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by aragonite 1012 days ago
I get what you're saying, but making the example one about sexual assault is not gratutous but because it poses a unique problem for consequentialism: it's pretty much the only uncontroversial example of an act that is (1) widely agreed to be moral wrong (2) and to be so regardless of its effects on the victim.

Suppose the example had involved instead (say) theft. Then consequentialists would be able point to the fact that the act caused a reduction of the victim's assets as the "negative consequence" which renders the act morally wrong. Likewise if the example involved something as serious as murder, or as (relatively) trivial as property defacement. In all these cases, the wrongfulness of the act coexists with a negative difference (whether mental or physical) it makes to the victim. So they would not serve for the purpose of refuting the core consequentialist idea that an act is made wrong by its negative consequences (rather than say by its violation of moral rules).

If you can think of an example other than sexual assault that satisfies the twin desiderata above ((1) and (2)) equally well, I'm all ears.