You Were Duped into Saying Yes. Is That Still Consent?

What I find weird is that this whole discussion presupposes that a woman gives away sex in some kind of transaction, not that she has sex because she desires it.

In the first case we could talk about some kind of fraud. Maybe she expected a long term relationship in exchange for having sex with the man, which he actually couldn’t offer because he was married, so she feels that he didn’t live up to his part of the bargain. She gave something away and didn’t get anything in return. But that whole premise is just sad.

If she instead had sex because she desired it, in the same way as the man, which I hope most people agree is how it should be, it wasn’t a transaction. And she wasn’t cheated on anything.

So if I hit the "agree" button on TOS that are long and complex enough that I am not expected to reasonably understand, I am not bounded by them, because I never provided consent?

What if instead of TOS, we're talking about the tax code? Or the law?

I am not trying to invalidate what the article says, but I think the subject is more nuanced than just "lie -> no consent"

Rape is one of the the most underrepresented and under prosecuted crimes since laws are made by men for men. This article gives the false impression that men are held accountable for their behaviors, sexual or otherwise. What a joke this article is.

Woman says she's on birth control, isn't, and gets pregnant. Was the man raped? Man says he's a millionaire, but isn't. Was the woman raped?

I define rape as when one party does not consent at the time of the act to sex. You can't retroactively remove consent.

Fraud is a completely different matter.

>"Imagine the following hypothetical situation: Frank and Ellen meet at a night course and end up getting drinks together after class several times. The drinks start to feel like dates, so Ellen asks Frank if he is married, making it clear that adultery is a deal-breaker for her. Frank is married, but he lies and says he is single. The two go to bed. Is Frank guilty of rape?"

"Imagine the following hypothetical situation: Frank and Ellen meet at a night course and end up getting drinks at a non-alcoholic juice bar (Frank and Ellen are Vegan New-Agers!) together after class several times. The non-alcoholic drinks start to feel like dates (or at least like non-alcoholic juices, which they are!), so Frank asks Ellen if she's wearing any make-up -- making it clear that advertising herself as less sexually attractive than she really is -- is a deal-breaker for him!

Ellen is wearing make-up -- but she lies and says she isn't! The two go to bed. Is Ellen guilty of man-rape?"

>"To most people, even those who consider Frank a dishonorable creep, the answer is clearly no. The law agrees: In most American jurisdictions, Frank is not liable for any tort or crime, let alone something as serious as sexual assault."

Yes, but conversely, Ellen slept with the man on the first date...

(Maybe I'm going to sound old-fashioned here -- but isn't Ellen going a little too fast by sleeping with the man on the first date? In other words, Ellen is not exactly a paragon of virtue herself, is she?)

>"But why? This question has been a source of contention among legal experts for decades, ever since the law professor Susan Estrich argued that the law of rape should prohibit fraud to procure sex, just as the law of theft prohibits fraud to secure money."

People have used marriage to "procure sex" since time immemorial -- and what exactly the difference between "marriage" and "fraud" is -- to this day, I don't know! <g>

>"Ellen did not consent to have sex with a married man, the argument goes, so the sex she had with Frank was not consensual."

If one of Ellen's criteria to have sex was that the man not be married, then this criteria would have existed because she would have wanted a chance to marry him herself in the future, should he meet her other criteria.

But even so, relationships are complicated things, and can fall apart for any number of reasons, so even if Frank would not have been married, and even if Ellen would have had a shot at that marriage, the relationship still could have fell apart way before marriage, and if she began going that route, the net effect, at least as far as the first sexual encounter would have went, would have been exactly the same!

...

Also, related to this whole "Frank and Ellen" thing (a fictitious story; an analogy), I offer you what 10x (actually 100x'er!) programmer Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of the C++ language (and generally very intellectual person!) said about analogies, and he said (and I quote!):

"Proof by analogy is fraud."

-Bjarne Stroustrup

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/226221-proof-by-analogy-is-...

Where are the outrage crowds when someone uses the word "rape victim" both for the person that was slammed on a pavement, threatened with a weapon and beaten into submission, and the one who had nice sex with the wrong person?