The rules for rape

[Weird Harold]

That would fall under the general guideline,

.Wouldn't non-consent be a better description?

Not really. It really doesn't matter what the banned material is -- rape fantasy, underage, snuff, etc -- if a scene can't be identified within the scene as role-play, it is banned.

 

[sr71plt]

Also, noted, it wasn't considered rape, but women don't feel different about being violated today than they did 300 years ago. The human condition is constant.

Did you do research into how women thought about it 300 years ago? I'm betting they were conditioned to think it was a husband's right to be endured in vast contrast to what is thought today. I don't really think anyone today is right to think the thinking about the human condition 300 years ago was the same as it is today. Sorry, that one just doesn't jell with me. We have quite a bit of subjective application of historical situations to today's values going on today that doesn't jell with me--or at least if folks are going to apply it, I wish they'd apply it to the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Which goes to story writing. A story that applies today's values to a historical situation--like twenty-first character reaction to rape in (or out of) marriage by the privileged--will sell well to readers, which is, of course justification enough for writing it. It throws historical accuracy out of the window, though. And that's OK too, if you don't want to go with historical accuracy beyond giving flavor. Pushed too far it will irritate some readers too, however. Your choice, but I don't buy that mind-sets 300 years ago were the same as today--about nearly anything--or that historical characters should be fully held to today's mind-sets on social values.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Did you do research into how women thought about it 300 years ago? I'm betting they were conditioned to think it was a husband's right to be endured in vast contrast to what is thought today.

I have, at least to the extent of going over some real and fictional diaries from Victorian England (not quite your 300 years) and some sermons and other comments I could find from the medieval period in Europe (slim pickings, but the Catholic church had things to say) and when America was settled. I'm no historian and I'm not afraid to rely on secondary sources, so take it for what it's worth.

As always, there's no simple consensus on anything at any time. But if I was going to summarise, there was a tendency to tolerate (in former times) that men would demand sex, but there's never been any such thing as an indoctrination that convinced women to uniformly and placidly accept it. There's no evidence of a period in history where women just universally shrugged and tolerated having their legs forced open. At the very least, if they had daughters to protect at least, rape raised a hue and cry.

What they absolutely couldn't count on was legal backing when they wanted to prosecute a rapist. Medieval England had anti-rape laws on the books before 1300. They appear to have been useless, uniformly not enforced. In the 1800s, France had a fuzzy definition of rape which covered things like kidnapping and even marriage without permission, but if it wasn't a virgin being sexually abused, there wasn't a lot of point to complaining because the law wouldn't hear you. (When a virgin was raped, a monetary fine might be awarded - to her father.)

Further back, Europe was largely under the sway of Augustine's deeply misguided and then misapplied thinking on sexual sin. His ideas morphed into the cultural view that sex was bad and it was all the woman's fault. If she went and got herself raped, maybe she'd forgotten to lower her eyes when spoken to. (That might be an exaggerated rendering of the thinking of the day, but maybe not very exaggerated.)

But not even Augustine could trump the older writings of the faith, and the old testament rules on rape still held sway in a lot of legal situations. They can be summarised as "if a woman in the city is raped and cries out for help during the act, she's to be helped (strangers were expected to intervene and then serve as witnesses) and she's to be held harmless. But if no one heard her scream she'd be deemed complicit." Interestingly, in a country setting, the rules went all in on the woman's side - it's simply assumed she did scream for help and no one was around to hear and help her. Note that a raped woman had every reason to scream her head off, even at increased personal risk - she could be charged as an adulteress if she or the rapist was married. That accusation was fatal.

But the fact that women continued to bring charges at all, even in that social climate, indicates there was never such thing as widespread acceptance of a man's "right" to sex. And of course there isn't. Abuse of your body is trivially, obviously wrong no matter how often you're told it's ok, and when the abuse comes with risk of disease (fatal, in those days) and pregnancy, it's simply impossible for any kind of vast majority of women to have ever been down with rape. The one place you can make a counterclaim is within marriage; as best as I can tell when a woman went to the altar in at least medieval times she was signing away rights to her body. There was no rape thereafter because there was no concept of consent after marriage. She'd already consented. Even then, the wife of a drunk and violent man could (and did) get a marriage annulled, though it wasn't all that common.

