Can women be rapists?
 

According to England & Wales Law, no.




And, for Scotland.

Women can only be guilty of sexual assault and other similar offences which carry a lesser penalty than rape. I don't know how this is in other countries, but I think this is rather outdated. What about you?

A woman cannot be guilty of rape. She can be guilty of sexual assault, and rape with a foreign object (which is a different offence to rape in legal terms)

Personally I think she should be guilty of rape is she forcibly has sex with someone, either using drugs or stimulation to achieve male arousal. (As is know, erections and orgasms can be achieved even if the person does not want to partake.)

Yes, although apparently according to those laws she cannot. Would anyone here really argue otherwise?

The definition of digital rape is unconsensual penetration by a digit, object, etc. Or something along those lines, I think.

By that definition, it is possible for a woman to rape a man.

It does not have to be "covered" by the law to be abuse, to be distressing & to have a profound effect on your life.

How could women not be capable of rape? It's ridiculous to think women cannot commit a crime that in its most basic sense is having sexual contact with an unwilling person. The failure, or sexism, of a written law to express that concept doesn't change the fact that women can commit acts of sexual violence.

Yes they can. and it doesn't necessarily mean penetrating a man with a foreign object.

There have been plenty of jokes about men having no control over their penis' and, from a biological standpoint, that can be true. Men do not have conscious control over the natural reaction to stimulus.
Just because a person is biologically able to have sex, does not mean they are consciously willing.

If sex is non consensual then it is rape.

You ever heard of the pornography star from the 70's John Holmes? He reportedly lost his virginity age 12 to a 36 year old friend of his mothers. That could not be considered consensual on his part because of his age alone. Just because his body was able to respond to the stimulation does not mean he was willing to perform the act. In short, this 36 year old woman raped this 12 year old boy.

By every definition out there: not really. By practical sense: yes. It'd be utterly disgusting and sexist to argue otherwise. Quite simply put, rape in every moral aspect is non-consensual sex due to the lack of consent whether unwilling or unable.

Personally, I'd quite like those campaigning for equality to campaign for higher prison sentences for women that rape (nb. this is based on equivalents). Would it happen? No. Society is very anti-men and pushes for equality are usually not in the male's interest as it creates a situation where he is of lesser status, since it's often flung in the opposite direction rather than bringing it to equal levels.

^What, do you mean people should campaign for women to receive higher sentences than men for rape? Or just higher than they would get now?

I think it should be equal. The gender of the perpetrator and victim should be irrelevant.

Than now, so it's equal. Laws are often extremely sexist and archaic - which should be sorted.

^100% yes

I think it's unfair that gender makes such a difference, it shouldn't make any difference when it comes to rape, I think it's very outdated. Rape is any non consensual sex, between people of the opposite or same sex. As mentioned above sexual arousal and/or sexual climax does not equate to consent.

Of course, a woman can be guilty of rape even if the law does not define it as rape, how can it not be!

The law is out dated, sexist and should be illegal itself here!

I'm all for women being treated equally and I think that should mean with prison sentences too. I think a woman is capable of rape, the same way that women are capable of violent crimes/murder. Just because there's a stereotype that we are the more gentle, tender, nuturing sex, doesn't mean that we are.
(Sorry if that's incoherent and comes across wrong, I am very tired -__-)

I also agree that prison sentences should be equal.

I was reading a sociological study about people's attitudes to "female sex offenders", I can't remember if that particular one found anything significant, but they were mentioning how in the media, reactions to female sex offenders are often either very negative, or very positive (that one might sound strange, but it refers to a case of a teacher jailed for sexual assault of a pupil, and the newspaper article was describing it as an "affair" with the pupil, insinuating that it's not really something to be jailed for). That kind of talk is something that would not happen if the perpetrator was male.

I've thought that too, when considering a female teacher sexually abusing a pupil and it's called an 'affair' but if it was a male I really doubt it would be called an 'affair'. The term affair seems to imply that it wasn't abuse or assault.

I think the law should be changed. Well, the wording of the definition of rape so that it reflects that women can rape men.

Also that women can rape other women (in my opinion)

It's because people believe that a teenage male student is not vulnerable to female teachers, they and their friends certainly do not believe that its abuse. Despite the fact teenage girls are generally more mature than teenage boys, people believe that if it's a male teacher and a female student, then the girl is getting manipulated.

The laws are there for good reason, but when I've read into many of the cases, it really doesn't appear as if anyones getting manipulated at all. I've seen students (of both sexes) go on about how they'd love to sh*g such a teacher, I remember back in year 11 a new Art teacher came in who was really popular with the girls and some girl would purposely stay in at break times and lunch times doing extra coursework just to (attempt to) flirt with him. Nothing happened obviously, but people really underestimate the maturity of teenagers, I'm not talking 13 year olds here before, but 15/16+.
I really think in such cases the teacher should only lose his/her job, not get prosecuted. I can't think of the name of this case, but there was a case in the US where a female teacher went out with one of her male students, she lost her job and got sent to prison and put on the sex offenders register and everything, but when that student turned 18 they got together in the end anyway..

Yeah, I don't doubt that high school students where attempting to flirt with their teacher. However, the rules are there for a reason. No matter the gender of the teacher, they are in a position of authority over their pupils, so they naturally have the upper hand when it comes coercion. The girls that you where talking about might have been attracted to this teacher, but they had no power over this teacher, so the teacher could easily avoid their advances. And thus nothing happened. But if the situation where reversed, then an inappropriate situation would be created. This is why it is illegal, and it should stay that way.

The case I was referring to earlier about a student-teacher "affair", both parties were female. I'm going to try & find a reference.

EDIT: I looked back at the article (Gakhal & Brown, 2011), they don't properly reference the source, they just say it was a "lesbian affair with a pupil" (The Times, 2009) so I'm not sure.

But the thing is, if you take a random one (google search term "affair with pupil") such as this: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...-pupil-15.html you can see how when it's a female it's downplayed, "lesbian fling with a pupil, 15". When it's a male, it's treated more seriously.