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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25760 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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statutory rape is very much not rape

To be clear, are you espousing the belief that an adult (e.g. a 30 year old man) is in no way morally transgressing to have sex with an enthusiastic twelve year old? Nine year old? Toddler?

  • -14

No, of course not. I frankly am surprised you think I said that, because I was very clear that we should punish someone who gets a girl drunk just to have sex with her. Just because something isn't rape doesn't mean it's morally permissible.

I think the disconnect is somewhere in which sets are equal vs subsets of "consented" "said yes but was much drunker" "was much drunker but I didn't realize", but have lost the thread of exactly what.

We can, and should, frown on and punish that behavior. But it's not rape.

Reading him as charitably as I can I'd say he's advocating something like what the French had before they brought in age of consent laws a few years ago. You still got sent to prison for having sex with a minor but it wasn't called rape, and you got sent to prison for much longer if your case satisfied the coercive bar needed for a rape conviction.

This is exactly right. I think that if an adult has consensual sex with a teenager, that's not OK (with various edge cases as we know from statutory rape laws). I think if anyone talks a 9 year old into having sex with them, we should lock them up and throw away the fucking key. But it's important to maintain the meanings of terms, so I think they should be under different laws than rape because they aren't the same.

This is exactly right. I think that if an adult has consensual sex with a teenager, that's not OK (with various edge cases as we know from statutory rape laws). I think if anyone talks a 9 year old into having sex with them, we should lock them up and throw away the fucking key.

There's an annoying chilling effect when it comes to the sex crimes where any attempt to differentiate between degrees of wrongness is seen as moral endorsement.

I think, clearly, lying to a woman at the bar that you're a millionaire to get in her pants is bad. Stringing a girlfriend along with vague future prospects of marriage when you have no intention of marrying her is bad. And dragging her into an alleyway and forcibly penetrating her is bad.

All these subvert the woman's free will to have sex with her when she would otherwise refuse. But they're very different crimes. Lumping them all together under one word and treating them all the same is stupid.

There's an annoying chilling effect when it comes to the sex crimes where any attempt to differentiate between degrees of wrongness is seen as moral endorsement.

Yeah and it's incredibly annoying. I have learned the hard way to expect that sort of bad reasoning from normies, but I didn't expect to encounter it here of all places.

It's like Jonathan Haidt says, people form their moral judgements first based on disgust, then rationalize it post hoc. People will jump through many hoops to preserve their feelings of moral superiority, especially when it comes to protecting women and how women are treated. This, in my opinion is evidence that women are not oppressed. Everyone wants to think everyone else is oppressing women but they are the one of the few good ones.

That all seems reasonable. What is the current status of French law?

They brought in age of consent laws in line with most western countries in 2021. The crime of atteinte sexuelle sur mineur didn't carry as long a sentence as a rape conviction so you still had to prove rape to get the full 20 year sentence, now it's a 20 year max regardless.

The point of the comment is that not all immoral sexual acts should be called "rape". I can imagine a framework where the 30-year-old has sex with a "consenting" 9-year-old, and then is prosecuted, not for "statutory rape", but for fraud—because he falsely stated or implied that there was little or no chance that the sex would result in physical harm to the 9-year-old, and the 9-year-old was too ignorant to know otherwise.

I mean I can imagine the framework, insomuchas axioms are axioms, but are you saying you think the 30/9 case is, or can reasonably be argued to be, closer to fraud than rape? If so, I disagree, but it's just marginally within the realm of things I could imagine reasonable people thinking.

I am inclined to agree with this framework, but my opinion is not very firm.

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