Apparently worried that the world might forget what a thoroughly reprehensible human being he is, fantasy author and freelance bigot Vox Day (Theodore Beale) has decided to bring up the issue of marital rape again – in order to assert, as he has many times in the past, that marital rape doesn’t actually exist.
In a post yesterday on his blog Vox Populi, Beale notes with obvious pleasure that an Indian judge recently ruled that marital sex, “even if forcible, is not rape,” thus upholding a section of the Indian Penal Code that refuses to acknowledge marital rape as rape.
Beale crows:
Some of my dimmer critics have attempted to make a meal out of my factual statement: a man cannot rape his wife. But that is not only a fact, it is the explicit law in the greater part of the world, just as it is part of the English Common Law. …
The fact that some of the lawless governments in the decadent, demographically dying West presently call some forms of sex between a husband and wife “rape” does not transform marital sex into rape any more than a law that declared all vaginal intercourse to be rape would make it so.
Unfortunately for Beale, simply declaring that the world is on his side on this one does not make it so. It not simply a handful of “ lawless governments in the decadent, demographically dying West” that see marital rape for what it is. The United Nations has recognized marital rape as a human rights violation for more than two decades. And the world is coming around to this point of view.
While (as of 2011) only 52 countries had laws specifically criminalizing marital rape, many others don’t have a “marital rape” exemption to their rape laws, meaning that in more than 100 countries marital rape can be prosecuted. And that number will inevitably grow.
Here’s a map from Wikipedia showing the countries (in red) in which marital rape is illegal. The countries in black allow marital rape. In the other countries, it’s a bit more complicated. (See here for the details.)
But for now, at least, Beale is happy for another chance to explain the toxic “logic” behind his assertion that “marital rape” is impossible.
Anyone with a basic grasp of logic who thinks about the subject of “marital rape” for more than ten seconds will quickly realize that marriage grants consent on an ongoing basis. This has to be the case, otherwise every time one partner wakes the other up in an intimate manner or has sex with an inebriated spouse, rape has been committed.
Now, by Beale’s logic, a husband is entitled to force his wife to have sex over her screaming objections. Since “consent is ongoing,” in Beale’s version of marriage, a woman could say no or even fight back against her husband’s advances, but none of this would count as non-consent because once a woman is married there is no such thing.
But of course Beale doesn’t want to have to defend what is obviously – at least to anyone with any humanity – violent rape. So he tries instead to restrict the debate to the seemingly innocuous practice of “wake-up sex.” After all, what guy doesn’t want to be woken up with a blow job?
But even this example isn’t as persuasive as he thinks it is. Some people like to be woken up in an “intimate manner,” at least some of the time; some don’t, and you don’t get to override their desire not to be sexually manhandled in their sleep just because you’re married to them. And while drunk sex is not necessarily rape, marriage doesn’t give you the right to force sex on a partner who is intoxicated to the point of incapacity.
And for those who wish to argue that consent can be withdrawn, there is a word for withdrawing consent in a marriage. That word is “divorce”.
No, that word is “no.” There is no such thing as ongoing consent to sex. The fact that you are married to someone doesn’t give you the right to have sex with them whenever and wherever you want, whether they want to or not, any more than the fact that someone is a professional boxer gives you the right to punch them in the head any time you feel like it.
The concept of marital rape is not merely an oxymoron, it is an attack on the institution of marriage, on the concept of objective law, and indeed, on the core foundation of human civilization itself.
No, Mr. Beale, you having the right to do whatever you want to with your dick is not the basis of civilization itself. Civilization, in fact, is built in part on the repression of some of our darkest desires. Part of growing up is reconciling ourselves to the sad fact that we can’t just do whatever the hell we want to all the time; Freud described this as putting behind the “pleasure principle” of infancy and early childhood for the “reality principle” that governs the more mature mind.
