more interesting articles on rape here on the issue of whether fraudulently obtained sex counts as rape.
hmmm. A Kantian would surely think that cases such as these are instances in which one cannot, due to the deception, will the end (shared end you think you are willing: ‘A and B have sex’. End that you are in fact participating in, but cannot share due to deception: ‘A and C have sex’). So one cannot consent to the end.
A case could be made for treating these kinds of cases as rape by looking at how we consider fraud and consent in other domains:
Think of a case in which, due to misinformation (e.g. about the mileage) we take it that the buyer’s consent (to buying a car) was not valid.
If this carries over, then if due to misinformation (about the identity of the sex partner) the agent’s consent (to sex) is not valid, the sex is non-consensual: rape.
The tricky part would be specifying what sort of misinformation is relevant:
being misinformed about the identity of who you are having sex with is problematic! But other cases of misinformation – lying about your job in order to get someone into bed – don’t seem like cases of rape (even if we think there’s something else wrong with it!)…
Feminist Philosophers 