PhilosophyTutor comments on Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics - Less Wrong

48 Post author: lukeprog 05 November 2011 11:06AM

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Comment author: PhilosophyTutor 25 November 2011 01:15:02AM -1 points [-]

Legally speaking this is far off the mark in most jurisdictions. I would call this "archetypal rape".

However lots of other things still qualify as rape, although they typically attract lighter sentences, in exactly the same way that different things that qualify as murder typically attract different sentences.

Obtaining sex by deception, or bullying which does not involve physical violence or the threat thereof, for example, is still going to get you charged with rape in most places. In a recent case a man was jailed for obtaining sex by deceiving a woman about his religion. I've got no problem with that.

(I do have a problem with the likelihood that there would have been no conviction if a Jewish woman had obtained sex by deception from a Palestinian man, but that's a separate issue touching on sexism and racism).

Comment author: lessdazed 25 November 2011 03:54:07AM 3 points [-]

In a recent case a man was jailed for obtaining sex by deceiving a woman about his religion.

Almost certainly not.

Back in July, it was reported that the two met in a Jerusalem street in 2008, had consensual sex within 10 minutes of meeting each other...

It was also reported at the time that Kashur was charged with rape and indecent assault, and the conviction of rape by deception was a result of a plea bargain.

New details in the case emerged when the woman's testimony, which had been kept secret, was declassified last week.

It shows an emotionally disturbed woman who had been sexually abused by her father from the age of six, forced into prostitution, and lived in a women's shelter at the time of the encounter with Kashur.

During her initial testimony, she repeatedly broke down in court as she accused Kashur of rape.

...

BBC

Comment author: PhilosophyTutor 25 November 2011 04:18:51AM -2 points [-]

Thanks for the updated data.

Reading closely however it's not clear that the man did not misrepresent himself as being a Jewish bachelor, merely that charging him with that rather than outright rape was a compromise. The fact that he agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge is not watertight proof that he did not in fact commit that lesser offence and the article does not as far as I can see address that issue.

It also seems to me that the point that such conduct is illegal is the point of interest, and whether or not the man in question turns out to be factually innocent or guilty is not relevant as far as the topic we are concerned with goes. It could turn out tomorrow that the complainant had made the whole thing up out of whole cloth, or it could turn out tomorrow that there was unimpeachable video evidence showing that the accused did indeed do it, and neither outcome would be relevant to the issue of whether the acts he was accused of are criminal, nor whether they should be criminal.

Comment author: Prismattic 25 November 2011 04:58:42AM *  7 points [-]

Not that I think it would save this thread at this point, but I suggest that you and everyone you are arguing with here would benefit from dropping the question of "Are some PUA tactics rape" and sticking to the question "Are some PUA tactics wrong". This conversation has totally derailed (if it hadn't already) on semantic issues about rape. You can argue that obtaining sex by deception or bullying is immoral regardless of whether or not it is rape.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 25 November 2011 02:31:24AM *  6 points [-]

Obtaining sex by deception, or bullying which does not involve physical violence or the threat thereof, for example, is still going to get you charged with rape in most places.

This is not an accurate statement of the law in common-law jurisdictions, nor, I suspect, of the law in most other Western countries. With some narrow exceptions -- such as impersonating the victim's husband, performing sexual acts under a false pretense of medical treatment, or failing to disclose a sexually transmitted disease -- enticing people into sex by false pretenses is usually perfectly legal in these jurisdictions. In the past seduction was a common-law tort in its own right (and sometimes even a statutory offense), but seduction by lies was never considered as a form of rape.

As Richard Posner writes in his Sex and Reason (which I can't really recommend otherwise, but whose statements about law are reliable given the author's position):

The law usually treats force and fraud symmetrically in the sense of punishing both, though the latter more leniently. It is a crime to take money at gunpoint. It is also a crime, though normally a lesser one, to take it by false pretenses. But generally it is not a crime to use false pretenses to entice a person into a sexual relationship. Seduction, even when honeycombed with lies that would convict the man of fraud if he were merely trying to obtain money, is not rape.

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