Judgy Bitch considers my debate with Louise Mensch on the matter, thinks everything through and concludes that my position is the correct one:
I think we have to clearly distinguish between having a right and exercising that right. Under the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, every American has the right to keep and bear arms. Lots of Americans choose not to exercise that right. They still have the right, whether they use it or not. The question under consideration in this particular debate is whether marriage confers consent to sex that cannot be withdrawn except by the dissolution of the marriage.
If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have sided with Mensch. If I say no to my husband, I expect him to respect that, although if I’m being honest, I would be very insulted and sulky if he rejected my advances. In the 18 years we’ve been together, I do not recall him ever rejecting me, and I can count the number of times I’ve absolutely refused to have sex with him on one hand. Pondering the idea more carefully, I have now come to the conclusion that Day is correct – rape cannot exist within a marriage. If marital rape is a thing, then 100% of the sex I have ever had with my husband has been rape.
I have never obtained his consent and he has never obtained mine.
Consent is assumed as a basic function of marriage. Consent to sex is part of what marriage is. Mensch acknowledges the general obligation spouses have to one another to have sex, but refuses blanket consent. I think the most interesting part of the discussion surrounds the use of force and violence. Marriage confers the right to have sex with your spouse, but it does not confer any right to assault your spouse. By what means could a spouse force sex that was not wanted without the use of force?
It’s not an accident that the same ideology that has expressly stated “all sex is rape” is the same one behind the push to create the oxymoronic legal concept of “marital rape”.
If they could, feminists would outlaw both marriage and normal sex. Marital rape is an effective way for them to attack both.