It was wild to me how, when I first read this story on another site, people were hating on...

To be honest and fair i hated both of them except their child!

Valid but I just saw another comment below mine hating on the 4yr old child, humans are just funny to be honest

I agree with the addressing of double standards, however I will say that this story is not one that can be looked at as a clear-cut flipped position situation. This is the definition of rape according to Merriam-webster: "unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against a person's will or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent because of mental illness, mental deficiency, intoxication, unconsciousness, or deception".
The case that was originally presented to the readers made it very obvious who the perpetrator and victim were. In that case he held power over her in many ways inherently and the added feature of her heat made her even more powerless against him. Yes, he was also under intoxication to some extent, but it was very clear that he forced himself on her.
Once the "switcheroo" was pulled and she became the "assailant", more nuance is needed to be able to determine who was actually violated. He still held power over her physically and mentally because he is an older male and he was of a more sober mind, the most you could give her is interpersonal power as the one who is being "loved", but that's a serious stretch since it's not a power she exercised over him or was even aware she had. So the question becomes, can a person of lesser power even commit rape against someone who holds more power over them in every way? I believe what she did to him could be considered assault (in a way, at most), but in terms of rape, how can we say she exerted power over him and forced him to have sex with her? The fact is, we can't. You could say he was coerced, but there was no reason for him to "give in" to the coercion. She didn't overpower or subdue him either, so then in what way did she force him to have sex with her?
Furthermore, the heat and pheromone situation makes it more unclear what was forced and what was willing. She may have been the one to initiate sexual contact, but is that something she can be held fully accountable for? Especially when, in her sobriety, she made clear attempts to isolate herself and get away from him. In that regard, he is at fault for putting them in a situation where they could both be taken advantage of. So it's not an obvious case of female rapist who no one wants to acknowledge because the victim was an unconventional one.

I appreciate you acknowledging the double standard amongst we readers.
I think the core disagreement here is about what framework we’re using to define rape.
Your argument centers on structural power, age, gender, physical strength, social positioning. But legally and ethically, rape is not determined by who holds more generalized power in society. It is determined by the presence or absence of consent at the time of the act.
The definition you cited includes situations where a person is “incapable of valid consent due to intoxication.” In omegaverse mechanics, rut/heat is consistently portrayed as a biological intoxication that overrides rational judgment. If that standard is applied symmetrically, then either both parties were impaired and incapable of valid consent, or neither was. It cannot only invalidate one person’s capacity while preserving the other’s.
The question “can someone with less power rape someone with more power?” assumes that rape requires a permanent hierarchy of dominance. It doesn’t. A person can be physically stronger and still be sexually violated if they did not consent or were not in a state to meaningfully consent. Physical superiority does not automatically translate to active agency in every moment, particularly under biological or psychological impairment.
Additionally, the idea that he “could have overpowered her” mirrors a line of reasoning that has historically been used to dismiss female victims (“she could have fought back”). Contemporary consent discourse rejects that standard because freezing, impaired judgment, and inability to resist do not equal consent. Applying that logic selectively based on gender reintroduces the same inconsistency that people are claiming to critique.
You’re right that the situation is not clean or simple. There are compounding factors:
He stalked her.
She attempted to isolate herself prior to the incident.
Both were biologically compromised.
But those contextual elements do not redefine what consent is. They complicate moral responsibility; they do not erase violation.
If the conclusion is that both were impaired and the situation was mutually tragic, that is a coherent argument. However, arguing that she could not have raped him solely because he holds more generalized power conflates social hierarchy with moment-to-moment consent.
The discomfort here seems less about definitions and more about narrative expectation. A male victim who previously appeared predatory destabilizes the initial moral framing. That tension is intentional storytelling, but resolving it requires applying the same consent standard consistently, even when the outcome challenges assumptions.

