated angry men are more likely to rape than those who are happy and content with their sex lives. With this knowledge, women who don't want to have sex with their husbands can greatly reduce the chances that they'll be raped by being rational and understanding of their husbands' wants and needs. Instead of coming at it from the conclusion, and saying, "It's that woman's fault that she got raped because she wouldn't put out," we can say, "It's a shame that any women gets raped, but perhaps we can prevent it in the future by adopting a rational view of sexual gratification in marriages where the lust is gone."
Am I saying a woman who doesn't want to fuck her husband ought to let him have another sex partner? In a word, yes, if that's what he wants. Sure, it goes against everything we've been taught about marriage, but marriage is not an accurate reflection of the normal state of human bonding. The system is at least partially broken, and it's not that hard to fix.
Here's a simple way of looking at it. We've all known people who were best friends for years and years despite being married to other people. Obviously, friendship and intimacy are possible without sex, and some people simply don't lust after each other enough to make it into a sexual relationship. All we have to do is realize that it's possible for the same thing to happen after a sexual relationship. If two people are still good friends, still like each other, and still have common interests, and the only real problem is that one or both of them are not sexually attracted to each other, how is that any different? The answer is that it isn't functionally different, but our expectations of being sexually involved with one person for life have imposed an unrealistic expectation which we fervently and jealously try to live up to.
[End Rant]
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
While I agree with you overall, and understand the passion behind you here, are you really saying that domestic abuse always involves sexual abuse? This is rarely the case, you know. Your proposal is equivalent to being outraged at parents injuring their children through negligence by not placing them in car seats, and parading people through a childrens burn unit to drive home your point. Both are terrible, but they are apples and oranges.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
You do know rape in marriage only became a crime in the UK in 1991 and in fact I don't even think it counts as rape today in the US ( its a lesser assault charge).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_rape.
Of course regardless of the actual crime I would have thought getting a conviction is likely to be extremely remote
The trouble with rape is that it's so hard to pin down. Rape is only possible to define legally as rape, if a woman actually thinks she has been raped. A woman who lives in a culture that tells her it is her duty to have sex with her husband will have a hard time admitting to herself, let alone anyone else, that she is being raped by her husband.
That's why I understand Peppermint's outrage at this, but also understand how incredably difficult this issue is to adress.
I'm sorry to drag out my girlfriend's past again on these boards, but it's an obvious example in this case.
When she was fifteen, she got her first boyfriend. The relationship quickly became violent, as he would beat her when she didn't act the way he wanted her to.
They also had sex regularly.
After a year the relationship finally ended, and this only after her parents finally stepped in and forced her to not see him anymore.
Why?
Because she told herself she was in love with him, and the violence only exasserbated her confusion. "If I don't love him, why do I stay with him even as he is violent to me?" she would ask herself.
Now she is 22 and we have talked alot about this relationship. She says now, that without a doubt, she was raped by him many times when they were together, because she never really "wanted" to. Sometimes she indulged him, other times he quite literally forced her. But she also knows that had anyone asked her at the time: "are you being raped?", she would have vehemently denied it. At the time she thought sleeping with him was what she was "supposed to do", since he was her boyfriend.
Now obviously, a confused 15 year old girl is not the same as a woman that's been with her husband for many many years, and and only now doesn't want to have sex anymore, but the point remains that it is possible to be in a relationship with someone who is raping you on a regular basis, and yet you don't call it that, because you think it is what you are "supposed" to do.
The problem is further mudled by the fact that a woman can sleep with a man, without really wanting to, and still not be raped. A wife that loves her husband, and wants him to be happy, could indulge him, and not feel violated afterwards, even if her heart wasn't in it. And it's a sliding scale from there to full-on coerced sex, so where exactly is the line drawn? When exactly is it rape? The woman herself might not be able to identify that line (as per my girlfriend who only years later realises it was actually rape), so how can the rest of us, let alone a court of law, be able to draw that line?
My personal experiences about this should make it clear how I feel about spousal rape: nothing angers me and sadens me more, so I get you Peppermint. Trust me, if I ever met my girlfriend's ex I would end up in prison after I was done with him.
But even so, the issue is clearly muddled, because how can you pin down what is rape and what is not, when the woman herself more often than not can't tell the difference herself?