In short you're both right. Culturally, things have changed radically. But a woman's view of rape has not. Some things really are human nature and are largely invariant under culture.

This is an interesting bit of writing:
http://lawweb.usc.edu/users/dklerman/PDFs/Klerman. Rape.pdf

 

[TheNaughtyCraftsman]

Okay, thank you. That won't be an issue then.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

The word OBSCENE literally means OFF STAGE. Like LAUREL, the Greeks allowed nothing unpleasant in sight of the audience.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Before Daddy Doofus appears:


obscēnus (obscaen-, not obscoenus), adj. with comp. and sup. 1 SAV-, of adverse omen, ill-omened, ill-boding, inauspicious, ominous, portentous: volucres, of ill-omen, V.: animalium fetūs, monstrous, L.: omen: puppis, fatal ship, O.: anūs, H.

—Repulsive, offensive, abominable, hateful, disgusting, filthy: frons, V.: volucres pelagi, i. e. the harpies, V.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

As a rule I strive to keep my LIT prose at a 1940 standard of legal approval.

LAUREL is a blend of 1940 Deanna Durbin with a twist of PC for a modern flavor.

Deanna wouldn't say COCK or CUNT, even if she had a mouthfulla either.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

http://rotwnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DURBIN-Smart.jpg

 

[Harvey_32]

It's all about the way it's described.

This was part of a 3 page submission about incest with a mother who had lost her breasts to cancer, which was rejected:

In one movement Terry stood, picked Tina up with his hands under her arms and held her against the wall with her feet about a foot above the floor.

Tina was wearing a thong and T shirt and started feeling very vulnerable and scared. For some reason, Terry dressed only in his briefs, became fully aroused and in the heat of the moment his dick stuck out of the top of his underpants. Now holding his Mother against the wall with one arm across her chest, he used the other hand to free his dick and direct it to her pussy, with one push he went straight past her thong and entered her. He urgently humped in and out and in next no time shot loads of his pent up spunk deep into her.


When he had calmed down Terry was leaning against his Mum against the wall, she had put her arms around his neck to relieve the discomfort of his weight on her chest then calmly said: “Is that what you meant by ‘fuck you’?”

They remained almost motionless for a number of minutes and he looked at her in utter confusion, not really believing what had just happened and in particular why was she not shouting rape or something? Instead Tina kissed her Son on the lips.

Tina released her hold on Terry and he put her down, she calmly turned and left the room saying: “Goodnight Terry.” As she disappeared from view.


The following changes were accepted:

In one movement Terry stood, picked Tina up with his hands under her arms and held her against the wall with her feet about a foot above the floor.

Tina was wearing a thong and T shirt and started feeling very vulnerable and scared. For some reason, Terry dressed only in his briefs, became fully aroused and in the heat of the moment his dick stuck out of the top of his underpants. Now holding his Mother against the wall with one arm across her chest, he used the other hand to free his dick and direct it to her pussy; with one push he went straight past her thong and entered her. She had put her arms around his neck to relieve the discomfort of his weight on her chest and circles his hips, crossing her ankles behind his bum. He urgently humped in and out and in next to no time shot loads of his pent up spunk deep into her.


When he had calmed down Terry was leaning against his Mum against the wall. They remained almost motionless for a number of minutes, he did not really believe what had just happened and in particular why was she not shouting rape or something. Instead they looked deep into each others eyes, Terry in shock and Tina with a twinkle in her eye. He was in utter confusion when Tina held tighter and kissed him on the lips, smiled and she calmly said: “Is that what you meant by ‘fuck you’?”

Tina held tight for a minute or so before she released her hold on Terry and he put her down. She calmly turned and left the room saying: “Goodnight Terry.” As she disappeared from view she was trying to remember the last time her orgasm didn’t come from her owns hands.





