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That's the marriage debt, it applies to both spouses (wives too have a right to sex) and it's not rape, since in marriage you are presumed to give consent to sexual activity with your spouse. There was a fine-grained legal distinction that rape was sex without consent, and since married couples consented to have sex, the crime of rape could not be committed within marriage (which is not to say that the act of rape could not be committed).
Forcing someone unwilling, by threats, violence, or other coercion, is wrong. That's not what marriage is supposed to be. So even if the spouses have a right to ask for sex from each other, and merely "I don't feel like it" is not good enough reason to refuse, you should not rape your wife (or husband).
Well then what IS your prescription for the scenario where Spouse A says "Sex please" and Spouse B says "No I don't feel like it"?
I have enough Chestertonian-fence respect in the wisdom of the ten thousand generations before me to suspect that if there WAS a solution better than marital rape, they'd have thought of it.
This reminds me of many of Vox Day's blog posts back in the day. He'd say "Marital rape doesn't exist" and "Getting married implicitly gives permanent consent." People would ask him "Does that mean if your wife says 'Not tonight, I have a headache' you can just smack her around until she submits?" He would always dodge or just sneer at the question.
I thought he was being disingenuous then, and I think your "Chesterston's fence" here is a bit disingenuous.
Well, first of all, no, I think it's ridiculous to think that we should just accept the received wisdom of ten thousand generations of savages. There are a whole lot of things our ancestors believed for ten thousand generations and we only realized in the last few hundred years were stupid.
So legally, yes, a husband in most societies historically had the right to literally rape his wife (by which I mean "rape rape", not just threats, pressure, and cajoling), but even the most misogynistic cultures generally didn't think highly of a man who physically abused his wife and had to force her to have sex with him. I strongly suspect that even back in caveman days, couples with genuine affection for each other were looked on with much more respect than couples where the man was literally having to knock his wife over the head and drag her by the hair to get laid.
On to the present day, which you seem to think is missing a little something something because a man can't knock his wife over the head and drag her by the hair anymore. But presumably you didn't mean literally that. But then I would ask you the same question put to Vox Day: what did you mean? If your wife says "Not tonight, I have a headache," are you claiming that you should literally have the right to say "Tough shit, on your back," backed up by force if necessary?
So presuming the actual question is not "What if she's not in the mood sometimes?" but "What if she refuses to sleep with me, ever?" Well, obviously, your marriage is dysfunctional, and you have a range of options from counseling to divorce. Even if you're a tradcon who believes divorce should be off the table, I would think you would want to find out why your wife is refusing to have sex with you, and try to fix that. If it's a physical ailment, well, you did promise "in sickness or in health," right? If it's depression, she needs help, not being compelled to put out because it's her "wifely duty." If it's none of these things, and it's genuinely not your fault for being a jerk husband - if you're stuck with a woman who pretended to like sex until you got married and then turned it off afterwards, like in those horrible old Playboy cartoons, well, I guess if you won't divorce her, then it kind of sucks to have made a poor life choice. But seriously, what do you think should be your options in that case?
(And yes, I've made the assumption above that we are talking about the woman being the one who refuses sex, because realistically, if it's the man refusing to have sex, it's very rare that his wife has any ability to force him. But I'd say the same thing to a woman whose husband rejects her and the situation doesn't appear fixable: if you won't consider divorce, then I guess you're trapped in an unhappy marriage. Which is why I don't think divorce should be off the table.)
That's a little bit... antagonistic. These are the people who built Classical Greece, the Pyramids, the University of Sankore. And even hunter-gatherers had enough civilization to care for their wounded and infirm, as the archaeological evidence of bone healing suggests. "Savages" is kinda harsh.
I strongly suspect that in caveman days "couples" didn't exist, because you lived fast and died young. Seems kind of a waste of time, and deleterious to the tribe's survival chances, to become particularly emotionally attached to a partner who has a ~40% chance of dying in childbirth every 9 months. If the sabre-tooth tigers don't get her in the interim (a big if).
Well, if you insist on this line of inquiry...
Rape fantasies are the #1 female fantasy, remember. And it turns out that accomodating to your partner's bedroom fantasies - shock! - improves your sex life, who'd'a thunk it?
So, observe my biting down hard on this bullet: yes, I do mean "Tough shit, on your back, by force if necessary", and I can tell you from the practical application of this principal in my own life that it is salutary to a relationship. I don't know whether it's a general principle of female psychology or just a peculiarly of my own girlfriends, but a few seconds of complaining is followed by years of her being smugly happy that her partner finds her attractive enough to be compelled to run roughshod over her consent. Acting like a troglodyte caveman is, it turns out, more attractive to the opposite sex than acting like a Title IX lawyer at a risk-averse university campus.
If we're going back literally ten thousand generations, I'll stand by "savages." Doesn't mean they weren't human, but I do not think we should credit the "wisdom" of people from the stone age just because they did things a certain way for a very long time.
