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.
A relativistic justice system based on the relationship between plaintiff and defendant would get unimaginably complicated. Should theft be more lightly prosecuted if a family member does it? Is it less believable if vandalism is committed by someone known to the victim? Is the burden of proof higher if an ex kidnaps your kids vs. a random stranger? Why should it matter? Essentially, it’s arguing that having human relationships makes you fair game for abuse and exploitation, which is chillingly cynical,
What Vox Day is really saying with this “implied sex contract” nonsense is that marriage makes the wife 100% the property of the husband.
Rea – it’s no surprise that someone who peddles a system of manipulating and lying to women would manipulate and lie to his followers. Vox Day and his ilk lack any sort of core self.
His “defense” of Spacebunny was tellingly thin-skinned and full of non sequiturs, in an attempt to squirm out of directly answering the accusation. Instead of calmly producing proof of their marriage (like, say, a photo of the two of them together), he attacked James Worrad’s masculinity, saying that gamma males just can’t bring themselves to believe attractive women exist. That wasn’t the original accusation. No one’s questioning that she exists; there’s a photo of her. The question is whether she’s his wife.
If she was his wife, you know he’d be plastering his blog with photos of her. Egotists can’t resist bragging.
It’s funny how, among misogynists, “my hot wife” is always trotted out as evidence of credibility, instead of something more relevant like academic credentials or life experience. As if that somehow trumps logic and proves that their gross worldview is correct. It’s even funnier when trolls try playing the HB10 card in the real world, where no one cares. “Now if all you SPINSTERS will excuse me, my SWEDISH MODEL GIRLFRIEND** is waiting for me in bed. I win! So there!”
**Translation: an Ikea floor lamp
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that if a self-styled Alpha Male Guru does not have a Hot Wife, it would be absolutely crucial to invent one.
I know! I keep reading this stuff and thinking “I know you think I’m supposed to be really really impressed by this, but even if it’s true (a pretty big “if”, I reckon), so what?”
Not that I have anything against Swedish models in principle, but I’d invariably be more interested in their conversational than their catwalk skills. After all, if I can’t actually talk to my partner on a level that both of us can naturally slip into without either of us breaking sweat, that’s going to make for a pretty strained relationship on even the most optimistic projection.
“In bed, in my house DIRECTLY ON THE BEACH.”
@Buttercup: You are right. And spreading this (“Vox-don’t-have-a-girlfriend-Vox-don’t-have-a-girlfriend!”) may sound like playground kid immaturity, but it would be more likely to decrease his influence, to lose him followers, than any sexist/ historically wrong/ racist/ rape apologetic/ homophobic thing he may say.
But then, it is fitting to lose followers that way – if those followers are hardly more mature than kindergarten kids.
Interesting map of the “marital rape” laws. You can see that marital rape is still legal only in some less developed countries, but eventually those countries too will join the rest of the world on human rights.
Yet these people talk about ” the foundation of human civilization” and such, it’s scary, it’s scary not only because their ideas are anti-feminist, misogynistic and hateful towards women, it’s scary because their ideas are essentially anti-human and anti anything that resembles civilization. In their “ideal” lawless world of rape and torture and the “might is right” paradigm noone will be safe and live good, not even men, not even those who propagate those ideas.
“Her name is Kudeleine*, and we met in IKEA.”
* Princess Madeleine of Sweden, famous for her good looks, is informally known by the nickname Madde. I once read a parodical story involving fictional Swedish princess named Kudeleine, whose nickname would then presumably be Kudde**.
** Swedish for “pillow”.
What matters is whether the person is consenting, so in that case it is rape since there was no consent – just compliance.
This whole post reminded me of a story I heard from my first feminist mentor, who also happens to be a lawyer and -gasp- a man.
[TW: marital rape]
He once received a question from an immigrant woman, who had been divorced (I don’t recall if she was formally divorced or just in practice) for over a year.
She wanted to know for how much longer she owed sex to her ex-husband, who kept showing up at her home and claiming the law granted him the right to have sex with her.
It still breaks my heart to think about it.
This whole argument is bogus. I mean, he’s arguing about whether there is a LEGAL standing for marital rape, but all the arguments he and his followers quote – yeah, I read the comments – are religious.
I’m sorry, VD and followers, but nowhere in the LEGAL wedding ceremony does it say that the wife gives permanent consent to any and all forms of sex her husband may demand, whenever and wherever he may demand them. NO.
Also, I’ve read the Bible, and I am fully aware of the fact that you guys are editing out the verses that say that the husband owes his wife sex. Yeaaahhhh, see that? For all those verses that say the wife owes the husband sex, there are also verses that say the husband owes the wife sex. But if the wife were to wait until her husband was asleep, flip him over, tie him down, and “peg” him mercilessly, because it turned her on and she wanted it, would you be so ready to defend THAT act? I think not.
You claim that your Christian religion teaches that the wife owes the man sex, and the man owes the wife protection and to provide for her and their children. And then you use that to argue a LEGAL case of rape.
