Well, it all seems to be cause and effect, and until effects overlap/intersect, we remain unaware and unaffected. Afterwards, in retrospect we can deem things this or that.

alright, you've taunted me into posting. girds my uterus

I wasn't going to post just because weird and anti-female ideas about what sexuality should be in an ideal world are obsequious to science fiction. the idea that women should be nude all the time is a common example, or just that sexuality should be free from emotional commitment (drama), that sex should be considered healthful and natural to be engaged in with as many people as possible with no jealousy or competition. that these ideas are common to science fiction says more to me about what kind of person writes science fiction and what they think of sex than what would be realistic or reasonable. but this series references the ship having it's own 4chan, realism is not to be expected and I understand that.

it's just, I wish the author had thought about what non-consensual sex, about what rape as a concept, as a thing used to torture and to dominate women, really meant before tossing it off as a badly explained line about how much more mature and well adjusted this polyglot culture of the future is.

does the author mean that in this supposed shining utopia of the future that a person can attack another person if the context is sexual? does it mean that all ideas of pair bonding, of marriage and commitment between equals has been abandoned in favor of one night stands? were those stands initiated through an attack, through an impingement on another person's right to autonomy? does it mean that rape in the context of arranged marriages between unwilling strangers is the norm?

this is not explained. rape is legal, that's all there is to it. rape of the underage, rape of the indigent, rape of minors, legal of course, the right of a free society. as far as this was explained.

it seems odd to me that a people so viscerally opposed to cultural infanticide would condone sexual attack.

because that is what rape is, it is an attack. is harming people in other ways legal as well? can I go out for a night on the town of stabbing people? no?

anyway, allow me this moment to object, as rationally as I can, as a person in actual possession of a working vagina, against the idea that rape is, was, or could be, legalized or condoned in any way.

if by rape the author did not mean rape, as many commenters suggest as a defense, then he is either insufficiently articulate or misguided, if he did not mean Rape-rape, but merely snuggle-kisses-rape-hugs then that intent should be better reflected in the text itself. as it is not I am forced to conclude that by rape, the author meant the forcible unwanted sexual victimization and attack on a person or persons by another person or persons.

I would suggest the author examine the blowback around the idea of the Open Source Boob Project for more articulate arguments about the right of women to posses their own bodies. http://feministing.com/archives/009066.html