Seduction Worse Than Rape?

Hi folks,

I recently saw an article by K.J Dover called "Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behaviour" (you can find this article in the book Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, Edinburgh, 2003).

The basic argument is that in ancient Greece, seduction was a crime that was worse than rape because it involved the capture of someone’s affection and loyalty away from the man to whom they properly belonged. In other words, as rape was a form of violation in which someone's physical body was captured, seduction was a kind of violation that involved the capture of one's mind and soul whose effects, on some levels, ran much deeper and could potentially be more destructive.

At the moment, most Western countries see seduction as a positive thing where the "individual as a consumer and as a voter is subjected to a variety of allurements through appeals to greed, vanity, envy, revenge" (see Talal Asad, Is Critique Secular? p. 31). I have not researched why this is the case, but perhaps one reason is that this has been part of a corporate agenda throughout recent capitalistic history in making seduction and consumerism (note that Consumer in old English referred to the Devil as he consumed the souls of man) socially acceptable. I don't need to mention the innumerable amount of ideas, values and ethical stances that have been ingrained in our current global culture through corporate propaganda and media brainwashing.

There are instances, however, where seduction is unacceptable. The greatest case in point is the (sexual) seduction of children at the hands of adults which can lead to arrest and imprisonment (the severity of which can almost be as bad as cases of actual rape). Yet if seduction, at least in the case of children, can be accepted as a violation of a child's being, why is the seduction of children through TV ads and commercials acceptable considering that these forms of seduction capture and violate their minds and souls by alluring them into making choices that they otherwise would not have made? That is, choices which inculcate consumerism, materialism, transient self-esteem through material goods, greed, selfishness, loss of self-control etc. Why is there no outcry directed towards the corporate rapist who violates the being and dignity of children for the sake of mere personal profit?

Is this what materialistic secularism (which purports to "free" people's minds) leads to?

That's for the readers to answer.