Power over another person, the prerequisite for most sexual violence, doesn't have to come from superior physical strength. It could come from an age difference, a professor-student or boss-employee dynamic, or some form of blackmail, for example. And the body can experience physical arousal in response to the right stimuli even when you don't want to have sex. You can also do acts of sexual violence that do not require an erect penis.

1. Rape does not always involve physically overpowering someone. Someone may coerce someone else into sex with blackmail, lies, threats, or abuse of a position of power.

2. Erections are controlled by a person's autonomic nervous system. A man can get hard even when he is not turned on or consenting to what is happening.

3. Not all rape involves a penis. A woman who sticks an object into a man without his consent is committing rape. Rape is about power and control over another person, and the rapist need not be directly stimulated for rape to occur.

Maybe it helps with understanding when you think of examples of female rape that isn't a stranger beating up a woman in a dark alley.

Like Harvey Weinstein. Countless women have come forward about rape and sexual violence from him. I doubt he always used physical violence on these women. But he was this all powerful person in the filmindustry who could and would destroy lives and careers with a wave of his hand if you'd deny him.

Very often rape and sexual violence comes out of a power dynamic where the victim (no matter the gender) feels they don't have a choice. Physical violence does not have to be involved.

Coersion. For example, "if you don't have sex with me right now, we're breaking up/I'm divorcing you/I'm going to ruin your life by doing xyz." And when you say no, she'll threaten to call the cops on you for some made up bullshit, but they'll believe her over you because she's the woman and you're the man.

Also, you don't have to be erect to have someone force you into performing sex acts. She could force you to perform oral on her, she could grope you, she could even penetrate you.

But if this happens to you, fight back.

By your logic a woman couldn't be raped because she got wet and had an orgasm. Getting an erection isn't a conscious thing that men will by, like lifting an arm. Plenty of men also get physically abused by their girlfriends / wives, despite being physically stronger and technically able to overpower them. If you really cannot fathom how psychological pressure & abuse works then I am not sure where to even start. I got raped by my ex early in my life when I was sleeping. And yes, men can get a boner when asleep too. I woke up during the event, obviously confused, and just went with it, before falling asleep again. I only understood what even really happened much much later in life.

There is one case I know of personally, I don't think it technically falls under the description of rape but I consider it rape. Husband & wife, wife wanted kid. Husband did not. Their birth control was pill-based oral contraceptive. Wife very purposefully moved off that birth control without telling the husband, husband was just raw-dogging her because "she was on the pill"...lo & behold...she gets pregnant.

She's not very smart, and she has told a number of people about this deception & laughs about it. HAHAHA, oh, so funny, yeah that's rape. You took advantage of your husband & used his reproductive abilities against his explicit wishes. You raped your husband. Had yourself a little rape-baby. Hilarious stuff (stupid broad).

Again, I don't think that's currently covered under rape. But goddamn I think it should be (although it's harder to prove without confession/admission).

you can get a boner without intellectually wanting to have sex. One of the fucked up things about rape is the body still is activating the chemicals that cause pleasure which fucks with the head of the victim and it does not matter what direction the rape is in.

From my viewpoint, it's usually more of a coercive thing. Something you're not necessarily entirely opposed to, but you might rather not, and in order to avoid a situation you might perceive as bad in a different way, you relent and allow it to happen, leading to years of questioning whether it even was rape or not, even though what it does to you mentally is irrefutable.

A lot of aggression in this comments with this is literally no stupid questions.

Sexual assault comes in many forms and men are and can be victims of most of them. Coercion, violence, emotional manipulation, drugs or alcohol, the list is the same regardless of gender.

As for an erection, it’s a biological response so they don’t correspond to desire/attraction/consent. Many women who are raped get “wet” and even orgasm, but that does not indicate pleasure or consent. It’s actually one of the reasons rape victims feel very guilty about the event. “If I didn’t want it/hated it/was scared, why did I cum?” That reasoning is also part of why people don’t report rape. They think that having an orgasm will hurt their chances to press charges or win because “they enjoyed it”

Rape can also happen between consenting people as well. In fact, quite a lot of what is and should be considered sexual assault/rape, is a partner “going too far” or doing something their consenting partner didn’t consent to.

