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Family & Relationships

You Cannot Refuse Me — You Are My Spouse

Marital rape is justified as a spousal right, denying the concept of consent within marriage

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The Situation

What They Said

“You are my spouse — you cannot refuse me. It is your duty and I have a right to this.”
This phrase is used by a spouse to coerce or override the other spouse's refusal of sexual intimacy, invoking marriage as a source of absolute sexual entitlement and framing consent as irrelevant within the marital relationship.
The Fallacy

False Authority / Perpetual Consent Fallacy

This argument rests on the outdated and legally abolished assumption that marriage constitutes perpetual consent to sexual activity. This was a historical position that modern legal systems have specifically rejected. Consent is required for every sexual encounter regardless of marital status — the marriage contract does not create an ongoing right to sexual access that supersedes the spouse's autonomous decision about their own body.

What the Law Says

Your Legal Foundation

Ley 26.485 de Protección Integral a las Mujeres
art. 5 de la Ley 26.485 — Gender violence law
“3. Sexual: Any action that involves the violation in all its forms, with or without genital access, of the woman's right to voluntarily decide about her sexual or reproductive life through threats, coercion, use of force or intimidation, including rape within marriage or other relational or kinship relationships, whether or not there is cohabitation...”
The husband's statement explicitly invokes marriage as a basis for sexual entitlement and disregards the wife's consent, constituting coercion and a violation of her right to voluntarily decide about her sexual life, which is defined as sexual violence under Article 5(3).
What Scripture Says

God's Word on This

1 Corinthians 7:4 (NET)
“It is not the wife who has authority over her own body, but the husband. In the same way, it is not the husband who has authority over his own body, but the wife.”
This passage — sometimes misread as granting unlimited sexual access — is actually a mutual authority text. Both spouses have reciprocal, mutual authority — neither spouse holds unilateral power to demand sex from the other. It describes mutual giving, not one-sided taking.
Song of Songs 2:7 (NET)
“I adjure you, O maidens of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it pleases.”
Song of Songs consistently presents the woman as an active, willing, consenting participant in intimacy — never as a passive object of a spouse's demand. Desire is mutual and invitation-based, not coerced.
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What They'll Say Next

Common Counter-Arguments

After you respond, they may push back with these arguments. Members get the full rebuttal for each.

They might say: “But I am not using physical force, so it is not violence.”
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They might say: “This is a private matter between husband and wife, and the law should not interfere.”
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