The other change I had to make in the story was an underage reference:

the big surprise was when she had shaved her pussy for the first time, she now has no hair on her body and suddenly her babyish pussy matched her flat chest. Suddenly at five feet tall her body looked like that of a girl of eight, his mind was in turmoil.

The big surprise was when she had shaved her pussy for the first time. She now had no hair on her body and suddenly her babyish pussy matched her flat chest. Suddenly at five feet tall, her body looked much, much, younger than her forty plus years; his mind was in turmoil.

 

[ColetteJulie]

I have, at least to the extent of going over some real and fictional diaries from Victorian England (not quite your 300 years) and some sermons and other comments I could find from the medieval period in Europe (slim pickings, but the Catholic church had things to say) and when America was settled. I'm no historian and I'm not afraid to rely on secondary sources, so take it for what it's worth.

As always, there's no simple consensus on anything at any time. But if I was going to summarise, there was a tendency to tolerate (in former times) that men would demand sex, but there's never been any such thing as an indoctrination that convinced women to uniformly and placidly accept it. There's no evidence of a period in history where women just universally shrugged and tolerated having their legs forced open. At the very least, if they had daughters to protect at least, rape raised a hue and cry.

What they absolutely couldn't count on was legal backing when they wanted to prosecute a rapist. Medieval England had anti-rape laws on the books before 1300. They appear to have been useless, uniformly not enforced. In the 1800s, France had a fuzzy definition of rape which covered things like kidnapping and even marriage without permission, but if it wasn't a virgin being sexually abused, there wasn't a lot of point to complaining because the law wouldn't hear you. (When a virgin was raped, a monetary fine might be awarded - to her father.)

Further back, Europe was largely under the sway of Augustine's deeply misguided and then misapplied thinking on sexual sin. His ideas morphed into the cultural view that sex was bad and it was all the woman's fault. If she went and got herself raped, maybe she'd forgotten to lower her eyes when spoken to. (That might be an exaggerated rendering of the thinking of the day, but maybe not very exaggerated.)

But not even Augustine could trump the older writings of the faith, and the old testament rules on rape still held sway in a lot of legal situations. They can be summarised as "if a woman in the city is raped and cries out for help during the act, she's to be helped (strangers were expected to intervene and then serve as witnesses) and she's to be held harmless. But if no one heard her scream she'd be deemed complicit." Interestingly, in a country setting, the rules went all in on the woman's side - it's simply assumed she did scream for help and no one was around to hear and help her. Note that a raped woman had every reason to scream her head off, even at increased personal risk - she could be charged as an adulteress if she or the rapist was married. That accusation was fatal.

But the fact that women continued to bring charges at all, even in that social climate, indicates there was never such thing as widespread acceptance of a man's "right" to sex. And of course there isn't. Abuse of your body is trivially, obviously wrong no matter how often you're told it's ok, and when the abuse comes with risk of disease (fatal, in those days) and pregnancy, it's simply impossible for any kind of vast majority of women to have ever been down with rape. The one place you can make a counterclaim is within marriage; as best as I can tell when a woman went to the altar in at least medieval times she was signing away rights to her body. There was no rape thereafter because there was no concept of consent after marriage. She'd already consented. Even then, the wife of a drunk and violent man could (and did) get a marriage annulled, though it wasn't all that common.

In short you're both right. Culturally, things have changed radically. But a woman's view of rape has not. Some things really are human nature and are largely invariant under culture.

This is an interesting bit of writing:
http://lawweb.usc.edu/users/dklerman/PDFs/Klerman. Rape.pdf

Thank you Pilot, you have a good point on accuracy. If it was going to be a novel I would have dug a lot deeper. Thank you ever so much Handsinthedark you know your stuff, and thanks for the article.

 

[Handley_Page]

I found THIS, today.
It might put a slightly different slant on the subject, for those who still have trouble with understanding.