And yes, I was being a little tongue-in-cheek about cavemen, but I still assume they had relationships (if not necessarily lifetime monogamous partnerships) which did not typically consist of a man grabbing the nearest available woman and raping her. (And if they did, then, well, "savages.")
Granting that a lot of women do get turned on by being dominated, I don't doubt there are times when that works for you. But do you recognize the difference between a partner who generally wants to have sex with you, might not be in the mood at this particular moment, but finds it hot when you make her, and a partner who genuinely, seriously does not want to have sex and whose partner forces her anyway?
If you want to take issue with contemporary notions of "consent," yes, I recognize the problem here in that what you've described with your partner is in fact technically rape and you probably realize she could have you prosecuted for it if she got it into her mind to do so, which is another reason why we should pick our partners very carefully and have very good communication. (I also assume that as a decent human being, you wouldn't pull the "tough shit, on your back" routine if you knew she really, truly did not want to have sex right now and was not going to like it if you forced her.) I don't know exactly how the law can differentiate between "We like to do caveman stuff in the bedroom sometimes" and "My husband is an abusive rapist" other than with a lot of fallible subjectivity, but if we have to choose between "You can 'rape' your wife but take the risk of her someday actually treating it like rape" or "Your wife literally has no legal recourse if you start brutalizing her," I'll go with the first option.
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Well, what if your wife starts stroking you, and you say ‘ No, I have a headache’, will she start beating you? Obviously not, beatings are a different matter. But if she feels your will is not her primary concern right now, she will keep stroking despite the clear lack of consent. So is it rape? Letting your spouse do his or her thing with your body seemed for the ancients to be part of the marriage deal. We’ve altered it, but the old one seems just as legitimate. No great wrong was rectified by ‘recognizing’ marital rape. In the future, they might require written, enthusiastic consent from spouses for every touch, and that too, will be legitimate. Just as long as people understand the contract.
Of course, as a man, you could almost certainly stop her from doing the thing you don't want, whereas she probably can't stop you from doing a thing she doesn't want. Even the ancients considered marital harmony and mutual desire to be the ideal, if not always the pragmatic reality, and arguing that today your spouse should be able to "do his or her thing with your body" like it's a fleshlight or a dildo, without your participation beyond a lack of physical resistance, sounds, frankly, pretty disgusting.
When you say "No great wrong was rectified by ‘recognizing’ marital rape," do you believe that it should be legal to hold your wife down, over her screaming protests, and force your penis inside her?
If the answer is yes, then all I can say that we have very different morals.
If the answer is no, then you are admitting that laws against marital rape serve a purpose, since without them, your wife would have no legal recourse against such treatment.
As a wife, she's allowed to touch me, without warning, and even over my protests in a way that would be illegal for a stranger. You could say the marriage contract has a sexual component, and that component was and is being eroded away, that's all. The spouse is treated in sexual matters now as a stranger.
No, of course it's illegal, it's doubly illegal. She's not allowed to refuse, and he's not allowed to use force over her screaming protests. For me, both sides violate their obligations, the marriage contract is dissolved. If the contract stipulates that consent will be given, by definition no rape is possible within its confines. You don't put a rape clause in the 'you're-allowed-to-have-sex-with-me-contract', it would be like a stealing clause in a trading contract.
In the past they were hardcore about marriage, no doubt about that. Heavy on the duties. But everyone has his own preferences. I don't care much for duties and binding eternal contracts myself. But who am I to say the lighter version of marriage is the morally superior version? I'm a liberal, if people want to enter slave contracts for a while, that's their business.
Yes, obviously there is a level of implied consent between partners that does not exist between strangers (or even friends!). But you're doing the same thing Vox Day used to do:
"Marital rape literally doesn't exist, getting married implies consent."
"Okay, but does that literally mean you can physically force your wife to do things she doesn't want to do?"
"something something marriage contract sexual component"
Yeah, if your wife keeps refusing you sex (or a husband refuses his wife sex), that's obviously a marital problem and a breach of the understanding they presumably both had when they got married. That doesn't mean you have implied consent to force your partner.
You think it should be literally illegal for your wife to say "Not tonight, I'm not in the mood?"
"Consent will be given" does not mean "Consent will be given at any time on demand." Don't you think the "contract" also includes showing consideration for your partner (such as, accepting that sometimes they might not be in the mood or feeling physically up to it?)
A ridiculous analogy. An agreement to do something does not imply an agreement to always do that at any time on the terms demanded by either party, without boundaries. A trading contract doesn't mean I can break into your warehouse and take things off the shelves even if they are technically things that are part of our agreement.
Least convenient possible world. If the contract did stipulate that, what would your objection be?