Healthy sexual intimacy requires clear communication, setting boundaries, and making sure those things aren’t broken. The kink/BDSM community is an extreme form of sexual pleasure, and despite literal violence and pain, there is always consent at the forefront and there is always an “opt-out” or safe word that ends the encounter with no second guessing.

I remember one guy telling his story that he was raped by a pregnant woman. He didn't want to hurt the baby so he couldn't force her to stop.

I think some jurisdictions count it as rape if the victim consented under certain circumstances, but the rapist changed those circumstances.

Like consenting to sex with a condom on, but the rapist removes the condom and continues.

Erections are a biological response to stimulus, desire is not required.

For example a man could be overpowered, tied-up, and teased manually until erect. This is only one possibility but there are many other ways

Also penetration doesn't need to happen for it to still be considered rape.

Prior to my coming out to myself, I was SA'd by a woman after being drugged.

The many, many mental struggles that followed brought me to the basic realization that everybody, well, maybe not lizardpeople, but the rest of us all bleed if somebody just shot us. Sure, I was drugged, so it helped with feeling weak at being assaulted, but even if I hadn't been drugged, it wouldn't have made it any more my fault. Im not saying like "if she had a gun you'd still..."

Anyone can be convinced by a horrible person that they won't be safe unless they do something they don't want to do. Gender, Chromosomes, Sexuality have no effect on that. -Full stop-

There are a few misconceptions in your logic.

1. Force is required to rape
2. Erections are controllable

Both of them are easy to disprove, but not obvious at first sight.

For 1 consider any case where a woman might have power (not physical) over a man, e.g. blackmail, teacher, parole officer, boss, etc. Another possibility to remember are weapons or physical threats to a third party. Also you should remember that humans have a fight/flight/freeze response, so a third of humans would just freeze regardless of being able to overpower their attacker. Finally there's also the possibility of even without any threat, even being able to think properly, and knowing that he could physically overpower a female attacker, a man might not do it for fear of legal or moral repercussions, e.g. being thought not to hit girls or believing that no one would believe that he was defending himself. In fact lots of women who get raped don't try to fight back or escape, believing (sometimes accurately) that their attacker would worsen the offense if they did that, e.g. by killing them (even if no threat was made), it's not uncommon for rape victims to feel ashamed and guilt about not having fought back, and by saying that men can't get raped because they could theoretically overpower their attacker you're indirectly saying that any woman who doesn't fight back with all her might is not being raped either, because they could have overpowered their attacker of they tried.

For 2, erections (and even ejaculation) are physical responses, in fact you can make a corpse get a hard on and cum (some wives do it to preserve their husbands sperm). This is no different from women getting wet or having orgasms while being raped (both of which are common), it means nothing, it's just a physical reaction to a physical stimulus. In fact lots of victims (both men and women), especially those in abusive relationships think they deserve that because of those physiological reactions. To put it in simpler terms, saying a men can't be raped because if they got an erection it means they wanted it is like saying that people can't be stabbed because if they bled is because they wanted the knife.

Usually it'll be something like,

"If you try to put up a fight I'll scream, guess who everyone's gonna believe?"

Or if you're really unlucky,

"Be my baby's daddy!", suddenly locks legs like a vise and begins grinding like there's no tomorrow

With girl on guy it's a lot less about physical overpowering and a lot more about weaponized social biases or lying about the intent of consensual sex for the purpose of trapping them into something.

If you've seen the infamous "Female Dating Strategy" forums, a lot of "tricks and tips" they come out with to "lock down your man" or "make him commit already!" basically amount to some form of Girl on Guy SA, either socially blackmailing them with the fear of you dragging them into a public accusation, which they aren't ever gonna recover from even if found completely innocent, or by sabotaging contraceptives or tricking him into finishing inside to make a baby on purpose and then trying to shotgun wedding the whole thing.

