Examples of women raping men in the pre-modern era?

serpentineeyelash · 2020-03-06T12:51:12+00:00

During the 13th-17th centuries, there was a craze of spouses being charged with impotence, which was grounds for annulment. The cases were mostly brought by wives against their husbands. The court would examine the accused’s genitals and, if one party demanded it, watch them have sex. This context would seem to suggest that yes, female-on-male marital rape was very legal - if a husband refused to have sex with his wife, she could charge him with impotence!

LacklustreFriend · 2020-03-06T14:58:13+00:00

Only from a twenty-first century perspective can this particular situation be called "rape", and even that's chancy.

Jesus Christ, what an awful argument. This is worse than when pro-choice feminists use pro-life arguments to deny men reproductive rights. Basically she's asserting that rape didn't exist at all until the modern era (is rape just a social construct? /s). It's rape apologia in the truest sense of the term.

I've argued with this user before. As dismissive as it sounds, don't bother. You're not going to get well reasoned responses. It's a waste of time.

azazelcrowley · 2020-03-06T16:26:07+00:00

Her argument is that a man being raped by a woman wouldn't be called rape so it doesnt count. However that also applies to a husband raping the wife. So she should explain why projecting 21st century values back is okay when discussing marital rape in history only if you do it one way, but not the other. Does she have evidence of women conceiving of their husbands forcing them into sex as them being raped? My suspicion is that they would not, and though traumatic, they would view it as a distinct phenomena from rape and that is precisely why marital rape as an idea changed perceptions of what rape entails and how it should be defined. It seems like she wants a modern definition of rape to be projected back only where convenient for her.

Realistically though she already tipped her hand by calling it 'Chancy' that we can consider rape of husbands by wives to be real rape. She is clearly a misandrist whose brain bas been broken by feminist rhetoric and is now unwilling to accept that her hatred for men and hostility to them is based on a biased perspective and misinformation. She has learned to enjoy her hatred and must thus make excuses for the framework that allows her to continue to do it. At the same time, it is the framework that convinced her to hate in the first place.

Oncefa2 · 2020-03-06T14:50:58+00:00

these were not enforceable by means of personal violence enacted by the wife against the husband

Obviously she's playing off the fact that men are stronger than women. Of course this isn't always the case. And it can be overcome with drugs, weapons, and coercion. This is true even today when we look at the tactics that female rapists use.

But it's also not true that violence, in the domestic context, is only used by men against women. Either today, or in history.

I posted a couple of sources about that here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/f2dxp3/domestic_violence_against_men_during_the/

Domestic violence against men appears to have been common for most of recorded history. So why wouldn't sexual violence be the same way?

C0dey · 2020-03-06T15:08:45+00:00

Don't take this as me disagreeing with your argument, I'm not and I appreciate you providing multiple sources to back up our shared viewpoint.

That being said; the bible? A fictional book isn't exactly a great example for.....anything really. Aren't those the same daughters and father that fled from a town of people having one big orgy before god blew it the hell up while the mother/wife was turned into salt for looking back as the "divine" asshole did so?

Again, not disagreeing with your point, just saying the bible isn't exactly a historically factual source. Which is why I'm glad you offered others.

w1g2 · 2020-03-07T03:45:24+00:00

I'll preface this by saying I doubt any of the examples I share will matter to the person you argued with, but I'll share anyway.

You already gave her the example of Matheolus, who chronicled being forced to have sex with his wife despite his unwillingness to do so, and how when he finally refused, he was physically punished for it by the law. Can anyone possibly imagine a wife, past or present, in the same situation and not regard that as rape?

But it sounds like she wants an example of a woman deliberately raping a man who has been physically restrained and does not consent. This is the closest I can find to that kind of situation.

"To characterize the oppression of Christians under Roman Emperors in the middle of the third century, Jerome described two male martyrs. The second man was tortured in way that persons today can scarcely understand. Drawing upon his vast knowledge of non-Christian literature, Jerome described a classical pleasure garden:

The Roman Emperor ordered another martyr in the flower of his youth to be abducted to a most delightful garden. There amid the white lilies and red roses, he was forced to rest on a thick feather bed. Beside him meandered a gently murmuring stream. The wind plucked lightly at the trees’ leaves and produced a soft whisper. Tied down with pleasant garlands so that he was unable to escape, he was left there... When everyone had gone away, a beautiful prostitute came to him and began to stroke his neck with gentle caresses and, what is improper even to relate, to grope his genitals with her hands. When his body was aroused with lust, this shameless, victorious female assailant lay down on top of him. What could the soldier of Christ do, where could he turn? He whom tortures had not defeated was overcome by pleasure. At last, by divine inspiration, he bit off his tongue and spit it out into her face as she kissed him. And so his feeling of lust was trampled down by the sharp pain that succeeded it."