I can imagine a couple having a relationship like that. It'd be considered heavy D/S nowadays ("consensual nonconsent") but as a kink thing, it's not that abnormal. Of course, marriage generally doesn't come with safewords...
Does the common marriage contract stipulate that? I'm not an expert in matrimonial laws, but don't the vows basically say "live in harmony and love each other" and leave it at that? Litigating how often your wife has to provide sexual access on first demand is among the furthest things from harmony I can imagine, and no, "there wouldn't have to be any demanding if she simply anticipated my whims and catered to them" doesn't sound like it either.
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If you can have implied consent for kissing and touching, you can have implied consent for PIV. Different bits, same principle. People in 50 years will be accusing you of groping without consent like a savage. They will pat themselves on the back for having "recognized" this great injustice. To think billions of people were kissed without consent, and sometimes, they were not in the mood. And the gotcha question will be : what did you do when you tried to kiss her and she pushed and ran away screaming? You beat her into submission, I bet. That's the way it was in the past.
If implied consent for sex is in the contract, they are in violation.
You can't avoid delivering the goods by claiming you're not in the mood.
Implied consent does not imply at any time, on demand, with no veto power.
No they won't. We're not talking about groping or having sex with your wife without a signed consent form, like in that old SNL skit about Oberlin College.
I asked you if you think it should be illegal. So you're arguing a wife who refuses sex is failing to live up to her contractual obligations. Fair enough - the remedy for breach of contract is a civil claim, which in the case of marriage, means divorce. You don't get to exact satisfaction using force.
No. But you don't get to break into my warehouse and take them because I'm late delivering, or even if I tell you I don't intend to fulfill the contract. You can take me to court, but you can't just use violence to make me hold up my end.
Since you think making marital rape illegal has not redressed any crimes, let me ask you: what is the downside of making marital rape illegal? Because I don't see how it harms anyone except men who want the right to physically force their wives to have sex if their wives don't want to have sex with them. By which I mean, holding them down and forcing their penises inside them, over their screaming protests. Which you already acknowledged should be illegal (but would not be, if marital rape were not illegal). So, we agree that if your wife refuses to have sex with you, you've got a legitimate grievance. What do you think your available remedies for that should be? Why are you insisting marital rape should not be illegal?
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Come on. Comparing implied consent to kissing, an act that lasts barely a few seconds (unless we're talking half an hour of tongue wrestling, and that's at the very least fucking weird if you continue to do it while your partner is not reciprocating), with penetration? Implied consent to initiating, sure.
Granted, I can't attest to any personal experience of fucking a disinterested woman, but it's more or less common knowledge that penetration can be uncomfortable or painful without arousal. It's not the same principle as "grabbing a kiss or a feel without asking", no. If you and your wife are into that kind of thing, you're free to have it. Not manufacture consensus that it's a normal and expected marriage thing.
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The solution was to consider it being a bad wife, and still not grant license for forcible rape.
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That's always going to happen occasionally. The idea that any religious authority would approve of forcing it in all cases is silly, so I won't address that, instead I'll assume you're saying something like Partner B has been refusing sex for an extended period of time, say six months at a time.
While I'm a big Chesterton guy, you also have to consider that the thousands of generations before you lived in different circumstances. Particularly, I don't think you can keep the "forced sex is ok if you're married" fence up if you've torn down the "living within a community of people who you can talk to about it" fence. Maybe a Benedict option argument at some level? The idea of Marital Debt comes largely from ecclesiastical court cases where spouses literally went to a formal tribunal to determine the answers to these questions! At a less formal level, you and your spouse go to your mutual priest and confessor, alone or together, and seek guidance. Today, we call this practice marital counseling, the only difference is the training of the counselor changing from theological to psychological, from one brand of nonsense to another more cynically.
We've also lost the kind of family honor-bonds that protected both parties to a marriage. A woman in an abusive marriage might count on pressure from her father, brothers, uncles, male cousins, and general social opprobrium to prevent overly vicious abuse. A husband who was too violent with his wife risked social outcast status, or revenge, even if divorce was impossible. Today, that kind of thing is unthinkable: we don't live in close knit families, private violence is anathema, and there is no sense of honor that would lead a would-be-Sonny to defend his sister.
Catholicism, of course, absolutely forbids divorce. Other religious traditions, nonetheless quite strict on their own views, take different attitudes:
So what does a solution look like? Compromise, talk to each other, talk to spiritual/moral counselors you respect, reach a place where things work for both of you. Just like you would for literally any other marital issue.
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Don't marry someone who doesn't feel like it for longer periods than you can tolerate?
How would you know, before you get arranged-married at 16 (this ALSO being the Chestertonian wisdom-of-the-ancestors advice)?
I suppose this is where I run into irreconcilable differences with the Chestertonian wisdoms of the ancestors.
How far back are we digging for those wisdoms, anyway? If longer time period == better, then we should source from caveman animism, not Christianity.
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