It’s not on, guys. Firstly, you’re not even remotely Christian, if you truly believe that. Jesus Christ did NOT teach that. Paul, a noted misogynist who was by no means perfect, said those things. Jesus never did. Jesus taught us to love each other, not USE each other. And anyone who advocates treating women like animals is NOT a TRUE Christian! What you are is someone who claims to be a Christian, while living under the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.
Secondly, legal arguments require legal basis, not religious. If you want to say that members of your particular church are subject to a marriage under those rules, and that no wife who married *in your church,* *with those vows,* can claim that her husband raped her, because it was right there in the *actual marriage vows,* well, that’s something that you might actually be able to argue. You might be able to argue that the woman made a fully-informed consensual CONTRACT, with it spelled out, and she is bounded to it.
But you’re not saying that. You’re making a blanket statement about all the marital rape in the entire world, and saying that your particular twisted beliefs apply to everyone in the world, regardless of their religion, and regardless of LAW.
Unless marriages actually contain a specific statement that the woman gives up any right to deny her husband sex, at any time, for whatever reason, then you cannot assume that all marriages do.
This is one reason why I dislike weddings where the bride and groom write their own vows. Most people don’t actually write vows. They write declarations of love. I LIKE the declarations of love, but there need to be some actual statements of what they expect in the marriage, and what they commit to do (and not do) within that marriage, in order for it to be a “vow.” As it is, it’s a declaration of love, accompanied by a “by the power vested in me by the state of _____, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Please sign the register,” and that leaves it open to all kinds of interpretation by people who will say, “Oh, sure, they didn’t actually SAY this, but we all know that the marriage vows entail ________, and if you don’t agree with me, then you’re just dumb and stupid.”
Clear and distinct vows are the best. But whether you have them, or not, once you sign that register, you are subject to the interpretation of the law of the land. Unless you signed a legally binding pre-nup that specifies something other than what the law provides, when you signed that marriage register, you signed the state’s legally binding nuptial agreement, and you can’t change the terms on that, just because you want the right to rape your wife.
Vox Day is an onion of awful–just when you think he can’t get worse, SURPRISE!!! He does.
Gary, you and Ken L here can fuck off forever.
In good news, we found a place in Seattle, so the move is totally a thing that will be happening in six weeks.
It is because of precisely this sort of scenario that many feminists now talk about “enthusastic consent”.
Badgering, guitling, a person grinding down someone until they give a reluctant “yes” just to get the person to stop doing/saying what they’re doing.- it says that the person is playing lip service to the idea of consent but actually fine crossing boundaries and ignoring “noes” until they get a token “yes”.
Why should psychological arm-twisting be any different to physical arm-twisting? (Hint: it shouldn’t and isn’t).
… and can make you cry if you don’t take precautions.
Additionally, the “being manipulated into sex is not rape” narrative feeds the notion that “women consent, then regret it and cry rape”.
“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.”
Question – Before you say the big, burly man can’t be raped by someone smaller than him, answer me this. Did the girl have a gun, or some other weapon? Did she drug him? Did she, perhaps, threaten to harm someone even smaller than her, if he did not cooperate?
Granted, legally, your situation is sticky, because being under the age of consent, you have the whole “statutory rape,” issue to contend with. However, I do believe that if she threatened him, or someone he loves, with a weapon, she could be charged as an adult, and the statutory rape charge would not be filed against him, as the adult. Weapons and drugs change everything.
And, unfortunately, having read about the big kerfuffle with the Washington D.C. police force actually changing reports to change a rape report to a misdemeanor, I’m afraid your statement that “It is likely that the police will not charge the 14 y.o. girl, irrespective of the claim or evidence” is true, because it is is unlikely that they will charge anyone with rape. The vast number of rapes go unprosecuted, regardless of the actual scenario involved. Police CAN act on it, but they don’t.
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/stonewalling-rape-police-can-investigate-but-will-they/
@tenya – “No way that someone who is abusive is going to possibly also be charming and convince anyone, including their victim, they’re a great guy. nope nope, would never happen.”
According to my aunt, her ex husband was just as sweet and considerate and kind as could be before their wedding. He didn’t raise his hand to her until AFTER the wedding.
I really, Really, REALLY hate reading those comments about how the wife was so stupid to marry an abuser in the first place, so it’s not rape or abuse, because, hey! She chose him!
She chose the face he presented to her, before he got her bound tightly in his clutches. Dude LIED! And he was really good at it. That is not HER fault, and no, she did NOT deserve to be abused.
The comments on this thread are great, but I do have to disagree with blaming TV for the belief that rape only fits a narrow definition.
*TW*
My great granny was date raped by a man who picked her up in a horse and buggy. Emotionally, she was a mess. Her parents could not keep her rape a secret, but they knew they could not say that the nice white boy did it on a date. No one would believe them. So, they claimed a mysterious Mexican field laborer had “attacked” her.
That was a long time before TV.
@confused
yes it counts. i mean, being convinced/cajoled is not a freely given yes to the thing.
@hookergal
I got creeped out, too, I just tried to answer the question like it was ‘big adult, small adult’ because I reallly couldn’t touch the underage stuff being added with a ten foot pole.
