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In reply to the discussion: Andrea Dworkin NEVER said "all sex is rape" [View all]KitSileya
(4,035 posts)For a long time, and still in many places in the world, wives could not legally be raped by their husbands. Their husbands had legal rights to use their wives' bodies for sex as they wanted. How could any wife give meaningful consent when she had no legal choice?
In fact, still in some places in the US, if a man pretends to be a woman's boyfriend, and she consents to have sex with him because she thinks he is who he pretends to be, it isn't considered rape by legal standards. This happened in California, where a woman, asleep and intoxicated, was raped by an intruder whom she thought was her boyfriend until a light shone on his face, and she knew she was being raped. His rape verdict was overturned, because only if he had pretended to be her husband, would it be legal rape. Presumably, that is because if he rapes her while pretending to be her husband, he is violating the husband's possession, while a woman with only a boyfriend is a free-for-all in California.