this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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It's much more likely simply a legal CYA maneuver on the part of the media outlet vis-à-vis libel allegations, to not use the name of the crime to describe an act that no one's yet been convicted of.
Well, not to be pedantic, but that's not accurate. Consent is not an intrinsic attribute of sex.
What are you on about?
Rape is a crime. A crime of nonconsensual sexual activity with another person. That, by necessity, requires consent for uncriminalized sex. Children can't give consent and that's why sex with children is called statutory rape.
That's their point: Rape being an explicit crime makes the whole thing a legal minefield.
Accusing someone of something opens you up to being sued for defamation. Truth is a defense against defamation. If I slander my neighbour for taking photos of my bedroom windows and they sue me, I can produce the photos where they are visible in the reflection as evidence that what I said is true.
However, an accusation of committing a specific crime is considered true if and only if the defendant has been judged guilty in a court of law. Until then, they are considered innocent in the eyes of the law. Proving the truth of your accusation would first require the accused being criminally charged, tried and found guilty. By then, you might have lost the suit for defamation or poured a lot of money into legal defense.
So a major news outlet accusing a sitting, immune and known to be vindictive president of a crime that he can't be tried for for the next three years and might never be convicted for by the justice system he rigged would be gambling with much to lose, little to win and awful odds.
Saying he had sex with children is essentially the same content, but a different packaging that doesn't paint as much of a target on your forehead.
Is it fucked? For sure. Is it possible they're just trying to sanewash the crime? Absolutely. At the very least, it's spineless. This isn't me defending their choice of wording, just elaborating on the reasoning behind it potentially being a CYA.
That's what the magic word "allegedly" is for. I'm not saying this person committed this crime, I'm saying that someone has said that this person did a thing that could reasonably meet the definition of this crime.
ok what do I look like a dictionary
When you write "[word], by definition, is [definition]"?
Yes, you do, lol.
hello I am now dictionary
Well, using a word usually mean that you have a cursory knowledge of its meaning. But they didn't exactly elaborate on what they meant by saying that sex doesn't implcitly mean consent.
The only way i could justify that position, is of they meant sex(*noun), and the description of organisms that create gametes of different size and shapes.
Sexual relations, coitus, boinking or one of the many different versions of describing the various acts of genital relationships between humans, DOES imply consent. Otherwise it is sexual misconduct or rape.
But i recon both of you already know this.
I was pretty straightforward about it, I think. Rape is a 'subcategory' of sex.
There's a difference between the disingenuous act of describing a nonconsensual sex act while deliberately not mentioning the 'nonconsent', and claiming that the word "sex" itself carries with it the 'trait' of consent.
If consent was part of the definition of sex, then when two people get blackout drunk (which legally makes them both unable to render informed consent) and fuck each other at a party or something, we'd consider no sex to have happened, which would be an obviously ridiculous conclusion that no one reaches. It's obvious consent is not an intrinsic attribute of "sex".
yes sorry I should've been more precise