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By Andrea Peyser
July 10, 2015

Is Bill Cosby really a 'rapist,' or has the definition just changed?

Bill Cosby is a lousy husband and a possible sex addict. But is he a rapist?

I have my doubts.

Is Cosby, 78, so diabolically creepy that he secretly slipped Quaaludes into the mouths of his alleged victims, as even President Obama suggests? Perhaps.

But I’m starting to think that Cosby’s “crimes’’ were not rapes, but high-pressure seductions.

This may be female heresy.

Still, I wonder if some, if not most (or maybe all?) of the dozens of women who claim Cosby attempted or completed sexual assaults against them, dating back as far as the 1960s, swallowed drugs willingly before the encounters.

It may not matter. Most of Cosby’s illicit activities would be considered sex crimes, according to today’s feminist-written definition of rape. Off with his head, and other body parts!

But not long ago, society looked at rape differently. If a woman, and this was mainly about women, knowingly took drugs or drank alcohol before engaging in sex, and then for whatever reason — shame, guilt or seeing Prince Charming turn into a frog by the light of day — that lady regretted her tacit agreement to engage in sexual activity, she would just have to live with her stupid decision.

That has changed. Following California’s lead, New York Gov. Cuomo earlier this year signed the so-called Enough is Enough law to combat sexual assault on public and private college and university campuses. Among other things, the measure states that anyone on a New York state campus, of any gender, who engages in sex while drunk, drugged — even unconscious or asleep — is incapable of giving consent. This means that someone who has sex with a zonked person, even if that partner deliberately got high or drunk to get in the mood, runs the risk of being accused of a sex crime.

The president weighed in on Cosbygate Wednesday during a press conference mainly on the Iranian nuclear deal.

“If you give a woman, or a man, for that matter, without his or her knowledge, a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape,’’ he said, after being asked if Cosby’s Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded in 2002, should be stripped from him. Obama said there’s “no precedent’’ for revoking the medal. But he said, “And I think this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.’’

But was it rape?

Obama implied that Cosby gave drugs to women without the recipients’ knowledge, which has not been proven. Cosby has never been charged with a crime and denies any wrongdoing.

Cosby’s wife of 51 years and business manager, Camille, 71, has doubled down on her defense of her man, according to a report in The Post by journalist Stacy Brown. This happened after a judge released a transcript of a 2005 deposition in a now-settled civil sexual-assault case. In it, the comedian admitted that he obtained prescriptions for the now-banned sedative Quaalude, intending to give the drug to women with whom he wanted to have sex. He copped to giving Quaaludes to one 19-year-old woman he bedded, but insisted that she knew what she was taking. He said the sex was consensual.

Asked in the deposition if he ever drugged women without their knowledge, Cosby’s lawyer objected to the question. He never answered.

“Camille still doesn’t believe that Bill provided drugs and had sex with women without their consent,’’ a Cosby family employee told Brown. “She’s well aware of the cheating, but she doesn’t believe that her husband’s a rapist.’’ Camille Cosby attended a crisis meeting last week with her husband’s advisers, and demanded that his lawyers and public-relations specialists “get back out in front of this,’’ Brown reported.

“Everyone took Quaaludes in the ’70s. He didn’t shove pills down anyone’s throat,’’ Sandy Kane, a former stripper and comedienne who earns tips from tourists who take her picture in Times Square as the Naked Cowgirl, told me. Kane said she had a consensual quickie with Cos in Los Angeles in the 1970s or early ’80s when she was on a Quaalude, and eagerly swallowed another half-pill he gave her.

“He was a handsome man and a star. He was just a doll,’’ said Kane, who plays guitar wearing a bikini bottom, cowboy hat and boots, plus red-white-and-blue pasties in the shape of marijuana leaves on her nipples. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s the victim here.’’

Is Bill Cosby a beast or a garden-variety lecher?

That could depend on how one defines sexual assault.