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god damn this is annoying. why is "let the babyeating ailens alone to have their reprehensible cultural practices the way they want them and expect them to do the same to us" not an option? obviously their ideas of what constitutes moral behavior differ from our own but that's true of any culture.
ok, so what you are saying is that in this hypothetical weirdtopia you've worked it out that women are more likely to initiate sex and to take it too far and disregard the signals of the male if he's saying something like "no stop, I don't want to"
which is certainly different from how we order the world in western society. and a valad premise on which to build a social-sci-fi story about the possible implications of such a role reversal. which is exactly what you haven't done.
you just used the word "rape" which is a loaded word, when you should not have done so and with out showing the context in the story instead explaining here, I assume there is a scene between two characters later in the story wherein a male is taken advantage of by a female and it all becomes clear.
also female on male sexual assault is a very real thing today and again not to be taken lightly or mentioned but not shown or explained. I am aware I am commenting on your explanation, it is not an in-story explanation, I had to scroll all the way down here to see it.
(I must say here that I looked up Miss Manners on the point of women initiating relations and she says that when one plays the gentleman's part one must be gentlemanly about it even if one happens to be a lady, the gentleman must gracefully accept a refusal and ladies always have the right to refuse or accept as they choose. this seems to square better with my actual experiences of asking men out.)
also you have supplied what seems like the kind of muddle minded defense and reasoning one might put behind something you as the author are sexually attracted too, which is fine, as I mentioned before you are in the company of sci-fi giants in that regard. might have been better done with an actual sex scene, if you are going for author appeal why not go all out?
I still feel that dropping in "rape is legal and it is not explained why this is so in the story and it was dropped in as a side comment purely to get a rise out of the audience" is an unnecessary part of the story to drop on the reader. I'm more shocked in terms of anthropological criticism than anything else.
oh yes, and I'm shocked, viscerally as a woman, at the idea of not having legal recourse in the case of a sexual assault, and of such an attack being my fault for a lack of constant vigilance. makes me think those anti-rape toothed condom/protectors as more practical than they already are.
someone mentioned that they could not think of an idea that would shock men emotionally and women intellectually the same way.
I decided to give it a try: "oh yes and after age 30 we castrate all the males to reduce incidence of children born with trisonomy 23"
fair enough.
alright, you've taunted me into posting. girds my uterus
I wasn't going to post just because weird and anti-female ideas about what sexuality should be in an ideal world are obsequious to science fiction. the idea that women should be nude all the time is a common example, or just that sexuality should be free from emotional commitment (drama), that sex should be considered healthful and natural to be engaged in with as many people as possible with no jealousy or competition. that these ideas are common to science fiction says more to me about what kind of person writes science fiction and what they think of sex than what would be realistic or reasonable. but this series references the ship having it's own 4chan, realism is not to be expected and I understand that.
it's just, I wish the author had thought about what non-consensual sex, about what rape as a concept, as a thing used to torture and to dominate women, really meant before tossing it off as a badly explained line about how much more mature and well adjusted this polyglot culture of the future is.
does the author mean that in this supposed shining utopia of the future that a person can attack another person if the context is sexual? does it mean that all ideas of pair bonding, of marriage and commitment between equals has been abandoned in favor of one night stands? were those stands initiated through an attack, through an impingement on another person's right to autonomy? does it mean that rape in the context of arranged marriages between unwilling strangers is the norm?
this is not explained. rape is legal, that's all there is to it. rape of the underage, rape of the indigent, rape of minors, legal of course, the right of a free society. as far as this was explained.
it seems odd to me that a people so viscerally opposed to cultural infanticide would condone sexual attack.
because that is what rape is, it is an attack. is harming people in other ways legal as well? can I go out for a night on the town of stabbing people? no?
anyway, allow me this moment to object, as rationally as I can, as a person in actual possession of a working vagina, against the idea that rape is, was, or could be, legalized or condoned in any way.
if by rape the author did not mean rape, as many commenters suggest as a defense, then he is either insufficiently articulate or misguided, if he did not mean Rape-rape, but merely snuggle-kisses-rape-hugs then that intent should be better reflected in the text itself. as it is not I am forced to conclude that by rape, the author meant the forcible unwanted sexual victimization and attack on a person or persons by another person or persons.
I would suggest the author examine the blowback around the idea of the Open Source Boob Project for more articulate arguments about the right of women to posses their own bodies. http://feministing.com/archives/009066.html