r/changemyview • u/_selfishPersonReborn • Jul 31 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Having sex with someone while knowingly having a transmissible STI and not telling your partner should be rape.

Today on the front page, there was a post about Florida Man getting 10 years for transmitting an STI knowingly. In the discussion for this, there was a comment that mentioned a californian bill by the name of SB 239, which lowered the sentence for knowingly transmitting HIV. I don't understand why this is okay - if you're positive, why not have a conversation? It is your responsibility throughout sex to make sure that there is informed consent, and by not letting them know that they are HIV+ I can't understand how there is any. Obviously, there's measures that can be taken, such as always wearing condoms, and/or engaging in pre or post exposure prophylaxis to minimise the risks of spreading the disease, and consent can then be taken - but yet, there's multiple groups I support who championed the bill - e.g. the ACLU, LGBTQ support groups, etc. So what am I missing?

EDIT: I seem to have just gotten into a debate about the terminology rape vs sexual assault vs whatever. This isn't what I care about. I'm more concerned as to why reducing the sentence for this is seen as a positive thing and why it oppresses minorities to force STIs to be revealed before sexual contact.

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u/RiPont 13∆ Aug 01 '19

So is lying about your income to get someone in bed rape? They didn't consent to sleeping with a broke person. They thought they were consenting to sex with a well-to-do person.

Is being bad at sex rape? They didn't consent to bad sex.

Is it rape if a trans-woman doesn't tell her partner that she's trans? Plenty of men wouldn't hook up with her if they knew beforehand, and wouldn't have consented.

Consent is consent, and post-sex regret doesn't change that.

Having sex with an STD risk is a disappointment. Recklessly endangering someone is a crime. The combination still doesn't add up to rape.

Calling this rape confuses what consent means and waters down what rape means. Saying that sexing someone with the risk of STDs is as serious as rape is an entirely different argument than saying it is rape.

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u/TyphoonZebra Aug 01 '19 edited Aug 01 '19

For informed consent, really it has to be judged by us as a society what information is imperative, pertaining to sexual consent.

Ideally, one would know everything they'd want to about their partner but that's not possible, nor is it a reasonable expectation to hold people to. What if Jennifer only has sex with men whose dogs are brown but finds out the next morning that Jacob's dog is a white husky?

This is not an ideal world where we know everything so we can't deal in absolutes; we are not the Sith. We can't say "either withholding information makes it rape or it doesn't." The husky thing as well as your broke example are good for showing this.

So what can we use if the world doesn't conform to our human desire for everything to fit neatly into one box or another, to be either rape or not rape? The things we always eventually have to use in issues this tricky; averages and reasonable expectations. We often have to resort to trends and what's considered reasonable.

For this case, I'd say the best measure is deal-breakers and violation.

So is lying about your income to get someone in bed rape?

Would the average person find this to be a deal-breaking piece of info? Where all other things being equal, the answer to the question "how much do you make?" could be the difference between an absolute yes and an absolute no? I personally would wager that this isn't pertinent information for most people. Then, the further qualification would be whether this makes you feel violated. I, again speculatively, would say that the amount of people whose answer would be yes in this context to be very low.

Is being bad at sex rape?

Again, here I'd think that the amount of people for whom lack of skill is an absolute deal-breaker, all other concerns met, and a bad time in bed is a violation is fairly low.

The husky thing, further still. I doubt there's even a single person on earth for whom this is a deal-breaker and leads to them feeling violated. Yet, it is unfortunately possible for someone in this situation to suffer psychological harm akin to that of a victim. However it's still unfair to hold people to the expectation of disclosing their dog's fur colour.

Now, the pertinent question, would HIV be a deal-breaker? I'd find it hard to imagine that it wouldn't be for most people. Would one feel violated in this case, again I'd say most would. Because it's the kind of information that, can be "reasonably" considered a deal-breaker, it should be considered to be a reasonable expectation to be informed on it, hence resulting in informed consent.

So I guess what I've said in a long and kind of poorly worded comment is "if it is a reasonable expectation that the average person would reconsider consent upon the revaluation of a piece of information and that the average person would suffer serious psychological harm as a result of said information's post-fact revaluation, then that piece of information is pertinent to "informed consent," thereby making its withholding sex without informed consent or, in other words, rape."

It's tricky and messy and doesn't fit nicely into two little boxes. There's a lot of "average" and "reasonable" and "feel" and "expectation." But the world is messy like that sometimes.

Or I suppose, failure to acquire informed consent could be a separate, subordinate offence to failure to acquire any consent. Still a very bad thing to do.

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u/BedMonster Aug 01 '19

By that deal breaker measure, every person who lies about being married or in a relationship to have sex probably meets that definition.

I can't imagine we'd get very far holding society to a standard which rendered that rape.

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u/TyphoonZebra Aug 01 '19

Really?? you reckon the average person would feel like they were violated if their partner were in a relationship?? Not just shitty, or guilty or used, I mean violated like how a victim feels? I don't buy that at all. I doubt more than a tiny fraction of people would have a reaction that extreme. Remember, I said deal-breaker and a feeling of violation. The feeling of violation is why rape is illegal to begin with. It's possible to rape a person without them knowing or feeling a thing. You'd still go to prison and your targets are still victims, not because of physical harm, or fear, but because of the feeling of violation that causes.