I would like to start by explaining what I mean by "power". When I say power, I'm referring to anything that can make a person more capable than or more advantage over another. This obviously includes embodied and interpersonal powers but it also considered circumstantial powers, for example: being in a point of advantage by being on top of the other, being sober while the other is intoxicated, or even being awake while the other person is a sleep. Having addressed this, I hope you understand where I'm coming from more when I say that he held more power over her. Aside from embodied power, he also held interpersonal and circumstantial powers over her: he was her stalker, making him the only one knowledgeable of the other person. He was on top of her, putting him at a greater point of advantage, and he was more sober than her, as seen by his ability to make sound judgement. Considering all this, I genuinely do not believe it could be said that she raped him.
I appreciate you bringing of the point of why he may not have overpowered her. Thoughts of futility, feelings of disbelief and shock, fear, and even dissociation are just a few of the many reasons why victims have been said to not act as they were "supposed to" when being attacked. There is so much nuance to the conversation that I don't think it would make sense for me to spend time deliberating on what mechanisms were at play. Therefore I shall leave that by saying any of these could be reasons why he did not fight back or push her away. What I can't speak on howeverz is his perspective as that's what is explicitly given to us. He himself acknowledged that it was his fault and and said that he lost control in the moment. Based on this perspective we could assume that his reason for "letting it happen" was not an incapability to refuse, but rather, a desire to accept. It is also possible that this perspective was formed as a coping mechanism to manage feelings of violation as a man, but once again, I don't think I can conclude anything about his mental state as it is not expressly stated or implied.
I do also completely agree with you on the fact that they were both biologically compromised and neither was capable of consent. It is for this reason that I didn't leave a verdict on the matter of rape in my previous reply, and instead ended by saying that if one where to be blamed for them both being taken advantage of, majority (if not 100%) of the fault would lie with him.
Lastly, majority of my gripe with the story lies not with it's "flipped victim" plot point, but rather with the quality of the story itself (specifically, with how the "male lead" is written). This sort of plot is already a cluster fuck to navigate, but the author's skills, or lack thereof, make it even more egregious. The male lead is incredibly confusing as a character: firstly, why would he spend so much time seeking out the person who raped him if that is actually what he believes happened? Moments like that make it very hard to understand what he is going through or how he views the situation. Is he a victim? A perpetrator? Does he feel like it was a mutual mistake? On one hand he wishes to "protect" her memory of that day by letting her believe that she was the one raped, but on the other hand, he so insensitively pushes his way back into her life, forcing her to relive the trauma that he believes he caused, without even so much as apologising, and even threatens to take her child from her if she doesn't accept him. Then after doing all that, the story goes to make him some sort of righteous victim who was unjustly persecuted. I can't even begin to understand how he recounted the story to his father that would lead him to believe that his son was the one raped by her. Did he explicitly say that she did? Did he tell the events exactly as they happened, including the part where he stalked her and was about to attack her first? I have no idea how he felt justified calling her "the assailant" when speaking to his father. All these elements make it very clear that the author does not know how to write a complicated male victim and diminishes any attempts made to understand his motives and perspective.
Anyway, I think discussing the story to this extent honestly gives much more credit to it than it deserves, as it's clear that we are putting more thought into the story than the creator of the work ever did. I've written a more in-depth comment on my gripe with it under the comment section of the manga, so feel free to read that if you wish.

Please don't bother reading the previous reply. This is an edited version correcting some of the grammatical errors.


I would like to start by explaining what I mean by "power". When I say power, I'm referring to anything that can make a person more capable than or more advantage over another. This obviously includes embodied and interpersonal powers, but it also considers circumstantial powers, for example: being in a point of advantage by being on top of the other, being sober while the other is intoxicated, or even being awake while the other person is a sleep. Having addressed this, I hope you understand where I'm coming from more when I say that he held more power over her. Aside from embodied power, he also held interpersonal and circumstantial powers over her: he was her stalker, making him the only one knowledgeable of the other person. He was on top of her, putting him at a greater point of advantage, and he was more sober than her, as seen by his ability to make sound judgement. Considering all this, I genuinely do not believe it could be said that she raped him.
I appreciate you bringing of the point of why he may not have overpowered her. Thoughts of futility, feelings of disbelief and shock, fear, and even dissociation are just a few of the many reasons why victims have been said to not act as they were "supposed to" when being attacked. There is so much nuance to the conversation that I don't think it would make sense for me to spend time deliberating on what mechanisms were at play. Therefore I shall leave that by saying, any of these could be reasons why he did not fight back or push her away. What I can speak on however, is his perspective, as that's what is explicitly given to us. He himself acknowledged that it was his fault and and said that he lost control in the moment. Based on this perspective we could assume that his reason for "letting it happen" was not an incapability to refuse, but rather, a desire to accept. It is also possible that this perspective was formed as a coping mechanism to manage feelings of violation as a man, but once again, I don't think I can conclude anything about his mental state as it is not expressly stated or implied.
I do also completely agree with you on the fact that they were both biologically compromised and neither was capable of consent. It is for this reason that I didn't leave a verdict on the matter of rape in my previous reply, and instead ended by saying that if one where to be blamed for them both being taken advantage of, majority (if not 100%) of the fault would lie with him.
Lastly, majority of my gripe with the story lies not with it's "flipped victim" plot point, but rather with the quality of the story itself (specifically, with how the "male lead" is written). This sort of plot is already a cluster fuck to navigate, but the author's skills, or lack thereof, make it even more egregious. The male lead is incredibly confusing as a character: firstly, why would he spend so much time seeking out the person who raped him if that is actually what he believes happened? Moments like that make it very hard to understand what he is going through or how he views the situation. Is he a victim? A perpetrator? Does he feel like it was a mutual mistake? On one hand he wishes to "protect" her memory of that day by letting her believe that she was the one raped, but on the other hand, he so insensitively pushes his way back into her life, forcing her to relive the trauma that he believes he caused, without so much as apologising, and even threatens to take her child from her if she doesn't accept him. Then after doing all that, the story goes to make him some sort of righteous victim who was unjustly persecuted. I can't even begin to understand how he recounted the story to his father that would lead him to believe that his son was the one raped by her. Did he explicitly say that she did? Did he tell the events exactly as they happened, including the part where he stalked her and was about to attack her first? I have no idea how he felt justified referring to her as "the assailant". All these elements make it very clear that the author does not know how to write a complicated male victim and diminishes any attempts made to understand his motives and perspective.
Anyway, I think discussing the story to this extent honestly gives much more credit to it than it deserves, as it's clear that we are putting more thought into the story than the creator of the work ever did. I've written a more in-depth comment on my gripe with it under the comment section of the manga, so feel free to read that if you wish.