Beale seems to be driven not only by a desire for instant sexual gratification, whenever and wherever he wants, but also by a certain degree of sexual insecurity. In a previous post on the subject, he wrote:
If a woman believes in the concept of marital rape, absolutely do not marry her! It would make no sense whatsoever to marry a woman who believes that being married to her grants her husband no more sexual privilege than the next unemployed musician who happens to catch her eye.
Beale seems to think that if married women are allowed to say no to their husbands, they’ll desert these poor beta schlubs en masse in favor of scruffy alphas with guitars. At the root of all his arguments against the idea of marital rape is an obvious terror of unrestricted female choice.
In a way Beale’s petulant, self-serving defenses of marital rape serve a positive function, in that they help to remind us how abhorrent the practice is and how nonsensical the “arguments” in favor of allowing it really are.
Every time he opens his mouth on the subject, he helps to strengthen the growing consensus against marital rape.
…why not?
Finish the sentence, dude. Why not?
What’s the terrible thing that might happen?
WHY NOT?
“Oh, no! A woman could just say her husband raped her and then he’d go to jail for ever and ever because they had sex and there’s no way to tell sex from rape besides her word”?
Because, A, you’re wrong, B, you’re totally wrong.
@katz
yeah on second read through I realized they might be joking but it’s soooo hard to tell.
Are you expecting a cookie?
Emma, here’s someone challenging VD’s claim to be married, and his response.
http://jamesworrad.blogspot.ch/2013/06/vox-day-schrodingers-spacebunny.html
http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2013/06/if-shes-hot-she-must-be-fake.html
@gary
here are some stats on how about 2/3s of rapes are committed by someone who knew the victim. here are some stats on how few rapists will ever spend a day in jail.
So tell me again why you think it should be even harder for a man to get in jail for raping his wife than it already is.
Hi Gary! Thanks for letting everyone on the internet know that you’re not a safe person for women to be around. Obviously no-one should marry you, but what about dating? Or friendship? Just how far does this belief of yours that if men and women have a close relationship then we ought to assume that rape couldn’t have happened go?
Remember Gary’s name and face, female readers, and never, ever allow yourself to be alone with him.
If civilization depends on married men owning their wives and being able to rape them with impunity, then this is a worthless civilization and I’m cool with tearing it down.
Of course, even Pox knows that isn’t so. He knows that rapists like him are the only people who “benefit” from there being a legal way for men to sexually torture women.
If your SO won’t sleep with you and that makes you miserable, you can leave or you can take a lover. What you cannot do is rape. There is never justification for rape.
Woo-hoo! Thanks, David!
Now I totally believe that Mrs. Spacebunny (what a lovely name) Day is real.
As a matter of fact, I have it on good authority that, right now, having finished yet another modeling shoot, she’s having hot sex with her hubby while simultaneously baking cookies and whipping up a four-course gourmet dinner for later (to be followed by more, even hotter sex).
Because that’s how The Alpha Venereal Disease and his missus roll. Take that, real world!
Huh, I guess I’ll have to inform the husbutt that he’s consented to a lifetime of pegging by marrying me, even though he has clearly stated his desire to not do that ever. Oh well!
/sarcasm
On a different note, every time we start talking about Vox Day and his (ridiculously pompous) nom de plume inevitably gets shortened down to VD, this is what’s going through my head.
No, it isn’t.
WTF?
And that presumption needs to die. Either the presumption has to die or the institution of marriage has to be dismantled. Under no circumstances is it acceptable to support a license to rape one’s spouse.
Marriage makes no difference here, and many women report being raped by their partners – marital or otherwise. You have no argument.
Fuck off and take your rape apologia elsewhere. Better yet, get rid of it altogether.
*doesn’t*
Oops.
I mean, how can Gary even claim it presents a quandary with a straight face? We have literally most of the world already on a legal standard where this is a crime, some parts of the world for nearly a hundred years. It hasn’t really presented an extraordinary problem for enforcement.
It’s almost like Gary is completely full of shit.