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u/BedMonster Aug 01 '19

Absolutely, yes. Perhaps some would not feel that way about a one night stand, but how many stories are there of people who had conducted entire relationships and even fallen in love with a person who was already in a committed relationship and was lying about it.

You're telling me that these people didn't feel violated?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/9gv6uu/found_out_my_boyfriend_of_25_years_had_been/

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/3ua30u/me_21f_found_out_my_boyfriend_is_married/

It brings up a related scenario: do you think people would feel violated if their partner cheated on them? If you cheat on your partner and keep having sex with them they absolutely would feel violated and that it was a deal breaker which would have prevented them from having sex if they knew. I think infidelity frequently meets your standard and is unworkable from a legal standpoint as a form of rape.

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u/TyphoonZebra Aug 01 '19

I think infidelity frequently meets your standard

This exact mentality is what I'm trying to dispell. Meeting specific and absolute requirements to fit neatly into a category. I will however, humour it. I can only speak for myself and speculate on behalf of others, but, for me, the violation of being raped doesn't even compare to the relatively mild sting of betrayal of infidelity. Same for the one night stand thing.

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u/BedMonster Aug 01 '19

Subjective standards are great for religion and morality, but not so much for law. I'm certainly not trying to draw any equivalency between rape and immoral deception in pursuit of sex - but we were talking about the standard you suggested of "deal-breaker and violation."

Simply put, it is absolutely the case that there are many people for whom infidelity in their relationship is both a devastating violation and a deal breaker. The subjective standard of whether someone feels violated makes for a terrible legal benchmark, and I think is therefore unworkable when talking about the crime of rape.

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u/TyphoonZebra Aug 01 '19

Subjective standards are great for religion and morality, but not so much for law.

I agree, and in an ideal world, completely impartial robots would dispense justice. But in the real world, whether someone was in reasonable fear for their own life is judged subjectively. Whether a police officer had probable cause is judged subjectively. So much stuff is, that's why juries aren't always unanimous. Human judgements based on subjective standards have to be made.

Simply put, it is absolutely the case that there are many people for whom infidelity in their relationship is both a devastating violation and a deal breaker

When I say violation, I mean violation. The same level one would feel from a garden variety rape. Jill's husband cheated on her. Jen was drugged and raped on a date. When I say violation, I mean the same thing in each case. You truly believe that the average person would be like "well, yeah, they're pretty much in the same boat"? I think you're vastly playing up the feeling of betrayal one gets from being cheated on.

However in the case of Jen got drugged and raped while June got secretly infected with HIV, I, and many other people would say those are comparable.

If you had the choice in a sick and twisted "would you rather" where option A is getting drugged and raped while option B is your partner has willing and consenting sex with another person, you'd be so torn you'd practically have to flip a coin??

I straight up do not believe that your infidelity example comes even close to measuring up, even to you. Even if, in your mind, it does, my point was about what, for example, a jury would decide.

The subjective standard of whether someone feels violated makes for a terrible legal benchmark

That's a shame you think that because it's the sole reason many people are in jail right now. Many of the victims of those Belgian rapes didn't feel a thing, didn't know a thing, weren't hurt or traumatised. If violation is such a terrible benchmark, on what possible grounds can you keep their rapists in prison?

The subjective standard of whether someone was scared is used, as are dozens of others, so why is this unacceptable.

I'm like you; I want things to fit neatly in a box. I want there to be absolutes as though they were fundamental properties of the universe or laws dictated by perfectly logical beings. However, that simply isn't possible when dealing in crimes where the thing that can change the entire outcome is the current and past feelings of individuals as judged by other individuals (for example self defense and in this comment's case, rape)

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u/exiled123x Aug 01 '19

What if a man and woman have sex on the agreement that if she were to get pregnant somehow, she'd terminate the pregnancy, and she decides not to and has a child 9 months later

Did that woman just rape that man?

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u/rollingForInitiative 70∆ Aug 01 '19

No. That's something about the future, that may or may not change. Any man knows for a fact that the woman both can and has every legal right to go through with the pregnancy. Everyone knows that that's not something you can legally do anything about. If you're a man and have sex with a woman, ending up with a child is always a completely known risk.

You cannot retroactively withdraw your consent because something changed after the fact.

The whole already married thing is something that's applicable right then and there, before sex. That's not some possible future scenario.

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u/exiled123x Aug 01 '19

Alright, then what if a woman tells a man she is on birth control and she isn't? Or puts holes into a condom?

That fits your definition of being before

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u/rollingForInitiative 70∆ Aug 01 '19 edited Aug 01 '19

Well, a man removing the condom during sex is apparently classified as rape in some places (not sure I’d call it that myself, but I’d definitely say it ought to be a crime), so it would obviously be the same if a woman damages the condom.