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
That's like saying a boxer can't receive a low blow because he/she agreed to be punched. Rape and consentual sex are so obviously far removed that I can't imagine the mental state that produced that thought.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Rape, IMO, is a malicious, intentional act of forcing sex on an obviously unwilling victim. This can happen in or out of marriage, and even with this definition, it's still hard to pin down, but just as a guideline:
* Wife says no ten times over the evening. Wife gets into bed, husband gets into bed and starts trying. Wife is so tired, she quits saying no and lays there motionless while he does his thing. Not rape.
* Wife says no ten times over the evening. Wife gets into bed, husband gets in and starts trying. Wife pushes him off, and tries to get away, at which point husband pins her down and roughly forces himself into her. Possibly rape.
Only.... what if they enjoy rough sex sometimes? So, maybe not rape.
See, this is why it's such a tough issue, and why it ought to be really difficult to convict someone of rape if they're in a relationship with the alleged victim. Rape is one of those crimes that feels really satisfying to convict a man for. I've noticed that across the board, it is pretty much a big issue for all varieties of feminism, and yet, it's one of the issues that is least concrete. Do women make 60% of men's salaries for the same jobs? Let's look at the numbers. Do women have the same rights in court? Let's look at the laws. Did Kobe Bryant rape that girl? Hmmmm....
We can't even use mental trauma to define rape because, as I've said any number of times, lots of things cause mental trauma associated with sex. What if a girl was raised by a fundamentalist freak show of a family, and her first sexual experience was with a non-Christian boy who had no idea that her silence was terror, and just thought she was a little nervous? After all, she never mentioned her terror because a girl is supposed to do what a guy wants, because that's what the bible teaches. Women are subservient to men.
Anyway, here's the thing. Whether you're married or not, if you beat the shit out of a woman, it's assault and battery. Whether you're married or not, if she's clearly and doggedly unwilling and you willingly and knowingly force yourself on her against her will, that's rape -- of a sort, although to be fair, except in the most extreme circumstances, I just can't see the justice in locking a man up for years for having sex with a woman he's had sex with a thousand times, who's technically under contract to provide sexual service.
That's why I said a woman doesn't get to just slough off the contract she entered into. It's all fine and good to talk about a woman's right to choose, but let's be realistic. If a man doesn't get to choose whether to pay alimony when she leaves, and doesn't get to choose to go to a hooker if he wants, and doesn't get to choose whether or not to contribute to her living expenses... in short, he doesn't get to selectively obey his wedding vows... well, she doesn't either. If she's tired of sex with him, she needs to make provisions for alternatives. One night? Sure. Headaches happen. Two? Sure. Acute depression happens. A week? A month... after that, it's getting into breach of contract territory.
No, it's not a woman's inherent duty to put out for a man, but if she was an adult when she signed the marriage contract, she freely and knowingly entered into a contract that makes it her duty. Yet another reason I don't like marriage contracts in today's society.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
It was an emotional reaction, okay? It wasn't a proposal or anything, and of COURSE not all abuse is sexual.
Okay, yes, rape can be hard to pinpoint. However, that's why TALKING and being OPEN are so very very important before and after sex.
No matter what two people do together, whether it's "vanilla" or very kinky, it should be CONSENSUAL. That is to say, both people should agree to it in some way, shape or form, and pay attention to the other person's reactions and feelings. "Playing rough" should involve safe words or ways to end it if it gets to be too much. You don't have to be a psychologist to see if someone isn't enjoying what you're doing. If you don't know, ask.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
Is it really, though? I share your objections to marriage, but are you really signing a service agreement as a woman? I thought alimony was only applied to the richer of the two in a couple (for instance, my mother ended up being wealthier than my father, so when they divorced, he ended up getting money).
I'm not seeing the "technically under a contract to provide sexual service" in all the "love and cherish" talk. I can't see that as legally binding, even hypothetically.
Of course, everyone who already objected that there are subtleties to this issue are correct. Life isn't black-and-white. Ideally, a wife would be able to say "I don't feel comfortable with this any more", but in North America, marriage is about emotional AND sexual love. We have the odd illusion that there's no difference, and that married couples are supposed to be in love forever. In the best cases, they end up being inseperable friends, but I don't think that the expectation of sex needs to torment a woman just because she agreed to be in a marriage.
