Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved? essay

[gotlucky]

You say this as if implicit threats are easily identifiable. If a 200 lb man invites a woman home from the bar, and then proceeds to show her his gun collection and says something like “I always get what I want” – its not at all clear that he is actually threatening her. At the same time, if the two had sex, I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying that there was no rape. The line of consent just isn’t clear.

I don’t know if you have seen this post by LogisticEarth in the Trayvon Martin thread, but I think it applies to this topic too. If you cannot prove that there was a threat, how can you know there was one? Anyway, I want to requote the end of his post:

@LogisticEarth

The bottom line is though, we don’t know precisely what happened, there is not enough evidence to convict or vindicate, and we must leave it at that unless something new comes to light. The only thing one can do is to draw personal insights from the tragedy, about racial prejudices, about the dangers of escalating situations, and rushing to judgements.

While you might not feel comfortable saying there had not been a rape, you can’t say that there was one either - unless new evidence comes to light. With the limited evidence, all we can say is that the woman felt threatened, and that was why she “consented”. It would be unfortunate, but without evidence demonstrating that the man threatened her, we cannot know if it was rape.

We oppose coercive laws, even though we recognize that its not the laws themselves that are committing acts of agression. I don’t see how this is any different. I mean, we don’t just oppose the actions of government agents, we oppose the entire institution. We recognize that the state distorts the market even in indirect ways – and we don’t say “oh man, shame on that businessman for hiring lobbyists to pass bills in favor of his company” – we say “hey, this whole system of rent seeking is a natural result of the state.”

My point is that you cannot interpret every action in terms of that social structure. Just because a woman has sex with a man in a male dominated social structure does not mean she was raped. We should oppose any social structure that includes aggression, but not every action is made in context of that social structure. If a man and woman have sex, whether or not he threatened her can only be determined in that relationship. It cannot be determined based on the existing social structure. The existing social structure is relevant only insofar as that particular man adheres to it.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not talking about this in a legal context. Although I’m pointing out how hard it is to determine whether rape is really occuring or not, my intent isn’t to come to some conclusion regarding guilt or how the law should be applied. My point is that insofar as there are cultural norms and social structures which help to blur the lines of consent, we should oppose such things.

Agreed.