Women inflict violence by proxy. So she just threatens to get one of her male acquaintances to harm you. This is also why women on male violence appears so much lower then male on woman violence. That and the fact that society is very incredulous and dismissive of male victims of female violence.

Bro, there are plenty of women that are stronger than guys. There are PLENTY of buff women who lift weights that can beat the shit out of an average guy who doesn't lift. Not sure if you're picturing every woman as like 5'1 and 100 lbs. I think you're making grossly inaccurate assumptions.

Also psychological abuse can force people to submit to activities that they wouldn't normally submit to, regardless of size.

OP I really think you need to reframe your thinking about how this happens. You're thinking about it from an incredible narrow lens. Strong men forcing weak girl to have sex is not the only way this type of thing happens.

Edit: that being said, a majority of rapes are most definitely men doing it to women. I'm not going to pretend like it's not. But it's not ALWAYS that!

She sucks him gets him hard and then climbs on. He's too drunk to resist.

Besides statutory, there are other situations where the man "can't say no". Power dynamics that are coercive. Intoxication. Fraud (eg. purporting to use birth control but not doing so would be a form of rape.

Being sexually aroused is not consent to sex is not consent to sex, to clarify the mechanics of it for you. And consent to sex of one kind is not consent to sex of another kind.

Bear in mind that in most countries rape is defined by a forced sexual act by a male.

I mean, I don't work out and am in terrible shape. A woman could easily overpower me if she was even slightly athletic. Not every man works at being strong, and not every woman is weak.

Also, as my sister points out: Gun.

Well some woman on the street can definitely drag you to a corner and do a lot of sexual things to yoy without consent. Thats rape.

I dont necessarily think in all cases its overpowering someone, its more making advances and the person is not saying no or unsure how to deflect their advances. Either gender can hold a position of power. Still rape does not really matter which gender is doing it to whom. No grey area consent must be clear.

It happens when your girlfriend is extremely unstable by default, even more so after a fight, comes to your parents house drunk in the middle of the night and essentially shames you for trying to reject her advances while simultaneously being physical about it by forcing you down and assuming you're playing some mind game while you try your best to avoid waking your parents in the next room and making a scene cause she's being loud and borderline belligerent. The sheer embarassment is enough for personal boundaries to get absolutely stomped on in that situation.

Life is living among infinite shades of grey. Every situation has nuance that you might not have thought of.

I think most female to male abuse comes in the form of emotional coercion. So, something like, if the guy doesn't have sex with her how she wants, there will be consequences. Sometimes they're explicit, such as when she actually says it openly. Other times, she communicates it implicitly for plausible deniability. For example, every time a guy is not interested in the moment, she does something that hurts him soon after. This could be from throwing a fit about some regular chore, to shaming them to their friends, to actively seeking attention from or cheating with other men.

I knew a girl that would tell everyone she was being abused before her boyfriend even knew it was happening. She would ask everyone to not say anything because she was scared he would abuse her more. She would also do things to make him angry in public so people would think he had an anger problem. People would start treating the boyfriend like shit, so he would start being isolated, which allowed her to abuse him more. If the boyfriend came out seeking help, no one would believe him and gaslight him further. The girl even went as far as telling relationship therapists that he was abusing her so that he had no escape while she now how documentation that he was abusing her. The girl was a completely deranged psychopath that did this with all her boyfriends. Of course, her friends were similar. One of her friend's boyfriends committed suicide after they had an argument. The girl then milked that for pity points every chance she got.

I really advise everyone to learn about relationship abuse and vulnerable narcissists. They're incredibly sneaky and brutally perverse, and anyone can fall for one. It takes a while for even trained relationship abuse therapists to catch on to them. Look it up on YouTube. There are many therapists and survivors that share their stories and guidance.