Gonna also jump on the I-hate-Gary bandwagon here: Gary, your rape apologia needs to go die in a fire, and you are hereby cordially invited to stand in the resultant smoke. You are a sad, sorry excuse for a person.
@dustedeste
You and I think alike *highfive*
Interesting link – the one that tries to find pictures of his wife. It seems Worrad looked up “Vox Day wife”. I think just to make more sure “Theodore Beale wife” could also be searched. But I suspect James Worrad is right.
Knowing someone is very different than marrying someone.
“why you think it should be even harder for a man to get in jail for raping his wife”
Your question pre-presumes the rape.
As I said in my original post, the problem is more of a practical one than fundamental.
Whether recognize it or not, there are always going to be thresholds of proof, pre-charging and post-charging at trial.
So, if a big burly man comes into a police station and claims a 14 y.o. girl raped him, the threshold level of belief is going to be rather high to overcome. It is likely that the police will not charge the 14 y.o. girl, irrespective of the claim or evidence.
A woman who charges a man who she doesn’t know raped her in an alley, will get far more serious attention.
And on that scale of threshold proof, a married woman who claims her husband of several years raped her, would fall in between.
The practical end of this all is, although rape, if it happened, should be taken seriously and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law – not all accusations of rape are as believable as others.
@MRA! HA! HA!
This sounds an awful lot like you’re saying that the only reason you avoid raping your partners is that it turns you off. I hope I’m wrong. At any rate you seem to be putting an undue amount of emphasis on your libido as a factor in you not committing rape.
Oh, and Vox Day is a man. Most rapists are men. And most people who abuse their partners are men. By attempting to frame their gender as somehow less “real” than that of non-abusive men, you contribute to a system that lets those male abusers off the hook. Male rapists and abusers are not cultural deviants; they are products of patriarchy and they serve a vital role in maintaining that system.
…and that’s why it wasn’t even a fucking crime to rape your wife in all 50 states until 1993, because of totally reasonable men like Gary who can just see how hard it will be to sort out the evidence.
It’s not as though there’s ever any kind of physical evidence that can be taken into account, or as if false accusations of rape are rare, or anything like that at all.
…
And that’s why all that majority of the world that has had laws about marital rape for nearly a century is in such disarray, because it’s just so CONFUSING.
Hi Cassandra!
You are so welcome for having a different viewpoint on what you reflexively look upon as black or white, absolute good or bad.
Unfortunately we live in a much more complicated world than that, and as uncomfortable as it may be, such truths need to be addressed in more nuanced ways than you currently have.
And to be clear, rape should never happen, and if it does it should be prosecuted.
and yours pre-presumes that it didn’t happen and the woman is trying to get her husband in trouble
Except, you blockhead, as has already been pointed out, the majority of rapes are perpetrated by, not a stranger, but someone known to the victim. Therefore, on the basis of actual facts, rather than the ones you’re pulling out of your ass, the latter is more likely than the former, and ought to be treated as such.
Whether what ought to be and what is match up is another story, one sadly influenced by the ideas and assumptions of assholes like yourself.
…there’s just so many grey areas, so many blurred lines, right?
Fuck off.
@gary
answer my question: why do you think it should be even harder for a man to go to jail for raping his wife? Don’ talk around it. answer it
So we’re playing the ‘strong men can’t get raped by people smaller than them’ card. Because they can. Even if you’re going ‘well he should have been able to fight her off’ it’s rape if he didn’t consent. Lack of physical resistance never means it wasn’t rape. Fuck off.
Which doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. The woman who got raped by her husband should also get serious attention. you can’t just go ‘thing happens, therefore it must be good.’
@gary
Newsflash: rape isn’t nuanced. Saying it’s more complicated doesn’t make you smarter, or more deep, or more understanding of human nature, it just makes you an asshole.
You’re contradicting yourself. You’re putting up that disclaimer because people thing (with reason) you are a rape apologist.