But then, I can't say there's any reason for people to force themselves into marriage anyway. It doesn't even serve much of a social function any more.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
While I agree with most of what you say I think you are off in your assessment of the sexual portion of the marriage contract. Isn't the monogamous marriage contract "If I have sex it will be with you." rather than "I will have sex with you forever."? The problem you have noted with people no longer wanting to have sex with their spouses is real and is one of my main objections to the idea of marriage, but is different from men thinking women are theirs and that they have a right to the woman's body. That's what seems to be at the root of marital rape to me. The idea of possession of another (rooted in the bible) is the problem.
It is refreshing to hear someone analyze and criticize marriage. Thanks for that.
"I am that I am." - Proof that the writers of the bible were beyond stoned.
I'm certain that there are different variants, and I'm sure some women have gone into marriage with the attitude you describe. I'd certainly be interested to know something, though. Did all the men who entered into marriage contract with the "IF I have sex" women know that's what the women thought they were agreeing to? Probably a few did, but damn near every married man I've ever known thought he was signing up for a willing sex partner for the rest of his life.
You've read enough of my writing to know that I believe sex is an extremely important part of a happy life. Not that you can't be happy without it, but that the vast majority of people are happier when they have good sex lives than when they don't. Not only that, but the health and emotional benefits are well documented, so we can truly say that depriving someone of sex is equivalent to harming their physical and emotional health. We need to seriously examine the implicit power granted to both men and women in marriage. Simply by choosing not to have sex with their partner, they are legally able to deprive them of health and happiness without their consent. That, IMHO, is just wrong.
I don't have any problem whatsoever with women deciding they no longer want to have sex with a man. The problem I have is with the interpretation of the marriage contract by courts. Regardless of what the woman meant to agree to, courts pretty much universally view any extramarital sex as a breach of contract, and such activities often figure strongly in alimony, child support, and visitation rulings. Frankly, I think that marriage needs to be reevaluated and reworked for modern society, if it is to be kept as an institution. This "til death do us part" nonsense has to go. We don't have to pussyfoot around sex anymore, either. Relationships fizzle, and people get tired of having sex with each other.
Please be careful of putting your own biases into my words. There is a very big difference between me owning a woman and a woman living up to her end of a contract. Look, if you and I enter a legal contract that twice a week you will allow me to come to your house and put plant food into your venus fly trap, and then after three years, you decide you don't want to let me do that anymore, if I am still trying to feed your trap, I'm livinig up to my end of the bargain and you aren't. If we were smart about our contract, we would have recognized that either party had the right to terminate their part of the contract, but that should that occur, the other would be free to either invite other plant feeders over or find new plants to feed.
It's not that I own your venus fly trap. It's that I have proprietary rights to it so long as the contract is in force. Smart people put protections in contracts of this sort so that if one party backs out, the other is not unduly harmed or forced into a bad position.
Again, it's one of the things I don't like about marriage. It's thinly veiled, but marriage is about ownership. Women really do "own" their husbands in the sense that they are only allowed to have sex with their wives, and vice versa. Marriage grants power of attorney and other legal rights that really do constitute a kind of ownership.
So I think, Anniet, that we are agreeing in principle and talking past each other a bit. I don't think women OR men ought to be owned, and I think that the current state of marriage is the equivalent of ownership, and it allows for abuse that runs both ways. Sure, men feel like they own their wives, but wives feel like they own their husbands, too. Either exercise of sexual power -- men taking sex or women withholding sex -- is really only possible if the courts uphold the principle of ownership. It doesn't matter whether or not they call it that.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Yeah, I do think we pretty much agree here, but I do like to further examine minor points of an issue sometimes. I did not mean to imply that you agree with the idea of ownership in marriage. That thought was related to the OP's comment and the basis for rape in marriage not being acknowledged. Sorry for that.
The whole idea of marriage needs to be rethought for so many reasons. Maybe we need some consciousness raising regarding the whole ownership principles inherent in the legal definition? I'll have to think on this some more. Thanks!
"I am that I am." - Proof that the writers of the bible were beyond stoned.