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this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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First of all I completely agree, and have no solution. Rape is by definition an intimate crime, generally all you have is he said/she said. That makes it hard to meet the criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" which isn't far for victims. Weakening the standard isn't fair for anyone. We have to be innocent until proven guilty, I'd rather not live in a system where proving me guilty requires only the claims of one person and no evidence.
Our legal system was never designed for date rape.
I would like to add that it's made worse by organisations spreading false information about rape. For example drinking or drugs don't USUALLY invalidate consent. That should be obvious to anyone who has ever gone out on a date, had a couple of drinks then had sex enthusiastically with their new partner. Alcohol or drugs invalidate consent when either the person is clearly too intoxicated to consent/participate or has been given alcohol or drugs by someone in order to make them less able to resist sexual advances.
Unfortunately in cases like this it's easy for the "any amount of alcohol/drugs means no consent" messaging to convince someone that it was rape. Especially if it wasn't a good time, which isn't uncommon when having sex with a new partner. Then they put themselves through the entire legal process only to come out of the situation worse than they started.
These organisations aren't doing anyone favours by using definitions of rape that don't match legal ones.
Same with statistics. It's well known that the "most women are raped in university" type statistics are based on these types of faulty definitions. Generally the surveyed women report NOT being victims. What these organisations don't understand is that overreporting statistics only makes people suspicious. If statistics don't generally match lived experiences people are going to become suspicious of the concepts. Then when a victim steps out they're subject to an unfair amount of suspicion: did you get raped by the common/legal definition or the definition used in these types of statistics. This is an additional trauma victims don't deserve.
Definitions are important and we need to adopt common definitions of rape and sexual assault across the board instead of self serving ones to make big numbers and confuse young adults.
I don't know that I agree that social definitions always have to match legal definitions.
Legal systems tend to be conservative and it's social progressive groups that push the public consciousness enough to eventually shift the legal system.
Until 1983, marital rape wasn't legally considered rape in Canada. The social understanding that you could rape a spouse needed to exist before the laws could follow.
I agree that it's nuanced and people need to be educated on the difference between legal definitions and social definitions, but I don't think what you're proposing is the only way.
I 100% get where you're coming from. That makes total sense. I guess I was thinking of one specific context and over generalized. There is definitely room for nuance and to expand definitions of crimes through social efforts.
I think I was focused on the idea that we should be careful with strong language like rape, genocide, fascism, etc. Using them too liberally, or in ways that don't match their severity undermines the position of victims like rape victims, Palestine, or whatever the fuck is happening to immigrants in the US right now.
It's definitely a step too far to say that the only valid definition is the legal definition.
Yeah, that's fair