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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.
So your objection isn't so much with the concept as that it doesn't describe reality?
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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?
Things should be legal and not illegal, generally speaking. More laws, more thieves.
It's more neutral than negative, but it imposes a 'marriage light' for everyone, whereas it used to impose the opposite. Ideally people would choose for themselves how heavy their marriage is, with old school marriage on one side, treated like a total stranger on the other, light civil unions in the middle. This bans the heavy kind, and that is prejudicial to people who prefer it, obviously.
You're the one who keeps bringing up beatings and forcing her over her screams, which I wouldn't do. Again with the analogy: if she runs away screaming after you tried to kiss her, being a decent fellow, I assume your response would not be beatings, but confusion, questioning where this marriage is, if she even likes you anymore. And so it is for this past husband in a heavy marriage if she screamed rape at the thought of performing her wifely duties.
The argument that we're unnecessarily criminalizing behavior that shouldn't be criminalized and thus creating more criminals is not one that I think applies here, unless, again, you're actually willing to defend a man's right to rape his wife.
Yes, I assume you wouldn't. I assume we are both decent people who would not abuse our spouses, so no such law is necessary in our cases. But then, I also assume neither of us are rapists or murderers or robbers. If there were no laws against rape, murder, or theft, I still would not be raping, murdering, or robbing anyone. We make laws against things so there is a remedy against those who do commit those acts. You've carefully avoided answering my questions about what remedies you think should be available because some men do do those things.
You're still dodging the issue. Yes, we agree, the appropriate response to your wife screaming when you try to kiss her is to try to talk to her like a human being. And so for us, laws against marital rape are unnecessary. But in times past, there were quite a few husbands who were less reasonable. Who literally would beat their wives, and hold them down and force them over their screaming protests. You keep saying "Well, obviously I wouldn't do that," but you won't say what you think should happen to a husband who does do that.
Here's a thought: maybe rape should be illegal, and marriage shouldn't provide a special exemption. If your marriage is dysfunctional enough that a law against marital rape is an impediment, then the law against marital rape is not the problem.
Through this law, you are banning a certain kind of contract, formerly common, consented to by free citizens, are you not? What they did behind closed doors, and behind a contract saying that they could, was not the state's business, and now they're more meat for the jailhouse.
Fucks her while she says no? Nothing. She, (or he, as the case may be, this is an entirely sex-independent argument) can cancel the contract that says he has sexual access, and then she can treat him like a stranger before the law again. If the new law wasn't on the books, like in the past. In our actual timeline the contract doesn't say that, so jail it is.
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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.
I'm not manufacturing consensus, I argue for a minority understanding, from a minority position within it (since most defenders of the old marriage norms are trad and I have a liberal perspective with liberal preferences).
I'm not saying it's a normal and expected marriage thing now, but it was in the past, and it wasn't a great moral wrong now rectified. People who wanted a heavy marriage got their way in the past, and now those who want a light marriage get their way.
As far as you know. An advantage of the old norms is that people didn’t have to fake enjoyment every time, lest it be some terrible crime.
no pain, no foul, then, if that is your true objection.
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