What is death?
What is life?
What is abortion?
What is rape?
These sound like silly questions we could answer without thinking or by flipping open a good dictionary, but in fact death,life, abortion, and rape (among countless others) are terms we negotiate with our cultures. They have different meanings in different parts of the world. They change over time.
Who’s a liar? Someone who once lied?
Who’s a cheater? Someone who keeps a mistress? Someone who flirts with strangers? Someone who sleeps with hookers? Someone who has a long and emotionally deep relationship but no sex with someone other than his spouse?
Who’s a gangster? Someone who belongs to a gang, or someone who acts aggressively in the neighborhood?
Over the years, and at different times in different cultures, rape (of a woman by a man, let’s keep things simple) has meant, and in some places still means:
- Property damage (the father was deprived of the virginity or purity of his daughter).
- Adultery (the man was blameless; the woman was guilty of adultery; her consent or refusal was irrelevant).
- A proposal of marriage (the rapist had to atone by paying a fine to the father and marrying the daughter).
- Abduction (the word rape and the word kidnap meant more or less the same thing).
- Consensual sex (if the rape victim got pregnant, she wasn’t taken against her will).
- Misdemeanor (while it might be a serious crime to rape a nun, forcing sex on a prostitute was no crime, and statutory rape of a minor was also not criminal if the girl was “impure”).
- Legal for 13-year-olds (England’s King Edward I set the age of consent at 12).
- Always legal for the husband (until 1993 in North Carolina, no wife could ever legally refuse her husband).
- Legal for slaveholders (in fact, in America, white men were not prosecuted for sex crimes against black women, slave or free, until long after abolition).
- Only if proved with physical evidence (in the 18th and 19th centuries, this usually meant a broken hymen or presence of semen; now it means a positive rape kit: progress?).
- “Absolute rape” or “legitimate rape” (Missouri Rep. Todd Akins echoed this one last in 2012 when he said a woman who didn’t enjoy the sex couldn’t conceive).
- A Motionless Needle (19th-century gynecologist Dr. Lawson Tait famously said, “You cannot thread a moving needle,” meaning that no woman could claim to have been forced; if she had moved, it wouldn’t have happened).
- Carnal Knowledge (yes, it’s a Jack Nicholson movie from 1971; it’s also the FBI definition: “the carnal knowledge of a woman, forcibly and against her will”).
- Your definition, please. Surely we can do better than this. Use the Reply field below to craft your Definition. We will review the entries together until we craft one that satisfies us.Several factors need to be addressed in your definition:
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- The rapist can be male or female.
- The victim can be male or female.
- The “couple” can be friends, strangers, lovers, spouses, family members, or engaged in a commercial transaction.
- Various body parts can be involved.
- Objects other than body parts can be involved.
- An age difference between the participants may change the rules.
- The power of one participant to compel sex from the other may take many forms.
- The participants are not necessarily in their right minds, old enough to consent, possessed of all their faculties, capable of reasoning, unimpaired, conscious . . . .
- Good luck.
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
In my opinion, rape is the violation or destruction of someones person or property.
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Rape is an intent. Interpretation is where the intent gets tricky.
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If the he or she says yes at the time of sexual act, it is not rape if they say no it is not rape. regardless of mental state.
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Rape is the act of someone or a group of people forcing another person to perform any sexual against their will.
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Rape is forced penetration from one person to another using parts of the body or foreign objects.
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Rape can defined as the carnal knowledge of any person by an aggressor against the victim’s will. If the victim is below the age of consent, cognitively impaired or otherwise unable to give consent, any carnal knowledge of the victim would be considered rape.
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Intent
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Rape can be defined as any sexual encounter with a male or female that is not mutually agreed upon by both partners, in their right state of mind. If a partner is much younger, under the influence of any kind of drug, or just unwilling than it is considered rape if the relationship gets intimate. It is an a extreme violation of a person’s body and mind. Rape is sex without consent.
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Rape is the immoral act of a man or woman forcing another man or woman into sexual activity through harassment, drugging, threats, or violence. If one person does not want sex, yet is constantly hounded by somebody else, whether they are their partner or not, that is rape. No means no.
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Rape is an unwanted sexual act against an individual.
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Rape is when an individual forcefully imposes physical relations, that involves penetration, onto another individual, without the unsolicited consent of that individual.
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Any sexual activity forced upon a man or women without his or her proper consent or agreement.
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Rape is any nonconsensual sexual act performed by an attacker, male or female, against a victim, male or female.
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Rape is not consensual and a violation of your rights.
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Rape is forcing a sexual conduct
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Rape is defined as the action of any one or more person(s) of any gender who force any sexual activity, using one’s own organs or not, on to another individual or many of any gender. The existing relationship between both parties involved is negligible and if consent of the victimized party is non-existent then it is rape. The rules regarding age should remain a constant, whereas parties both under the age of 18 must be within 3 years of one-another’s age, and if any party is above the age of 18 then both involved partes must be of age. Both parties involved should be on the same level of coherency, whether coherent or not. If both parties are under any influence of the same level and are both consenting, it isn’t nor can it become rape at a later time. If one party exploits the incoherent mind of another to coerce consent is engaging in rape, this includes any party who knowingly alters the state-of-mind of a victim (drugs) to coerce consent.
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Rape is unwanted, sexual penetration against an individual (regardless of gender), without the indivdual’s consent.
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Rape is where one person is forced sexually and is sexually penetrated by another human being without with consent of the victim, and also if the victim is not in the right state of mind.
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I’m not going to leave a definition but instead provide perhaps another facet, or category of rape. In today’s day in age I think it also must be discussed if rape can be committed without the victim and criminal being in the same place. Can it be considered rape if someone acquires your contact information, whether it be over text or social media and starts sending sexual pictures/messages about rape? If there can be cyber-bullying can there be cyber-rape? Does there need to be a definition that also includes aspects of the long-distance society the world has become?
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Rape is when anyone male or female is forced to perform any sexual act against their will or without their consent (someone cannot give consent if they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs)
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Rape is a forced sexual act on a woman or a male without their consent or them knowing, whether it be to intoxicated or incapacitated in any way.
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In my perception rape is the act of forcing sex or having sex with an unaware person. Having a sexual experience with a person who is not willing to have sex is a example of rape. In addition, rape can be making another person without the awareness of their action, for instance, engaging a kid to coitus or any sexual act like intercourse, digital sex, or oral sex to have sex. Additionally, a person under an influence engaged into sex can be defined as a raped person even if there is approval.
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