Deceptive Sex is Rape Proper

K. P. A. Ilyas

Since reading the perceptive essay on The Wrongness of Rape by Gardner and Shute,

• I realised that crimes need not be what we think they are.

• As rape is an offence which is reported  frequently and reported with such catchy headings,

• chances of public getting brainwashed with the casual clarity of the media is high.

• In the case of Deceptive Sex ( an apt term has been coined !), I tried to visualise what the 'victim' would be undergoing.

• To be fair to her, I thought we need to assume that sex can be one of the many possibilities for her:

1. It can be a pleasure seeking affair. 

2. It can be agreeing to a pleasure seeking request or demand from a person she loves.

3. It can be consenting to a highly intimate act she would not have consented with anyone except her would be husband (perhaps because of her stiff, dogmatic religious beliefs, perhaps because of her fear of getting pregnant, perhaps both). She taking the calculated risk but as the person is going to marry her and hence no risk of a living with a 'bastard' child and the child will definitely have a 'proper' father).

• We cannot impute only one or the other possibility or denying her the freedom to look at the act of sex as any of these.

• Or, the possibility that she might have viewed the act of sex as any of these.

• If it was indeed the last category (Point 3) which she had in mind, and additionally if the investigation supports such a possibility, it is not proper on the part of the Criminal Justice System to declare that it is not rape.It would be rape, rape clear and proper, as the act, as it would turn out, can be seen as clearly against her will.

• Simply because what she had consented to is not what has actually happened.

• (Whenever I presented this view to my colleagues, I was told that the motive of the accused is relevant but this is not the case with the motive of the victim. But on a closer look, there is no substance in this argument because no-one has ever stated that the motive of the victim is not relevant or is irrelevant.

• Motive of the victim is very much relevant for one reason- the consent and will are contingent on and intricately linked to her motive behind and understanding of the act she is participating in).