To say that this isn't rape because the perpetrator is trying to make it pleasurable would again be based on a lack of understanding of how rape is perpetrated. Just because a rape isn't violent doesn't somehow make it less of a rape. Just because your rapist performs acts in an attempt to make it pleasurable for you doesn't make it any less rape. Just because you orgasm during the act doesn't make it any less rape.

One study describes how rapes often involve rapists engaging in acts to make the rape seem more consensual, less forced. " For instance, pseudo-intimate behaviour is never described in news media (Greer 2003; Soothill and Walby 1991), while a lot of rapists exhibit pseudo-intimate behaviour (Canter et al. 2003). Pseudo-intimate behaviour is behaviour that is commonly exhibited in the context of consensual sex and mimics a caring relationship. Kissing is, for example, pseudo-intimate behaviour. Lay people do not believe that pseudo-intimate behaviour is exhibited by rapists."

Another example of a female-on-male would be rape is taken from the Decameron (circa 1350). In it, several women decide to rape a man whom they believe to be mentally incapacitated because "he is so simple that he will do whatever we will."

Another, also from the Decameron, is about a woman, who forces marriage to a man who did not want to marry her. She later finds a way to replace herself with the woman he intended to have sex with, so he unknowingly has sex with her, otherwise known as she rapes him.

That's all I have so far, I'm sure there are many others. I suggest reading the Decameron and Pentameron as they will probably have more.

Egalitarianwhistle · 2020-03-07T00:35:32+00:00

I think people don't understand how strong of a political alliance marriage used to be.

The idea was not that men were "allowed" to rape their wives but that no one, not even the king, (or Queen,) was allowed to come between a husband and a wife. Their personal relationship was entirely up to them.

Only a deeply misanthropic radfem could interpret this as allowing rape. But because they view all of life through the lens of power all they can see is the man is stronger and therefore more powerful and therefore, an oppressor.

If we take radical feminism conception of rape to its radical conclusion, shouldn't we as humans immediately intervene to stop the endless rape happening constantly in the animal kingdom?

Jaffacakes-and-Jesus · 2020-04-18T15:04:24+00:00

Some similar stories have been mentioned already but: - Calypso in The Odyssey pretty much threatens to throw Odysseus into the sea if he doesn't have sex with her, possibly also Circe coercing him by effectively keeping his men hostage. These are ambiguous as he does then choose to stay with them for years afterwards, but still. - Book of Genesis again: Jacob does not give informed concent to Leah when she pulls a bed trick with Rachel (also ambiguous as the text puts the blame on her father, but both Rachel and Leah are capable of deception so they may have been in on it). Less ambiguous is Mrs Potiphar who sexual harasses Joeseph and then tries to rape him to the point where he has to leave his coat in her possession (she then accuses him of raping her, very Asia Argento). Also Judah is reproductively cocerced by his daughter-in-law (compare to the Leverite marriage laws in Deuteronomy 25). - Invisible Romans by Robert Knapp mentions a slave being coerced by his mistress he cites the Satyricon that says something like "it was not his fault, she forced him". - St Athanasius makes a vow of virginity and his mother heirers some prostitutes to seduce him. They are hidden in his bedroom and are so forceful that he has to beat them off. - St Gregory of Tours mentions a preists's wife who breaks down a door to sleep with her husband. May be debatable as he is an early advocate of celebacy so has a bit of an axe to grind against preists's wives. - St Thomas Aquinas' brothers angain hiered a prostitute to seduce him after he joined the Benedictines. He has to chase her away with a big stick from the fireplace. - Lord Byron mentions being raped by his governess at the age of 9, she used to "play tricks upon his person" (probably explains some of his later behaviour). - Zofloya by Charlotte Darce is a Gothic novel in which the protagonist murders three people and drug rapes her brother in law (fictional but still a source perhaps).

I know a lot of these are attempted/ ambiguous, but accounts of rape of women suffer similar problems (people slandering their enemies and so on) and so they still provide evidence for female on male rape existing in the past.

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