"I had another idea that I forgot to suggest last time! We voted on the right not to be raped* and we also proposed no making people have children and no ordering people to do Evil things, but I think we should also say nobles and priests and soldiers and powerful wizards and so on shouldn't be allowed to order you to have sex with them, even if they don't use actual violence. We don't have to vote on it yet but I think it should be on the list."

(Victòria is pretty sure she's advocating for something controversial but that's not a good reason not to try.)

*specific subset thereof, you know the drill

"I think that's a good one."

"If they can order you to have sex with them, and refusal is a crime, and crimes are met with violence, that certainly seems like rape with more steps to me. But I'm not opposed to more clarity." Less dangerous than discussing torture, anyway.

"My intent with the right not to be made to have children was - there were nobles in some corners of the country who confiscated all young women who manifested sorcerous bloodlines, with the intent to create more sorcerers. This thing should be illegal."

Nod nod.

Wow, what the fuck. "That's messed up, that should definitely be illegal."

"Absolutely. The only issue I see with it is that banning it might conflict with laws about abortion, which we probably want to have some of, even if we don't ban it entirely like Andoran. Probably we can handle it with careful wording. We'd also need careful wording on Delegate Ferrer's proposal, to avoid banning powerful wizards from ever having sex at all."

"They can get married like everyone else."

"I'm not a particularly powerful wizard, but I've known a good many people who were trying to be, and I think a number of them would have been discouraged by the prospect of it being illegal to ever visit a brothel. Adventurers rarely settle down while they're adventuring, and they would avoid Cheliax if it was illegal to indulge themselves while they were here. I suppose brothels could be an exception as well?"

He looks at the Calistrian. This is supposed to be Her expertise, right?

~Ban siring bastards!~

But in political opinions likely to go anywhere -

"I don't see that we need to ban telling people to have sex with you if you're not someone whose word carries force of law. If you tell someone to have sex with you, and they say 'no, fuck you', then either they stop, and we have no problem, or they resort to rape, which we have already made illegal."

"Well, if they're a wizard they can ensorcel you."

"I don't think it should be illegal for powerful wizards to visit brothels. There's a difference between paying someone to have sex with you and ordering them to have sex with you, just like there's a difference between a powerful wizard saying 'I'll give you a silver for a copy of your committee notes' and the same wizard saying 'you have to give me the committee notes or else.'

"I think— if a powerful wizard goes up to a girl and says 'you have to have sex with me or else' she's not usually going to be thinking 'well, if I tell him no and he makes me do it anyway, that'll be rape, so I'll tell him no and he'll leave me alone.' She's going to be thinking 'I have to let him or he'll kill me.' Even if we make it illegal for him to order her she'll probably still be thinking that, but at least we'll be able to do something about him afterwards, and if we say it's not allowed then wizards might be less likely to try in the first place.

Probably some girls will still think 'I have to let him or he'll kill me' even if he doesn't order them at all, but I don't know a good way to stop that from happening."

"....this is all true, but we can't ban implied threats. As a practical matter, you can argue anything is an implied threat. We can ban ensorcelling people. Probably."

"I agree. If a man attempts to use threats of force to coerce a woman into sleeping with him, that should still be outlawed."

"I think— if a powerful wizard says 'have sex with me or else,' that's not really an implied threat, no one wouldn't think it was a threat. ...how hard is it for powerful wizards to fool truth magic? Delegate Ibarra said he could do it but I don't know if that was a him thing or an everyone thing."

"To fool Abadar's Truthtelling? Practically impossible. I wouldn't be surprised if he was bluffing."

“It’s not always violence or the force of law, though. There’s…” a pause to figure out how to say it, “Rich man hires a servant, buys an indenture with debt. Even if there’s no law saying she can’t refuse, it’s hard to stay an honest woman.”

”I don’t know if we can stop all that with a right. But I heard Lastwall has something about how you can’t have sex with anyone you’re in a position to give orders to, so maybe it can work?”

No one ask how he knows this random fact about Lastwall government, when he’s never as much as left his county before. A certain smuggling operation by the church of Shelyn is to blame for that detail being common knowledge. 

ABSOLUTELY NOT

Hmm, how to phrase this diplomatically...

"Well, if a girl says under Abadar's Truthtelling 'I thought he would kill me if I refused him,' and the powerful wizard can't say 'I didn't mean to threaten her,' then I think that regardless of what he did, it's not the sort of thing that should be allowed. But I don't think there are that many priests of Abadar so I don't think that would work for the whole country."

"What's the matter with marriage and, if you've really got to have it, a carveout for prostitutes in particular?"

" - wait, wait, wait, you can't have criminal penalties for making someone think you're going to kill them. I'm fine with the ban on explicit threats if the Archduke thinks it's workable."

"- You really can't," he says, agreeing with Korva. "A ban on explicit threats is practical. A matter of 'felt threatened' makes it impossible to draw a line between the legal and the illegal that a judge can rule on, even with knowledge of all the facts of the case."

"—just for clarity, if a powerful wizard that you know could definitely kill you says 'you have to have sex with me or else,' are you counting that as an explicit threat or an implicit threat?"

(The problem with limiting it to marriage is that he is sleeping with seven different adventurers, two of them female, whenever they happen to be in town and they both have time free. People who don't try to do interesting things aren't attractive, and people who do don't want to settle down.)

”I thought powerful wizards only have kids when they want to, so usually what they do doesn’t count as sex?”

"Sower, I think a ban on siring children outside marriage would cut to the heart of many of Cheliax's problems. But you'll never get it past that floor."

- wait, what the fuck, Enric? "- you can. Have sex that doesn't produce children. Though."