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Case against Rubel to be dropped because of world cup win :blink:

hendrix

hendrix

Hall of Fame Member
It's simply not rape under any logical definition of the word. So offensive that the term is being used.
They should call it fraud at worst and even then it's freaking ridiculous.
 
D

Dan

Hall of Fame Member
hendrix said:
Bangladesh has ridiculous, backwards laws.
It's insulting for this to be called rape in the first place.
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Is it really?

I mean, the more I think about it the more complicated this example becomes -- we're balancing issues of informed consent, how we define rape, the universality of Western values, the efficacy of the legal system and questions of feminisms more generally. It's all incredibly complex, interrelated and rather a nebulous discussion.

At its most basic level, the informed consent given in this example (that I'm constructing; not claiming to know all the facts on the Rubel case) is contingent upon the man's pledge to marry her. If the guy never had any intention to marry her, then the consent isn't actually informed -- its coerced -- and its hard to consider it anything other than rape (i.e. *** without informed consent). From this perspective, the Bangladeshi law is hardly 'backwards'. It's incredibly progressive by Western standards.

This permutation of the situation has, in itself, many different readings. You could argue that informed consent therefore never existed, but you could probably also argue that the female has retroactively withdrawn consent upon finding out her partner's true intentions (raising the question of how, and when, consent can be withdrawn -- how does consent play out temporally?)

But, let's imagine he isn't being fraudulent. In this permutation, if the guy is genuine in his promise to marry and isn't doing it to fraudulently procure ***, how to we distinguish this from the previous situation in a legal sense? Life is uncertain, so do we take the female's consent to be contingent upon the marriage actually happening, or on a balance-of-probabilities good faith approach? I'm sure there's been many a teenage relationship whereby the two partners were so naive and love-struck that they genuinely believed they'd be together forever, and as such had *** with the consent underwritten by that belief. If, as most teenage relationships do, it all ends in tears, does that retroactively call into question the consent? Or, if we take the good faith approach, how do you prove beyond reasonable doubt that the guy never had any intention of marrying her?

Moving on to the universality of Western values, we have to ask how ***ual ethics and rape culture play out cross-culturally; holding two Bangladeshi individuals to Western standards or legal definitions is problematic in and of itself. So, hendrix, do we consider 'rape' to be a universally-defined act, or are legitimate and illegitimate forms of *** cultural constructs? If the former, how do you morally underpin that universalism other than with a neo-colonial "the West is right, your culture is backward and wrong" form of argument? If it's the latter, then how do you argue against cultures that subject women to horrendous ***ual violence under the guise of 'cultural relativism'? These aren't clear-cut questions.

And then this ***-positive, consent-based and rape culture-informed reading of the case is something that emerges out of third wave liberal feminism, which is quite often derided for being "rich white woman" feminism that ignores various intersectionalities and cultural contexts to impose a very West-centric view of what feminism and gender equality are. This led to the envisioning of multiple feminisms, which do take those things into account -- but they become so incredibly specific that they lose any analytical utility whatsoever and arguably undermine the actual goal of feminism as they have little choice but to accept certain cultural characteristics as contextual givens. The Indian ecofeminist literature I've read, for instance, clearly distinguishes between "traditionally-male" and "traditionally-female" work in the domestic division of labour and aims to give them equal valuation, but never once suggests that women ought be able to do what they want to do; the 'woman as carer' trope is never actually challenged.

Then there's how we define the word 'rape' -- too broad a definition and you risk trivialising rape by equating it to things which are still terrible and violent and desperately need to be eradicated but are slightly less-bad than violent or malicious *** without consent, and hence undermining victim's accounts ("were you really raped, or did he just stare at your boobs?"). But if the definition is too narrow, like those UK laws (I think it was the UK) which define rape in such a way that it can only ever be committed if a man penetrated something, then there's a huge number of victims who have no legal support whatsoever and can't seek redress for their suffering.

