Full disclosure: I'm going to be a humorless feminist here. If you are thinking of commenting with "Well, yeah, but it's not rape if..." stop yourself. If you are going to say, "Wait, that actually sounds funny," don't even bother clicking post. I will delete your comment. I don't care. This post is a safe space, and I will not deal with rape apologists or anyone who wants to come down on me and tell me I'm being unreasonable. I don't like rape. I hate rape. What constitutes rape is not up for debate here. Take it elsewhere, but don't expect me to get involved. This post is triggering.I'm going to lay it on the line here: If a person is not capable of consenting to sex, and you engage in any form of sexual activity with hir, you are raping that person.
If your date has had too much to drink, or has been drugged and her judgement is severely impaired, it's rape if you try to have sex. If she said she would have sex with you two hours ago, but is passed out and barely able to string two words together before passing out again, and you put your penis in her, it's called rape.
When it comes to sex, the word yes is the one that matters. It's not "I'll get this over with," and it's not, "Since you wore me down and badgered me." Consent should mean an enthusiastic, "Yes, let's do this." Just because she didn't say no, doesn't mean it's not rape. She has to say yes for it to count as consent.
I bring all this up because I've been reading many posts about the movie
Observe & Report. In the movie there is a scene where Brandi (Anna Faris) is seen passed out on a pillow with vomit while Ronnie (Seth Rogen) is grinding away on top of her. At one point he stops to look at her and she wakes up enough to drunkenly say, "Who told you to stop, motherfucker?"
See? That right there is supposed to be consent, nevermind by legal definition she is incapable of giving it. Nevermind that she's too drunk (and drugged) to realize she's covered in her own vomit. Nevermind that the man has been pounding away at her for who knows how long while she's passed out this way. Yeah, it's still rape.
What's worse is that writer/director Jody Hill knew he had to put two versions of that scene (one with the line and one without).
He says so himself:
I would have been happy without any dialogue in that scene. I wanted to show them just having sex and her passed out, and I thought that would have been funnier. But I think I have a darker sense of humor than most people. So at the end, [Faris’ character] is okay with it. [Laughs.] And that was like, “I’ll shoot it both ways.” So I actually shot it both ways. I just kept the camera rolling.. I think if you’re really pushing the envelope, you have to not include everybody, if that makes sense. Or else it’s not really pushing the envelope.
In other words, the whole joke is the rape.
Tiger Beatdown says it better than I ever could:
I mean, I get the "joke" of the scene in Observe and Report. The joke is that it's not rape because she wants to be fucked while drugged and unconscious and unable to move or to take bodily pleasure in the act. (Or, in Jody Hill's Very Special Edgy-Pushing-the-Envelope Director's Cut, the joke is that it is rape, which is hilarious in and of itself.) The problem is that this is a joke you can't make unless you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of sexual consent, or the nature of rape. Anyone who does understand it knows that a single phrase blurted out by a semi-conscious, incoherent, out-of-her-mind high character who can't really even know what's going on, let alone respond to it in a way that is "full and informed," does not mitigate the fact that the male character in the scene is raping her. Anyone who doesn't understand that is capable of getting rape and consent confused - and, for that reason, may be entirely capable of committing rape. This joke doesn't just rely on our misunderstandings of rape; it actively promulgates them. That's the problem. That's why I'm not laughing. [Emphasis added]
Lindsay Beyerstein
has posted a review of the movie itself (yes, she saw it). Her description of how Ronnie goes about convincing Brandi to go on a date with him in the first place is rather disturbing in and of itself.
After dark, Ronnie catches up to Brandi in the mall parking lot. He scares the hell out of her in the process of offering her a ride on his golf cart, but he won't take no for an answer, so she gets in. Instead of letting her off at her car, he keeps driving, joking that his brakes have failed. He asks her out on a date, making it clear that the only acceptable answer is "yes." She grudgingly agrees to go out with him.
Even the date itself can't be classed as given enthusiastic consent. I was further disturbed by what happens at the end of the movie:
...He gets his job back. He gets the good girl--that self-described born again virgin from the food court, whose boss he assaulted.
In the final scene Ronnie regales a TV news team with his professional and personal triumphs. Pointing to his now-girlfriend he explains that she has made a promise not to have sex with him, but that he intends to make her break it. [Emphasis added]
Keep in mind this is after he essentially tells Brandi she's a good for nothing slut for going on to have consensual sex with Ronnie's rival Detective Harrisson (Ray Liotta). He's admitting that he intends to go against his new girlfriend's wishes and have sex with her,
when she has said she does not want to. This is supposed to be a funny moment, but hey, at least he's not a rapist, folks!
Yes, I get that it's supposed to be a dark comedy (though the trailer I saw when I viewed
Watchmen sure could have fooled me), but it fails in this regard.
Amanda Marcotte tackles this aspect as well:
...I have no problem with putting rape in a movie, or even using it for dark comedy, which could, in theory, be done well. I’ve often strained against feminists who claim there’s entire categories of things that can’t be joked about. But if you’re going to put rape in your movie, put rape in your movie. Don’t put a rape in your movie, and then create a faux “out” so that the sexist idiots who see your movie can tell themselves it wasn’t really rape. And don’t pretend it’s edgy to slap every stereotype imaginable about women who deserve to be raped, either.
And you wonder why feminist go on about rape culture. You wonder why women don't find rape funny. It's because we're told this is how it is. It's not rape if we got drunk, even if we never said yes. It's not rape if we wore a short skirt, or walked into the wrong part of town. If we like to party, we're asking for something like this, and there's no one to blame but ourselves. We're here to be fucked, and it doesn't matter if we're into it, or if we're lying there in our own vomit. As long as we can fire off a witty one-liner, it's ok and it completely absolves the guy of being a complete and total douchebag.
If you want us to stop complaining, start listening and take a different approach to make a statement about rape that doesn't turn it into a joke.
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