@Thomas,
Quote:All the definitions you cited expand the definitions we used a generation or two ago, when coercion was a necessary element of rape. There's no question that the gentleman in Max Dancona's story would not have been guilty of rape in, say, 1970.
But "rape" has always been
sexual intercourse against the will of the victim. And state laws still describe "rape" as a criminal act of
sexual intercourse. It doesn't refer to other types of sexual contacts. In that sense, the definition has not changed, or expanded.
I'm of the impression that some people think the term "rape" refers to acts other than sexual intercourse, but, legally it does not. Other non-consenting acts of sexual contact are defined differently.
What has changed, somewhat, is the degree of coercion the law requires to consider the act illegal. In addition to forcible compulsion and serious threat, disregard of the victim's verbal, or behavioral, indications of non-consent is now sufficient to consider the act "rape". But, implicit in that condition is still the notion that the victim has had an unwanted act forced upon them.
I don't think the man described in the OP would be considered a rapist now, and there is no indication he was adjudicated and found to be in violation of either state law or the college's code of conduct. I think the OP is an intentional strawman set up by maxdancona.
If you read the link provided in the OP, that relates to the excerpt provided, the woman, sometime after the fact, told a college counselor she had been "raped" by this man under those circumstances. The point of the article seems to be that her complaint was not regarded seriously, and she was never informed of the outcome of any investigation, or told whether any investigation was even made. That's a whole different issue, and relates to how colleges handle these matters, and not to whether the scenario she reported legally constitutes a rape.
We have no idea why, a few months later, this woman felt she had been raped that night, and decided to report it to a college counselor. Her reasons for doing so are also apart from whether the man in question actually violated any state laws by his actions.
To add to the confusion in discussing this topic, colleges have their own codes of conduct, and their own standards for defining, investigating, and adjudicating, complaints of sexual assaults, that may differ considerably from the laws of their state. Students at colleges are governed by both the codes of conduct of their particular school as well as by the laws of the state in which the college is located. But, for all other citizens in the state, only the state laws apply.
It is possible that the male student described in the OP might have violated his school's code for Sexual Misconduct, as the school defines it, but he might not have violated state rape laws. It also must be remembered that college codes of conduct do not generally use terms like "rape" that pertain to felony crimes--they use the broader, and often less legally serious, terms like "sexual assault" and "sexual misconduct", closer to things which can be regarded as misdemeanors under the law, and the maximum punishment they can administer for violations is to expel a student from their campus. Their definitions do serve to downplay the seriousness of many crimes of sexual assault, which then affects their crime reporting statistics, and that's partly what has created the brouhaha about deficiencies in the way they handle the entire matter of sexual assaults of any type.
So, in discussing an issue like "rape", and whether an act is "rape", I think we have to look to state laws to define the term, since colleges don't even seem to use it in describing an act. And we also have to look to state laws to define "non-consent" as well. As noted in my previous post, NYS does require some indication of non-consent, "No means no", for sexual intercourse to be considered "rape"--and that non-consent must be given
at the time of the act--not merely 5 or 10 minutes before anything took place. This does shift a burden of responsibility onto the victim to make their lack of consent clear--particularly when forcible compulsion, or threat of forcible compulsion, is not involved--the law in NYS does not require a possible perpetrator to be a mind reader, nor does it require an unequivocally affirmative, "Yes!" as the only indication of consent.
I feel the female described in the OP made a conscious voluntary decision to allow the male to engage in sexual intercourse with her, without any verbal protestations on her part, and without any attempts on her part to just get up and leave the situation, in a situation that involved no threats or forcible compulsion, or restraint, and in which she could have called an immediate halt to her participation, just as she had earlier done. In that particular situation, and under those circumstances, her complete passivity regarding the male's behavior, and her lack of any protest and objection to it, could be easily perceived as consent by him, or by any other reasonable person in his situation. That's why he would not be guilty of a rape--at least not in NYS.
There is a responsibility on the initiator of sexual contact to be sure that consent is present, as state law defines the conditions of consent, but there is also a corresponding responsibility on the part of any fully conscious, and aware, and competent, and non-helpless, adult potential victim to give some clear indication of non-consent in those situations where forcible compulsion, or threat of forcible compulsion, is not a factor, and the sexual contact is definitely unwanted.