And then, finally, we have to look at the efficacy of putting these things into law. There is a distinction between what is rape, and what is incredibly poor ***ual ethics, influenced by rape culture and questions over what is and is not consensual. That distinction is the legal definition of terms and, more so than that, what can be proven. How does one go about proving beyond reasonable doubt that the guy never had any intention of marrying his partner at the time of the act? In the context of an innocent-until-proven-guilty legal system, and social debates which make the line between rape and consensual *** ever-changing and often quite blurry in terms of what can actually be proven in a legal sense, means that it's incredibly hard to stamp out rape culture from the top-down.

Rape culture is obviously something that needs to be addressed from below -- teaching men not to rape. But in an era of ***-positivity, it's incredibly difficult to run the dual narrative of "well you should be able to have as much *** as you want...but you have to be very careful on how you interpret consent". Not impossible, by any means, but when you're reinforcing the traditional male narrative that lots of *** = good while simultaneously challenging the traditional male conceptualisation of consent, within the context of so many sociological debates, you've got something that's incredibly difficult to wrap your head around.

tl;dr -- this kind of thing is messy and unclear and filled with ideological contradictions that have to be carefully balanced; plus people (read: men) are bastards and our legal system isn't equipped to deal with rape culture and men being bastards especially well. There's nothing simple about this.
 
D

Dan

Hall of Fame Member
hendrix said:
It's simply not rape under any logical definition of the word. So offensive that the term is being used.
They should call it fraud at worst and even then it's freaking ridiculous.
Click to expand...
Posting to kind of summarise my above post a little better.

I think most of us would agree that not all consent is equal -- said consent is legitimate only if the person consenting is sufficiently informed, and is not coerced (which is why we have age of consent laws).

If Rubel acted fraudulently to gain that consent, then there's a valid argument that the consent was coerced. Thus rape.
 
Fusion

Fusion

Global Moderator
Dan said:
Posting to kind of summarise my above post a little better.

I think most of us would agree that not all consent is equal -- said consent is legitimate only if the person consenting is sufficiently informed, and is not coerced (which is why we have age of consent laws).

If Rubel acted fraudulently to gain that consent, then there's a valid argument that the consent was coerced. Thus rape.
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I strongly disagree with that line of thinking. I think in essence you are mixing what is moral with what is legal. Maybe Rubel is a complete douche (like many men) and would've said anything to have *** with that girl. That makes him a bad person, but not a criminal. Rape to me is clear-cut: If the woman was forced into *** without her consent, than it's rape. The definition of consent shouldn't be muddied, IMO, to include "conditions", as in "I only give you consent if you promise to marry me".

Let me point out problems with such conditional consents using an extreme scenario: What if a guy tells a gal, "have *** with me because I'm really good in bed and you won't be displeased". Say they then proceed to have *** and the girl decides, well hell, I AM displeased. Is that a case of rape because her "consent" was driven by a promise of ***ual satisfaction?

I think we should simply stick with the "no means no" traditional definition of rape or we'll run into a lot of trouble.
 
hendrix

hendrix

Hall of Fame Member
Dan said:
Posting to kind of summarise my above post a little better.

I think most of us would agree that not all consent is equal -- said consent is legitimate only if the person consenting is sufficiently informed, and is not coerced (which is why we have age of consent laws).

If Rubel acted fraudulently to gain that consent, then there's a valid argument that the consent was coerced. Thus rape.
Click to expand...
If she was legitimately exchanging *** for something else (i.e. in the same way a prostitute might exchange *** for money) it might (might) be considered rape; I'm not sure of the legal precedent there. I'm sure someone one time refused to pay a *** worker. That might be a case where consent could be retroactively withdrawn and it could be considered rape in some cases, not sure.

But given that marriage proposals - even in Bangladesh - do not always work out (*** or no ***), then at worst what she was trading for *** was the promise of marriage (i.e. engagement), not actual marriage.
 
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