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That’s slightly misleading. Rape is defined as the specific crime of penetrating a person with a penis.
There’s a separate, more modern crime of “sexual activity without consent”, with both penetrative and non-penatritive variants that was created that was created to be a gender neutral sex crime.
One of the purposes of this offence, in addition to the wider range of sexual activity, is to create a female equivalent of the offence of rape, which carries the same level of punishment for what amounts to the same type of offending behaviour.
So why not do away with the old law if the new one supersedes it?
@NoIWontPickaName optics. The last thing any politicians want is being acused of “abolishing rape laws”.
Easier to just leave the legacy law in place as long as you’ve got the whole thing covered.
We have the same thing in New Zealand.
Also, you usually can’t remove laws after they pass. You just add another saying the old one doesn’t count. In this case you might as well leave the old “no raping allowed” law in. It’s not something we want people to do anyway, and keeping it is one less law than removing it!
Most realistically, no one is going to go on the books as the person who voted to repeal the crime of rape.
More pragmatically, repealing a law that someone is in prison for always creates an argument that they shouldn’t be there any more. Often seen with drug legalization, but I’m sure someone would try to argue that because the exact type of sexual assault they were guilty of isn’t a crime anymore, despite an equivalent existing, that they should get some type of break.
I’m not in the UK, so I can’t speak to their legislative process as specifically unfortunately.
Follow-up: I started to look it up, and as far as I can the the UK legislative bookkeeping system is fucking insane. They don’t organize their laws in sections, they just refer to them by the act that passed it. So rather than passing a law that says “we’re amending section 792.5078r to include new definitions”, they just say “here’s a new act with a new crime, and rape includes mouths now”.
Also the UK has three legal systems, they’re bound together in what feels like a very disorderd fashion, and the following sentence from their judiciary scares me deeply, as a proper American:Our lack of a written constitution is one of the consequences of the way the current political and legal institutions in the United Kingdom have evolved since 1066
Hahahaha this is the most UK thing ever
Fairly common to leave old superseded laws on the books even here in the states. Spending legislative time going back to undo something for no practical reason is a luxury reserved for Big Deals™️.
Because the old law is still applicable in some situations and now the prosecution potentially has 2 options to choose from …
I don’t know the real answer but I’d guess it’s a mix of “if ain’t broke don’t fix it” and the cost of removing the law (time debating in parliament) that could be better spent.
It’s like charging someone with first, second, and third degree murder. If the first definition doesn’t sit well with the jury the second or others might.
You still can’t just say a women raped a man though, you would get sued for libel.
It still creates a divide that puts one in a worse light, even though there is an “equivalent” crime.
you would get sued for libel.
That wouldn’t play. Truth is a complete defense for libel and all your lawyer has to do is point out the ordinary meaning of the word rape encompasses the plaintiff’s crime.
If people could get successfully sued for speaking English instead of Legalese in an ordinary context then we’d all have been sued by now.
all your lawyer has to do is point out the ordinary meaning of the word rape encompasses the plaintiff’s crime.
You can’t use ordinary meanings in the court of law… that’s the entire issue and why it’s a thing. You say ordinary, and than use the word crime. Now you need to use the legal definition instead of ordinary. You shot your own foot in that situation.
That’s not how libel works though. The legal meaning of words doesn’t bind publishers of newspapers to use only that meaning, for example.
If you argue that a woman is a rapist in UK court, that won’t work.
If you argue that your usage of the word rapist to describe a woman convicted of penatrative non consensual sexual contact is accurate, all you need to do is point to the dictionary, because the libel case isn’t about the sexual offense, but the plain words used.@schmidtster I don’t think you’re understanding libel law.
You can’t take someone to court just for using a common dictionary word to mean the thing it is commonly used to mean.
I mean you can but you just won’t win.
I’m not sure you’d get sued for libel. Legally speaking, any non-penis penatrative sexual assault wouldn’t be rape even if you would call it that in other contexts.
Where I live, rape isn’t actually in the criminal code at all. There is only “criminal sexual misconduct, first degree”, which also includes other terrible things that people can do to each other.
No one gets sued for libel for using the dictionary definition of the word rather than the legal definition outside of a courtroom.
That’s a problem. I’m guessing the sheer number of male perpetrators outnumber the women rapists so overwhelmingly that there’s not a lot of push for legislative reform, but that doesn’t make it right
Culture will not allow a man to report being raped - there is a large double standard in play. Nobody will believes you would refuse sex with any female who wants it - even fundamentalists Christians won’t believe you while calling the girl a slut. The police are less likely to take you seriously if you do try (and many do not take rape seriously). Even if the second is not true where you live, the first almost certainly is.
As such we don’t have good statistics. (We also have reason to believe women typically will not report being raped)
I find it bizarre how frequently entertainment plays off sexual assault against men for comedy
Those are all very good points. On the plus side, societies as a whole are slowly but surely improving on every aspect of this. We still have a long ways to go, but looking at the laws and perceptions now vs 50 or even 20 years ago, we’ve made vast improvements
All true, every word! But see my comment, unless there was violence involved, or an STD, I’m not going to care. I’ve laughed it off as foolishness on my part, no emotional or physical harm.
But as you said, I’d hesitate to report. Who’s going to believe a man or care? OTOH, how many times is a man in a position where a woman overpowered him and violated him? I’d report that kinda situation, but it probably wouldn’t go anywhere unless I had strong evidence. And like man-on-woman rape, evidence is often slippery and hard to nail down.
Eh, they already have a law on their books that carries the same penalties. @ricecake’s comment has the details.
We have the same thing in my country. Rape is the traditional penetration law and then Unlawful Sexual Connection got added to cover all the other kinds of rape.
That makes sense, and I kind of expected as much. Thanks for the added context
Yeah. Obviously people of any gender can commit rape, and though the statistics may be dominated by male perpetrators, that fact is enough to not make the legislation gender-specific.
I completely agree
Y’all gonna hate me for this, but I’m simply not going to complain unless there was violence. There’s probably been a time or four where what happened to me met the definition of rape; Drunk as fuck, did not want, forced herself on me, happened anyway, but nothing that emotionally affected me. Mostly cases of waking up, “Where the fuck am I at? (looks at girl) Hell no she did not… I’m going home.”
And as ricecake noted, rape is a specific crime in the UK. There are other laws for woman-on-man non-consent. Put up the pitchforks.
Hate on me for this as well; Man-on-woman sexual violence is generally far worse. A man penetrating a woman risks physical trauma, pregnancy, higher chance of an STD, etc. The emotional trauma is far worse as well. And no matter how you slice it, physical penetration is invasive, it’s a violent taking.
For you guys reading this, imagine having your ass thoroughly kicked, and then anally/orally fucked when you can no longer resist. That does not compare to the vast majority of cases where a woman rapes a man. I can laugh off the later, the former causes PTSD.
And if you’ve never been raped or taken an ass beating, I don’t care much for your opinion.
Y’all gonna hate me for this, but I’m simply not going to complain unless there was violence
@shalafi I don’t hate on you. If you have in fact been sexually assaulted or coerced you deserve our compassion not hate.
Every rape victim has the right to be silent if they prefer. It’s up to you how you process this.
It’s also not uncommon for people who were molested or raped to minimized what happened to themselves or even deny what it was. And that’s totally okay.
But that doesn’t mean you get to define other people’s experiences for them or dictate our reaction to it as a society.
