"Women are allowed to do some things."

"- oh right, that. Well, consider letting Iset do things, I guess, if she would like a statue of her or whatever you do around here."

"I will keep that in mind."

"Women not being allowed to do things is a leading contributor to domestic abuse," comments Cam, who has stepped back from the crystal ball to resume his work on the slide show about IUDs.

"Huh, really? Which things?"

"Leave their husbands, as the most direct one. Work, that being a thing you need to be able to do to leave your husband in a scarcity economy. Uh, are you going to let people get these things," he waves the current picture of an IUD he's labeling, "without their relevant menfolk's permission, because you should definitely do that."

"Osirion doesn't permit divorce except under exceptional circumstances. The northern countries do and it sort of makes the whole institution of marriage fall apart, at least the way they did it. It's mostly not illegal for women to work but very few people will hire them." He glances at the IUDs. "Why should you let a woman get those without her husband's permission, what if he wants children -"

"Then he can figure out how to incubate them his own damn self," says Cam. "- 'what if he wants children' don't tell me you also haven't invented the concept of marital rape who am I kidding of course you haven't. Invent the concept of marital rape immediately!"

He looks - super confused.

"Why do you have a monosyllable for that."

"Because it's common!"

"I don't think I think very highly of whoever invented humans."

"I don't know about the ones here but the ones at home were not invented."

"Do you understand -" he says to his husband.

"...I mean possibly they are just saying that if your wife wants nothing to do with you you should marry someone else? We do have that concept."

"...I don't have the text of the Anitami law memorized but I think it's a pretty good implementation, Neli, do you recall its particulars -"

"You mostly get spousal rape law by not having a spousal exception to your normal rape laws. Advance consent can't override objections communicated during the act, and you can't have sex with people unable to communicate objections."

"...I feel like it is sort of condescending to tell people they cannot sign any contracts that include agreeing to have sex."

"They can, the law just won't mandate specific performance if they change their mind - that is, you can give me money for sex, and then if I decide I don't want to have sex with you after all you have a valid claim against me for violating the terms of the contract, but a court will just make me give you the money back, it won't decline to prosecute you for rape if you attack me over it."

"- I guess I can see how that'd work. I think it'd come across as awfully intrusive, trying to prosecute someone under those circumstances."

"You don't have to prosecute if nobody reports, we aren't saying have security cameras in people's bedrooms. I guess maybe Anaander advocates security cameras in people's bedrooms? Not sure how she's implementing her security arrangements there. But not for this reason. Though separately you need to make reporting as costless as possible or it's just a way for someone to ruin their lives by trusting the system, which I think you might especially disprefer."

"All right. I guess maybe we can find a particularly unsympathetic case and have a public discussion about it and come down on the side that repeat conduct should be prosecutable."

"Here, have a paper copy of the legal code of Mars, I like what they've done with the place," Cam says, offering him one. "They were founded recently so they don't have as much cruft as Earthside. Also you know what you should probably do is park your dad in the corner and have him play with the translation program of Anaander's, since it can hear what we're saying and learn it and then it'll be up to speed."

He nods at an attendant.

"Our legal code is optimized for getting people into the lawful afterlife, not for making this world a particularly nice one for them. If you have a plan to change the circumstances that necessitate that, I'll be delighted."

"I have never tried to get people into the lawful afterlife. Maybe you are making a rational decision that it would be too hard for would-be rapists if they couldn't even rape their wives and then they'd get tortured and that would be disproportionate. I do think that if that's what you're doing you should do it explicitly and not because you haven't invented the concept of marital rape."