Many countries are in a process of replacing outdated sex offense regulations with laws that accurately correspond to modern ideas about gender equality, sexual self-determination, and consensual sex. One example is Sweden, where a law that defines rape based on a criterion of nonvoluntary participation entered into force in 2018. This lecture presents an analysis of how rape is understood in the new legal discourse in Sweden, and I show that rape is presented as a matter of choice and communication in sexual situations. I argue that the new rape law sends a clear message about what
sex should be — namely, voluntary — but does not accurately describe the
crime and the behavior that deserves criminal censure. I conclude that a lesson from Sweden is that future rape law reforms may benefit from empirical knowledge of how people communicate in sexual situations.
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