The Guns of Auguste

On the not-very-good-at-all pilot last night for “Dirt”, Courtney Cox’s Hollywood-Gossip-Magazine show on FX, there was a moment which has the potential to be either the worst sex-related scene since “Rescue Me”’s ‘consenting-rape’ scene, or an unusually strong statement on consent. It all depends on which direction they go (always assuming this show lasts more than two episodes, of course.)

[WARNING: SPOILER FOR SHITTY TELEVISION SHOW]

A semi-washed-up actor, Holt, is sitting in Courtney Cox’s office, being pressured to provide the editor’s gossip rag with info about his Hollywood friends. If he doesn’t play ball, he’s told, they’ll go public with a videotape which shows Holt’s girlfriend, a more-famous actress named Julia, involved in some very Paris-Hilton-like sex with “some guy.”

Now, where the potential controversy lies is inherent in the video Holt is shown. An approximate transcript of the scene follows (Possible trigger warning after the break):

Julia: I can hardly focus my eyes…
Johnny: C’mon, baby.
[He kisses her]
Julia: I don’t know if I want to do this, Johnny…
Johnny: Sure you do.
[Rough sex ensues]
Julia: Johnny…
Johnny: You like that, don’t you?
Julia: Ohh, Y-

At this moment Cox’s character freezes the frame for maximum impact with Holt. The perception, of course, is that she was about to say “ohhh, yes” - in fact, the closed captioner actually finishes the word for her - but the scene is carefully timed so that we have no idea what she’s about to say. In fact, the moment that Cox pauses it is so strange that I’m tempted to assume that it was intentional, and that it will be revealed later that Julia was saying “Ohh, you’re hurting me” or something along these lines.

But, frankly, it doesn’t really matter. The scene depicts a rape. Julia is probably too drunk to consent, and never DOES consent. The only thing she says about her willingness or not to have sex is “I’m not sure I want to”, and the point is, that should be enough.

There’s been a lot of talk on the blogs recently about consent. It started with a letter to Dan Savage, in which a woman who had been raped by her boyfriend - brutally, really - was agonizing over whether to take him back. She didn’t seem to think it was rape, you see - just because she had told him repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that she would never have anal sex, that it would in fact put her life in danger - well, he’s simply a jerk.

Or not. No, he’s a rapist. Unquestionably, right? Well, for some reason, that simple question in a complicated post generated 322 comments, a surprising number of them seemingly dedicated to finding some reason that there was more there than meets the eye. No one would come out and call the letter-writer a liar, which is unfortunate for them since there is nothing short of baldfaced lies which would make what she described not a rape.

But I’m not writing this post to recapitulate that argument. I’m writing this post because of something that Shakespeare’s Sister wrote in the aftermath of yet another discussion about rape (emphasis hers):

There have been times since [being raped] when I have been walking home, alone, after a few drinks, wearing something that might have shown a bit of leg or cleavage, and I wasn’t raped. The difference was not in what I was doing. The difference was the presence of a rapist.

See, in addition to the supposedly-murky issue of consent, there’s the only-slightly-different issue of a woman’s “responsibility” to “protect herself” from rape. Ignoring mountains of evidence that acquaintance-rapes are far more common than stranger-rapes, plenty of people cling to the illusion that they can both blame the victim and be innocent of victim-blaming.

“I’m not saying it was her fault, but she was wearing a short skirt…”

“I’m not saying it was her fault, but she was walking from one bar to another without an escort…”

I know plenty of reasonable people - men and women - who wincingly nod their heads at arguments like this. They see that it’s almost victim-blaming, but they just can’t help but agree. “Being smart”, right? “Common sense”, right?

Let me offer an analogy for why this is not, in fact, the case.

Before the election, there was a lot of discussion, as there always is, about whether one’s vote counts, especially in less-contested districts. The right answer to that question is as follows:

Sure, on the day after election day, chances are your vote didn’t amount to much. But on election day itself, when all votes are still merely potential votes, your vote does count. You have no information, prior to the polls closing, which guarantees a margin of victory or defeat - the only influence ANYONE has on the process is their vote.

It’s not a stretch, then, to apply that logic to rape. Sure, it’s indisputably true that, given the choice between a dark alley and a lighted thoroughfare, a woman would be safer choosing the thoroughfare. (So would a man, for that matter). Given the choice between walking in a group and walking alone, a woman would be safer choosing the group. All of these are facts.

But after a rape has been committed, after the die is cast, these elements are all utterly moot. They are moot because every action a person takes is another potentiality to make up the whole of their experiences; a rape is a concrete occurence which cannot possibly be said to rely on only one of those potentialities. Or, to put it another way, there is only one single factor which is undeniably the cause of rape: The presence of a rapist.

This is a lot of words for something I described as “possibly the easiest concept in the history of the world”, so let me prove that point right now:

Consent is defined according to the quality and quantity of assent, not the quality and quantity of dissent.

Almost every argument about rape can be boiled down to this one sentence, because almost every argument about rape centers on what the victim did or didn’t do. “She didn’t kick him, she didn’t bite him, she didn’t dress modestly, she didn’t scream for help, she didn’t break his nose…” Rape apologists throw up requirements, levels and types of dissent that the woman would have had to live up to in order to really have been raped. It’s interesting, however, that they’re always able to come up with something.

No, rape is about something that the rapist does. Or rather, what he doesn’t do, in that he doesn’t rely on the woman’s assent. Now, I’m not arguing for signed affidavits or videotaped disclaimers, as the MRAs and rape apologists sometimes claim.

But let’s bring it back to the beginning of this post, shall we? I’m fairly certain that there are some people who will read the description of the scene and think I’m crazy, that she never said no, that she never tried to fight him off, that she never tried to get away, therefore it’s not rape. But instead of focusing on the quality and quantity of dissent, let’s look at the quality and quantity of assent. She was trashed, and she never said yes. He never gave her the chance to. A non-rapist stops when a woman says “I’m not sure I want to do this.” He often doesn’t have to stop for long, because if she assents, it will quickly become apparent.

Simple.