A lot of things that are crimes, generally aren’t crimes if all parties consent and enjoy the interaction.
Consensual rape is sex.
Consensual theft is giving someone a gift.
Consensual burglary is inviting someone to your home and giving them a meal.
Consensual stalking is hanging out with your friends.
etc.
And I’m not trying to minimize these crimes, I’m saying that the difference between the same act being a terrifying, unpleasant crime vs a pleasant interaction is whether all parties consent or not.
But obviously for some crimes consent doesn’t matter and shouldn’t. Anything sexual to do with kids, sexual things to do with people in prison vs the people imprisoning them (prisoners can’t consent to sex with cops or LEO even if they are all adults), consent regarding sex, finances, etc with people with mental health issues is invalid.
Some forms of consent seem to be a gray area though, like battery. Non-consensual battery is a crime. But consensual battery can or can’t be. Like two people consensually fist fighting is a crime, two people consensually fist fighting in a boxing ring is fine.
You can’t consent to exchanging material goods for sex, unless its indirect. A guy buys you a necklace and a week later you have sex with him because you want to be with a guy with money? Thats legal. The direct exchange of money for sex is a crime.
I feel this is probably a first year criminal justice topic.
Sure, but that’s nitpicking over his terms. What he’s saying is that, for instance, consensual sex is legal and nonconsensual sex is not. Consensual transfer of goods is legal, nonconsensual taking of goods is not.
To reply to the OP: since this question varies by nation, if I’m not mistaken, there is a Canadian law that says a person cannot consent to bodily harm. Whether this means a ban on even consensual BDSM activity, I don’t know.
A parallel example is public service. If a government official does an act (or does not do the act) in exchange for money or material goods, it’s bribery. Even if it would be legal for them to take the same action if the exchange wasn’t involved.
So prostitution and bribery are two examples of things becoming crimes when they’re done for money, even when all parties involved consent.
Said another way, there are some things it’s illegal to sell, but not to have or to do.
e.g. Nowadays in some jurisdictions it’s fully legal (ignoring the Feds) to grow and harvest marijuana for personal use. But don’t try to sell it to your neighbor without a license; that’s a crime.
So the issue there isn’t exactly the “consent” as asked in the OP, but rather the selling of something that’s “supposed” to be freely given.
Ultimately I think that the OP is sterile. @Czarcasm was on the right track, but said it a little clumsily and got pushback.
A crime, almost by definition, is where a person called a “victim” is forced against their will to participate in something that leaves them worse off with no compensating benefit whatsoever. The issue isn’t the “something”; it’s the “forced”. True consent eliminates the “forced”. And that’s true whatever the “something” is.
The only real exceptions are things, such as @Little_Nemo’s mention of murder, where the state has said, for reasons good or bad, that they deny the citizenry the right to consent to that thing because the results are just too icky. A second class of exception is one where the victim is assumed to not be able to consent. Kids & sex, wasted people & sex, mentally deficient people & sex are common examples of this latter idea of someone unable to properly knowingly consent.
Which to me raises the question of how well-founded any of those governmental “too icky” judgements are. There are lots of things that were too icky 100 years ago that occur routinely today. “Miscegenation” anyone?
Actually, I think @czarcasm was too polite. Some things are not to be joked about. Rape is one of them. Hospitality or giving a gift bears no resemblance to being burgled. Or robbed. None. It isn’t even clever.
I don’t feel the OP was attempting to make a joke. You can question the way he worded it but I think his point is clear and he raised a valid topic for discussion.
This brings up a broader issue; activities which are legal when done within a private setting but become subject to regulation (and potential criminal charges) when done commercially.
I can, for example, cook meals in my home. And I can serve those meals to guests. There’s no regulation involved in this.
But if I begin cooking meals and serving them to paying customers, I am operating a restaurant and I become subject to a number of regulations.
It’s not that the act becomes illegal; there are obviously plenty of restaurants operating legally.
The same is true for a number of other activities from giving somebody a ride in my car to preparing somebody’s tax returns.
Equating consensual sex with rape is insensitive as well as salacious. I’ll give him a pass on the others since a discussion was spurred but that rape verbiage is out of bounds and a mature, learned debater would know that and abide by it. Accepting it creates more harm by desensitizing all of us to the very real horror that rape is. It is a cheap shot, chosen for shock value and titillation. The poster got his wish: I’m shocked and also horrified. I’m just no longer going to keep quiet about it. I’ll persist.
There’s consent or lack on one side and the nature of motivation on the other. Rape and consensual sex involve two very different mindsets on the part of the perpetrator even if the mechanics are grossly similar.
Which is another way the OP’s formulation of semi-equivalence falls apart. The motivation of a criminal is to hurt or to deprive. The motivation of a dinner guest is to share in hospitality. Even though in both cases the host is out a few extra bucks for the experience.
Motive matters in moral calculus. A lot.
I suspect a lot of @BippityBoppityBoo 's well-founded unease/disgust is that by ignoring the aspect of motivation it essentially converts the OP’s formulation of “consensual sex” into “It isn’t rape if she reluctantly agrees/enjoys it even if the guy is attacking her with malice aforethought”. Which is a pretty primitive and inappropriate thing to (almost) say in this venue.
