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Eugine_Nier comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong
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Least convenient possible world:
Is it wrong to rape someone unconscious if pregnancy and STDs aren't an issue?
Living in some even less convenient world, I think I might consciously apply compartmentalization/hypocrisy upon hearing that someone did that - agreeing that they didn't commit anything too bad either ethically or legally... then I'd still do something to harm the rapist emotionally, socially or materially, accepting that my aggression is merely an outlet for a moral emotion and not the demand of a consistent principle.
Personally I think the problem is with the quasi-utiliterianism that tends to be the default moral theory around here.
It's not a direct answer, but this thelastpsychiatrist discussion of a similar question "f you could rape a girl, but then give her this magic drug that left her with no memory of the rape, would you do it?" is interesting.
I don't know if many male readers will fail to think of the reversal before he suggests it. But he has a point that we teach girls, but not boys, that rape could happen to them. (I don't know if we teach boys that they might be rapists, but we sure don't teach girls that.) This may explain some empathy failures. Rape of men is around one third as common as rape of women, but the tropes treat rape of men as something that happens to other people, such as prison inmates or comedic characters.
I think you provide a sufficiently inconvinient possible world to challenge but this seems to be almost the default and fairly neutral world in which to test the theory. The worlds that almost instantly to mind in response to the implicit challenge ("hard to argue in even those cases") naturally took the inconvenience to the extremes.
(I agree with what seems to be your key message.)