If you're going to "respond" to what I write, please read what I write. What I wrote was that there was no REQUIREMENT in the study that the man know that the woman didn't consent. That is true. The situation you described is one in which it is obvious that the behavior is wrong and not consented to. But there are (literally) countless other situations in which the man doesn't know and cannot know that the woman doesn't consent because (as I said) there's no requirement that she inform him in some way. Notice of what is prohibited is a feature of all criminal law except this one.

But you don't address the issue that, according to this law, if applied on a gender-neutral basis, many women are rapists. As even a cursory glance at this thread will tell you, plenty of men have sex when they don't want to. So tell me, how many years in prison should those women serve to atone for the horrible wrong of wanting sex and not being told by their partner that he didn't?

many people on this thread are discussing behaviors which any grown man knows or should know is either rape, battery or close to it. One salient feature of the "study" is that there is no requirement that the man know, be told or have any reason to believe the sex he's having or had was not consented to. There's no way for him to conform his behavior to any sort of legal or societal norm.

Again ladies, is that the standard you want for yourselves? Should it be OK for your husband/boyfriend to go to the police and announce that the sex you had last night wasn't consented to and thus you go to jail for several years and have to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life thereafter? If not, should it be the standard for men?

Let us know.

First, like such noted travesties as the Hite Report, the women they interviewed "self-selected," meaning that they handed out a great many surveys, but allowed women to either respond or not. That methodology is fundamentally flawed and every first-year masters degree student knows it. That methodology "self-selects" the cranks, those with an ax to grind, in short, not even close to a representative sample.

Second, what does "consent" mean? According to the respondents they quoted, it includes the concept of compromise, i.e. he wants to have sex and she doesn't particularly, but she goes ahead to please him. In short, she consents, it's just not her idea, her first desire at the time. In other words, it's what we've all done at one time or another, and it is NOT rape. See? There's nothing keeping her from saying "no" but her own desire to please her husband, avoid a conflict, etc. She could have but she elected not to.

Which brings us to three. Men do this too. According to this study's theory of rape, women rape men fairly frequently. Do the authors understand this? Does Lynn Harris? Ladies, do you want to go to jail because you wanted sex one night and your husband/boyfriend complied but, unknown to you, really wanted to go to sleep? How many years do you think would be appropriate to teach you your lesson?

And four, of course the study asks WOMEN about MEN's attitudes on the subject. Why not ask men? What valididty do these "findings" have?

Thanks for the response. Interesting stuff, but I still have to wonder. We've been told we're preparing for a major two-front war even with all the commitments of troops we have around the world. But when it comes to it, 180k strains us to the breaking point. Journalists, politicians and people generally should be righteously p.o.ed about this as far as I can tell, yet even lefty publications don't ask the questions.

we were told that defense spending was so high because we were preparing for a major two-front war like WWII. Now we have a two-front war with only 150k troops on one front and 30k troops on the other and we're being told that we can't do more, that our force structure is on the verge of "breaking," etc. And these aren't wars in which we're expending a large amount of ordnance or losing a lot of major equipment like tanks, helicopters and planes. Where is all that money for defense ($630B/year) going if this is the most we can do and why aren't journalists asking?

It's nice to watch a sporting event in which you know the players aren't juicing, are literate, and can both compete to the utmost and act like gentlemen at the same time. Of course neither is an American, but...

had intense drama in every point, in fact in every shot. The quality of shot-making was superb and errors were amazingly few. It was a donnybrook, lasting five sets with no set being decided by more than two games. Late in the match the number of points won by each man was exactly equal. Each man was totally focussed on each shot. (Compare that with the NBA finals in which players, no actually entire teams, took whole quarters off at a time.) It wasn't just tennis at its best, it was sport at its best.

stop voting for these people, we're going to continue to have only these people to vote for. Until we stop voting for them, stop giving them our money and stop working for them, we will continue to have candidates who do not represent our values. Why would it be otherwise? NOW is the time to resolve to vote Green, vote Nader, vote libertarian or don't vote at all. And NOW is the time to inform Obama and the Dems WHY he's lost your vote. It'll never change if we don't change it.