I'm going to
paraphrase Andrea Dworkin in the
preface to her book
Intercourse1: The "
all sex is rape" thing is based on a definition of
rape as "any sex where one participant has more power than the other".
Dworkin goes on to talk about what a great thing (hetero-)
sex is, or would be, in the absence of an unequal power relationship.
This definition of
rape is woefully
reductive, but it's not based on any
false assumptions about women
inherently not liking
sex. What it
is based on (for starters; it goes on from there) is the reality of what
rape actually is:
Sexual intercourse where consent is not given at all, or is
coerced. That's fine so far, but IMHO
Dworkin goes off the beam in further assuming that
any interaction must be coercive if the two people involved have unequal power in the world at large:
"Rape == coercion" (Fine so far . . .)
"Unequal power == coercion" (Uhhh, the two sure don't exclude each other, but are they identical?)
Therefore, "unequal power == rape" (Hey, there, hang on a minute . . .)
As I said, it's reductive.
Finally, I'd like to point out that the title of this node is very poorly phrased: My guess is that the intent was something more like "Not all sex is rape", rather than an assertion that rape does not exist, or is unrelated to sex, or something.
1 I know it's bad form to read Dworkin before characterizing her views, but I'm willing to live with that.