I wasn’t trying to, so I deleted it. I guess what I am getting at is that the definition of rape is defined more by common law tradition, and not some active attempt to downplay the seriousness of other forms of sexual assault.

I do not doubt that the sentencing of women convicted of sexual offences is likely in practice to be much less harsh than for men. There’s this attitude that men can only be the aggressors and women only the victims that’s incredibly harmful to both men and women.

And, given what a small percentage of defendants for sexual offences are female (typically 1-1.5% in an average year) a lot of prosecutors don’t think it’s worth the effort to even bring prosecutions against women when even juries are much more likely to acquit a woman.