Words that Rape: A Normative Quest for What Rape is and is Not

Abstract

Although the legal discourse on the offense of is vast, perhaps more so than regarding any other offense, is still an elusive normative concept. The doctrine of has evolved and expanded significantly throughout the years, to include diverse physical interactions and different social settings. The academic discourse on the offense typically focuses on one form of rape, or even on a small element of one form. This essay provides a significantly broader observation that could deepen the normative understanding of rape. Can we, by observing the diverse doctrines of rape, coercive sex, incompetent sex, uninformed sex and unconscious sex, extract a clear and coherent normative message? Philosophically speaking, what is and why? This tackles these very difficult questions, by examining these forms of in an analytic normative way, an innovative intricate academic task. In order to better understand the normative foundations of and extract the precise normative message from the law, this task requires a thorough analysis of notions of and their doctrinal boundaries, and an examination of what counts, and what does not count as rape, and most importantly: why. To do that, this essay presents an innovative dichotomy, analytically dividing the perpetrator-victim interaction into major facets: the physics of rape, the settings of rape, and the accurate legal labeling of rape. While unfolding what constitutes rape and what is excluded from rape, this unprecedented analytic observation reveals significant normative dissonances and cracks in the modern conceptions of rape. After the thorough analytic journey, having identified major normative dissonances in current doctrines, the conclusion is the offense is normatively shattered. This article proposes to abolish the designation and start anew, categorically dividing sexual offenses into sexual coercion and sexual abuse, and offering subcategories and key parameters regarding the measuring of severity.