The Wrongness of Rape

Abstract That rape is wrong, and seriously wrong at that, can scarcely be doubted. Arguably, rape is among those wrongs which are never excusable. Probably, it is among those wrongs which are never justifiable. Certainly, it is among those wrongs which ought to be forbidden and punished by the criminal law. Joel Feinberg is right to place it on his shortlist of wrongs which are crimes ‘everywhere in the civilised world’ and the decriminalization of which ‘no reasonable person could advocate’. In view of all this, one might expect it to be obvious to every reasonable person what is wrong with rape. Many writers and commentators, including Feinberg, seem to imagine that this is indeed obvious, and do not give the question detailed attention. Some writers, for example, just take rape as a settled paradigm of wrongdoing in need of no explanation, and work towards the conclusion that certain other actions are wrong simply by pointing out their resemblance to rape. But unless we know what exactly is wrong with rape, how do we know whether such a resemblance is resemblance in a relevant respect – that is to say, in a respect which makes the rape-resembling action wrong too? Other writers concentrate on difficult test cases which seem to lie at or near the borderline of rape. Of a fascinating and burgeoning recent philosophical literature on rape, a very large proportion has been concerned with tricky issues about the precise demarcations of consent in rape, or the difficulties of relying on the concept of consent to settle particular classes of case (e.g. those involving false promises or emotional blackmail on the part of the alleged rapist).