@confused
Um, yes. Yes it’s still rape. IIRC the right word is ‘rape by coercion’ or something. Anyone else, does that sound right?
and Ally responded better than me.
@michelle
I’d have prefered that over the church vows my dad + stepmom took. they were misogynistic enough and it pissed me off enough I would have walked out if it weren’t, you know, my dad’s fucking wedding.
What a post to come back to. It seems fitting that my state is on fire when I read this crap.
BTW, Gary T is using the name/image of a divorced father who has been featured (approvingly) on AVfM for putting videos on the internet disclosing medical information about his young daughter. I don’t know for a fact that this Gary T. is in fact that Gary T., but if he is there’s a whole ‘nother layer of fuckedup in there.
And hey, hellkell is getting the hell(kell) out of Texas! Hooray for Seattle!
On the coercion question, I remember watching a story on the Koresh (sp?) thing after the raid where someone was interviewing some young teens who got out before the raid. I recall one saying, “He told us we were going to have babies for God” while explaining how she’d been abused. It was so incredibly sad that they had to deal with that kind of evil.
@pecunium – “because women are able to press, and “cajole” and otherwise wear down their resistance because assholes like you insist that only someone using violence is really committing rape.”
This reminds me of something I read online years ago. Sorry, I searched, but can’t find the link to the original story.
To the best of my recollection, though, it happened like this: The poster, a woman, was recovering from surgery. She was at home, but in a hospital-style bed, with IV drip, and all. Why they sent her home, I don’t know. Insurance restrictions, I suppose.
Anyway, her boyfriend comes over to keep her company, and they chat for a while. Then, he tells her that he’s horny. She says, “honey, I’m sick! I’m in pain all over my body. I can’t move without more pain!”
“But, baby, I’m so horny! Look, you can just lie on your stomach, and drape your legs over the side, so your body is supported, and I have access. You don’t have to move.”
Other than getting into his preferred position, in the first place.
“I don’t want to! I’m HURTING!”
“But, BABE! I’m HORNY!”
This went on and on and on and on and on and on…. Until finally, she said, “Fine! Just get it over with, already.”
It was remarkably quick, because of course, “get it over with,” means that he should take his pleasure without any regard to how she feels or responds, or the fact that she was crying and in pain, and it was just as bad as she thought it would be.
The poster then asked the peanut gallery, “Was I raped?”
Amazingly, the responses were split pretty much down the middle. About half said that she was raped, because he refused to take her “no” for an answer, and she gave in out of sheer exhaustion. The other half said that she was not raped, because she *did* give in, in the end. However, it must be said that the half who said it was not raped ALMOST all agreed that the boyfriend was a Grade A jerk, and should be dumped, immediately. Almost all. Yeah, there were a few…
My understanding of it is that if the victim can’t bring themself to name it rape, it is not good to name it for them. But if they ask, then the scenario of not taking no for an answer, and wearing the person down is a form of coercion and rape.
I had an acquaintance who married a man and on their honeymoon called her sister and said, “Something’s not right. I may have made a mistake. He’s not the same”.
TRIGGER WWARNING
If he hit her, we never knew. I doubt she’d have stayed, but he did other things. He was cruel to her kids and did not act like a dad to them at all. I don’t think he was very nice to her either. She was Christian and already once divorced from her high school sweetheart. I think she was determined not to divorce again. They went to counseling at their church, but eventually she realized that he was a lost cause and moved herself and her kids out. She was very smart and managed to almost complete a degree while working full time.
He shot and killed her, then himself. Her BIL found her.
People around here could not believe he did it. He was a PK and always so quiet. His mother was so distraught that she’s lost all her marbles and says that my dead acquaintance follows her, so she knows her son could not have killed her. I consider her a third victim of the crime. I don’t think she’ll ever recover.
But he did. He planned the murder.
He hid and waited for her and then he shot her.
Still, it was a shock to her family that they had sat down at holidays with a man who would murder someone they loved. It was a profound betrayal.
She did not choose an abuser/murderer. She chose the good man he pretended to be.
He was so convincing that he fooled her entire family and his, friends and church family.
…but we know how much these folks like to blame the victim.
What is consent? Isn’t it saying yes to something, agreeing to it?
I ask firstly because I am a pretty compliant person. I easily go along with what others say.
And secondly because there are people who claim they are “naturally submissive” who are in relationships with dominant, sadistic people who punish them with whips and canes and insult and humiliate them – and they believe it is okay, because they said yes to it. It seems to me that is, like marital rape, something that they may tell themselves is okay because that is what the community tells them?
I guess someone with a submissive nature is the one kind of person who cannot say “no” strongly enough against a cruel person with a dominant nature – especially if the submissive is in love.
@Lea, That’s terrible. Why are people always so surprised that manipulative abusers are very good at being manipulative abusers? It’s all they do; they get lots of practice at it.
“… and can make you cry if you don’t take precautions.”
You mean peeling him under cold water?
Hmmmm, how long can Vox Day hold his breath?