re: #170 The Vicious Babushka

Apparently some feminists on Twitter are displeased with Rebecca, calling her a “rape apologist”

The problem is that we have wisely narrowed the definition of consent with the concomitant broadening of the definition of rape, while holding onto the the understandings that are true of those who were rapists under the old definition. That is, ‘rape is about power, not sex’; ‘those who commit rape will tend to do it again and again’.

But for those of us of the Boomer generation and earlier, we were raised with a different idea of consent, because women were supposed to be reluctant, because if they weren’t, they were branded as sluts. So if a woman wanted to have sex, she had to walk the fine line between eagerness which could get her a reputation as ‘easy’ and reluctance which would discourage the man. For men, it was about knowing what was a show of reluctance and what really meant “No.”

I’m reminded of the shitstorm that the GoT showrunners experienced over the scene in the Sept of Baelor, between Jaime and Cersei. A majority of the viewers saw it as rape, because she was clearly objecting and saying ‘No, stop!’, while the showrunners hadn’t seen that because she eventually got into it. That’s a view from another time.

I had a conversation on this with the Older Boy’s Girlfriend, who had just seen Gone With The Wind for the first time. She was shocked and horrified by the scene where Rhett carries Scarlet up the steps to her room, and outright called it Rape. It was jarring, but she was right - that’s what we’d call it these days, even though the author undoubtedly saw it VERY differently.

It’s a difficult thing to know what one should think about things like this. So much of the past, so many of our ancestors lived their lives according to the mores of the time they lived in, doing things that today we find horrifying. Judging them solely as people of their times isn’t enough, but neither is judging them solely by our own standards.