Moral Dilemmas: Sex via Emotion control.

First of all, yes, I know that purposely manipulating someone's hormones/pheromones/emotions to make him/her want to have sex with you counts as rape.

But... what about accidentally doing it?

Here's the situation:

Character A and Character B are of the opposite sex. No, I will not tell you who is the boy and who is the girl. Double Standard and all. At the time of this incident, both of these characters are in their early teens, and developing mental powers; they aren't fully aware of them.

A has Emotional Projection (causes others to feel emotion that A is feeling) and Emotional Absorption (feels and is affected by emotions that others are feeling). Occasionally, both pop up at the same time.

B is psychic/clairvoyant/precognitive in the ~weird feeling~ sense, but not a full on "see the future" kind of thing. If enough thought is put into the ~weird feeling~, the right conclusion will always be drawn from it. That's a part of the power. Yeah, I know

Due to Power Incontinence, A's friendship with B gets a Relationship Upgrade. After a few months of infinite loop (A Projects on B amplifying B's feelings for A, then those amplified feelings are absorbed, amplifying A's feelings for B...) they have sex.

During this hanky-panky that B receives an inclination that ~something isn't right~ about both of their feelings. A picks up on this. They are both wary of continuing, but the infinite loop of "horny" has a head start on the infinite loop of "I don't think this is a good idea." Despite this, B asks several times whether or not A wants to stop, and is met, at each time, with "No, do you," to which B replies "No," even though B has a ~feeling~ that A doesn't really want this.

Would either of them be guilty of rape? Why?

If A was aware of the projection power, but not of the absorption power, how much would it change?

edited 23rd Nov '12 4:43:12 PM by SalFishFin

Consent is tricky at the best of times. I'm pretty sure there's no rape involved here, but it IS morally questionable.

B is probably the most at fault in the initial scenario, because from your description B continues despite a reliable reason to believe that A does not 'truly' consent. But there's a big difference between not 'really' wanting something and actually not wanting it. I don't 'really' want to do a lot of the things I spend my time doing, but it wouldn't be reasonable to say I don't consent to them.

I think if A became aware of the power, it would be their responsibility to tell B about it, at the very least. I wouldn't call not doing so rape, but I would call it 'being a major dillweed' on a level that's not too far off.

Overall though I'd compare this to the real-life scenario, where (non-supernatural) empathic feedback loops are a naturally occurring phenomenon. Almost every successful relationship is based on one, but it could be argued they're considered acceptable because everyone is basically aware of how they work and so nobody is being misled. There could also be an analogy with alcohol - sleeping with someone under the influence of magical attraction is like sleeping with someone who's drunk. The scenario is then sort of like two people getting drunk together by accident and getting it on, much more innocent than a situation where one person deliberately gets another person drunk in order to sleep with them.

Also if you want to keep the genders secret you should probably edit out the 'he'.

edited 23rd Nov '12 4:46:01 PM by Kesteven

Honestly, I don't think it would be rape. Even if either one of them ends up regretting it later, it seems like in the moment they would both want it just as much, even if their desire is being artificially strengthened. I'd wager there are lots of people who have had sex that they wanted quite badly in the heat of the moment that later looked like one hell of a dumb idea, and that seems like the impact of the power. I'm assuming it would also have the effect of turning a dislike between A and person X into a full blown Nemesis?

It sounds like a psychic version of what most people achieve with verbal and body-language interaction. It's like "Flirting Plus".

If A were not aware of the absorbtion aspect of the power but aware of the projection, A might be more inclined to suspect that B was being led by A's desires, rather than it being a spiral involving their mutual feelings for one another.

Being aware of the absorption means a recognition that some of it is coming from B.