I understand what you mean by “power,” and I agree that circumstantial advantages matter. But even by your own expanded definition, intoxication and biological impairment are also circumstantial power shifts. If both were compromised, then neither held clear capacity over the other in that moment, which brings us back to consent, not hierarchy.
You also mention that he said it was his fault and that he “lost control.” Victims blaming themselves is extremely common, especially male victims. Self-blame doesn’t automatically equal desire or consent. It can just as easily be a coping mechanism.
Where I think we fundamentally differ is this: you’re weighing general and situational power to determine whether rape is possible. I’m weighing whether valid consent existed. If neither was capable of consent, then it becomes mutual incapacity, not a case where one is automatically shielded from being the aggressor because they’re younger or physically smaller.
As for the writing quality, I actually agree with you there. The inconsistency in how he’s portrayed makes it harder to have a clean ethical reading of the situation. But weak characterization doesn’t change the underlying consent standard, it just makes the narrative execution messy

I guess I didn't express my stance on this clearly. When I said that I don't believe she raped him that wasn't meant to discredit his experience, nor was I attempting to shift the violation of consent to either side. I believe they were both violated to a degree (I wouldn't say equally, but that's just personal opinion. Feel free to disagree). My stance on this is that he is to blame for the both of them being taken advantage of. That's not to say that he raped her, but rather, that his actions caused both of them to be put in a situation where they were vulnerable and were forced to do something they didn't want to.
I also addressed his perspective by saying that there could be any number of reasons as to why he didn't push her away, but I would prefer to use only the information given to us. It would be easy to excuse his actions by saying that male victims sometimes feel this way or that way, but even his victim status is incredibly questionable, mostly due to inconsistent writing. He could be blaming himself as a coping mechanism, or he could be blaming himself because he actually feels that he is responsible for what happened that day. It would make sense to have this sort of discussion when the character has been written thoughtfully, but because he's so poorly written it simply feels like extending unwarranted grace towards the author. For that reason, I personally would prefer to stay away from unsupported assumptions about his perspective or mental state.
Basically, I'm not trying to judge whether or not it was possible for one to have raped the other. I recognise that it would be very difficult to determine that in this situation. My "judgement" is simply that he is responsible for the creation of the circumstances that led to both of their violations. I think that's a reasonable conclusion to reach.

I understand your position, and I agree that he bears responsibility for creating a dangerous situation. Stalking her and inserting himself into her heat was reckless and wrong. That absolutely contributed to what happened.
Where I still disagree is with the leap from “he created the circumstances” to “he is to blame for both of their violations.” Creating a risky situation and being responsible for someone else’s loss of consent aren’t the same thing. Otherwise we’d have to say that anyone who makes a bad decision that puts themselves in danger is responsible for what happens to them, and that logic gets shaky very quickly.
You’re right that the writing muddies his victim status. But even with inconsistent characterization, the standard stays the same: if neither was capable of valid consent, then both were violated by the situation itself. His prior wrongdoing explains how they got there; it doesn’t automatically transfer responsibility for her actions onto him.
I think it’s completely fair to criticize him morally and criticize the author’s handling of the topic. I just don’t think “he caused the circumstances” equals “he is responsible for both violations.” That’s where I draw the line

Well then, I guess this is where we agree to disagree.
Thanks for engaging with me respectfully on this topic.

Oh no, it’s no problem. You’re honestly one of the few people here I argued with without things getting rude or turning into insults. I really appreciate that, even though we have different opinions and views on certain things

Thanks. It is quite rare to have arguments like this.
And I will say, after stepping away from the topic for a bit and rereading your comments, I do actually understand your stance a bit more. I still don't entirely agree, but I think I get where you're coming from.