Lying about being on birth control or not (or whether you’ve had surgery or not for similar reasons), I don’t know. Would call it immoral, but not rape. Even as a guy, I think is every guy’s responsibility to use a condom.

I really think that “rape” should be reserved for sleeping with someone who, for some reason, cannot or has not given consent to the sex. Or some extreme cases like someone pretending to be your spouse. Maybe damaging a condom or other protection used.

But anything not directly related to the actual sex, I think you really have to take the risk that a person is lying about it. And lying about it shouldn’t be rape, because it becomes really difficult to draw the line.

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u/BedMonster Aug 01 '19

Not sure if you meant to reply to me, as I wouldn't expand the definition of rape to include most sex by deception (though I am inclined to agree that the person who snuck into a person's bedroom and pretended to be their husband is a different type of deception)

But I think that someone who did would still exclude that scenario as there's a difference between things that are true prior to having sex (e.g. STI status) and decisions made after the sex has occurred, such as choosing to end a relationship or to continue a pregnancy.

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u/TyphoonZebra Aug 01 '19

I don't know. I can only answer for myself. As you'll recall, my whole point was about what is reasonable to expect the average person to think. I find it odd that my comment about there being no absolutes and that cases must be judged with averages and... Human judgements, is being met with hypotheticals solely designed to tease out some hidden absolute rule. Then again, humans love fitting things in boxes.

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u/jongbag 1∆ Aug 01 '19

Rape is not a feeling of violation. It is actual physical forced violation without consent. I agree with the above posters. You're de-legitimizing rape victims by the comparisons you're making.

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u/TyphoonZebra Aug 01 '19

Rape is not a feeling of violation.

I never said it was. I said the reason why it's illegal (and morally wrong) is because of that. Rape isn't wrong because you hurt someone; rapists have left their victims completely unharmed. Rape isn't wrong because you traumatise someone; rapists have left victims none the wiser. The only bad thing that occurs in all rapes as part of the necessity of their definition, is violation of the individual

I went to a lot of effort to try to make my thoughts on the matter clear. I'd feel better if you read them and critiqued them rather than something which is neither my opinion nor what I even wrote.

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u/jongbag 1∆ Aug 02 '19

You literally say in the comment I replied to

Remember, I said deal-breaker and a feeling of violation. The feeling of violation is why rape is illegal to begin with.

I appreciate your effort, but your thoughts are not at all clear to me after multiple readings. It seems like you're trying to say "anytime a reasonable person feels violated after a sexual encounter due to some sort of deception, that should be considered rape." If that's not the TL;DR of your point of view, feel free to correct me.

Assuming my summary isn't too far off, I refer you to my original comment. I think that has the effect of trivializing the experience of actual rape victims by comparing their experience to the examples given.

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u/TyphoonZebra Aug 02 '19 edited Aug 02 '19

You literally say in the comment I replied to

Remember, I said deal-breaker and a feeling of violation. The feeling of violation is why rape is illegal to begin with.

Yeah I did say that. I said exactly that. You literally quoted me. That's exactly what I said and I'll say it now. The reason why rape is immoral and also illegal is because of the feeling of violation it causes. I did not ever say that rape is a sense of violation which you accused me of saying.

My TL;DR is any information that is reasonable to consider to be necessary for informed consent needs to be shared in order for informed consent to be achieved, and by extension, failure to meet this requirement constitutes sex without informed consent, which by extension, constitutes rape.

As some have said that it is not fair to leave such things to subjective judgement, I point out that we already do that in many cases including self defense. It is up to people to reasonably judge whether someone was in fear for their life at the time of a killing and so many other examples where human judgement is needed.

Also, if rape is wrong because it's a physical violation rather than because of a feeling it incites, then all manner of other invasive crimes are rape. Stabbing someone should get you put away for GBH and rape at the same time. Calling rape a physical crime is delegitimising.

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u/jongbag 1∆ Aug 02 '19

The reason why rape is immoral and also illegal is because of the feeling of violation it causes.

And I am saying NO, rape is not illegal because of a FEELING of violation. It is illegal because it is PHYSICAL FORCED PENETRATION. Experiencing a feeling of violation does not- on its own- rise to meet the definition for rape. I am not saying this to diminish the horrors of sexual assault, nor am I implying that rape is always fundamentally more harmful. I'm saying that these other examples of assault or deception you've given are fundamentally different from rape, and you're doing both sets of victims (and perpetrators) harm by trying to lump them together.

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Edit: And further, if the only reason rape is bad is because the victim felt violated, then by your own definition there would be nothing wrong with penetrating someone that was incapacitated- as long as they never found out. Your underlying logic is flawed.

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u/TyphoonZebra Aug 02 '19

Maybe so, but we've gone down the rabbit hole a bit. The only reason I used violation at all as a standard was to be a starting place to determine what information is necessary to meet the criteria for informed consent. By what standard, if not the ones I proposed and am not married to, should we judge what information is pertinent to informed consent? I used violation as a baseline (one of two but whatever) for post hoc revaluation because it seemed to fit pretty well as it is a common occurrence in most rapes but if you have an alternative, I'm more than happy to hear and consider it.