In the modern, detached, clinical way of looking at the world, sex is an act of pleasure that, by definition, is received from at least one other person. There are two kinds of sex.
- Sex where all participants consent and
- Rape.
There are pure forms of each. There is the sex when each participant willingly gives and happily receives pleasure, where the aftermath leaves everybody noticeably better off than before.
There is the sex where one participant is threatened and physically forced to participate against all possible interpretations of choice and will.
Then there is the grey area.
People are complicated. We have competing and contradictory desires and wills. When a sad, lonely, desperate woman gives in to the repeated advances of a charming womanizer, some of her will is in favor, some is very much not. And that part of her will regret it in the morning.
At the same time, when the man, silently struggling against his inability to control his desire, resenting the women so easily seduced, reaches his climax with another stranger, he has his own regrets.
Does regret constitute rape? Does being unable to control your own appetites constitute rape?
There are some people who are very adept, by nature or by developed skill, at seducing others into sex.
Seduction is about convincing your target, with truth or with lies, that giving you what you want will get them what they want.
Does lying constitute rape?
The late economist Walter Williams once said (27:25) that governments making economic decisions, using threats and force so that one side gets what they want no matter what, is rape. Free markets are seduction. Even the biggest, most powerful company on Earth only gets my money if they convince me to get up and go out of my way to give it to them.
Unless, of course, they convince the government to confiscate it on their behalf.
We get lost in the grey area, in questions of regret, being unable to control our appetites, being lied to. But Williams makes an important point. All that aside, there is a significant line that separates enticement from force.
And, even when five people vote democratically to have their way with the sixth, even when the five are ugly incels but the sixth is beautiful and capable of seducing anyone she desires, that is still rape.
