Why Even Some 'Consensual' Love Scenes Can Still Come off as Nonconsensual
Looking through critiques of the webcomic,“Starfighter” (which I haven’t reviewed yet) and one comment stood out to me:
“Saying Cain didn’t rape Abel because he secretley “wanted it” ignores the fact that Cain would have proceeded regardless of whether Abel enjoyed it.”
(-Elf on an Elk)
Because I think that that statement applies to any fictional romance that romanticizes sexual assault and rape. Be it Fifty Shades of Grey, any old-school Harlequin romance, or fanfics. Usually, when readers try to defend the rapist hero, they point to the heroine’s behavior.
“Oh, sure, she said no, but then she changed her mind.”
“Yeah, she was trying to push him away, but then she started screaming his name to the heavens in ecstasy.”
But to me, that’s just another form of victim-blaming. Or, if not victim-blaming (since in many scenarios, the heroine does come to “enjoy” the sex with the hero), then it’s another case of putting all of the responsibility on the woman. Many feminists have criticized standard warnings about rape as being targeted solely towards women: don’t go out late at night alone, don’t have too many drinks, etc. Since, most cases of rape involve male rapists, many feminists have pointedly asked why there aren’t warnings directed at men, why men are not told, “Don’t have sex with a woman who’s obviously drunk and out of it,” “If she changes her mind, then stop,” etc.
And the same principle applies here. Nothing is said about the hero’s behavior when it comes to the rape, it’s all about the heroine’s reaction (or, in yaoi, the uke). Oh, her heart is pounding, she’s blushing, her body’s enjoying it, she asks him for more, etc. And for me, that’s missing the main point.
Which is, okay, you’re saying that the hero didn’t rape her because she changed her mind (under dubious conditions, but that’s a whole other story). Because eventually she gave in and said yes or she let him have his way with her.
Here’s a question, though. Why if she didn’t?
What if there was no moment where her “body said yes” or she “succumbed to the pleasure” etc.? What if she made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want to have sex with him and maintained that position throughout the book? What if she was screaming “No?” What if she was crying?
Has the writer made it clear, explicitly and without any doubt, that he would’ve stopped?
That he would’ve listened when the heroine told him to go away? That he would’ve let go of her when she turned her face away from him? That he would’ve realized what he was doing, apologized, and left her alone?
Because if not, then if not a rapist in words or in deeds, he’s certainly a rapist in thought. It doesn’t matter if Anastasia Steele eventually grew to like having sex with Christian Grey. It doesn’t matter if Abel eventually grew to like having sex with Cain to the point of penetrating him in one scene. It doesn’t matter if the standard damsel-in-distress Harlequin heroine grew to like having sex with the hero who ravished her.
Because it didn’t matter to the men who raped them. If Ana never grew to like BDSM (or, at least, Christian’s version of it), Christian would force her to do it anyway. If Abel never decided to share Cain’s bed, Cain would drag him over there anyway.
And this is true even for heroines who are shown to enthusiastically welcome the sex. For example, in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Dagny Taggart, unlike Ana and Abel, does not have any hang-ups about having sex with Hank Rearden. She does not fit the blushing virgin archetype at all and her thoughts indicate that she’s into rough sex, which is what Hank Rearden also happens to like.
Now, on the surface, this might seem like a refreshing change from the usual romance trope. There is no wishy-washy double-guessing of feelings, there is no passive-aggressive bickering, there is no instance of Ayn Rand trying to have her cake and eat it too by presenting Dagny as an innocent, pure virgin, the lady who doth protest too much, and who’s so much better than other women because of her naïveté but who then enjoys lots of rowdy sex with the hero.
But, ultimately, the book falls into the same trap. Not because of Dagny, but because of Hank. Because while Dagny may be all gung-ho about having sex with him, Hank’s thoughts make it clear that he wouldn’t give a darn if she wasn’t. If she didn’t want to have sex with him, if the rough sex hurt her or traumatized her, he couldn’t care less. Even though Dagny wakes up all content and satisfied after their night together, it’s ruined by Hank’s appalling selfishness. Yes, Dagny enjoyed it, but he would’ve grabbed her and had sex with her even if she’d been telling him no. And in another scene, he tells her to her face that he would’ve demanded sex from her as payment should she have come to him to ask a favor regarding his company if the request had been made in different circumstances. So, yes, technically Hank isn't a rapist because he didn't rape Dagny. She wanted to have sex with him. But he certainly has the mindset of a rapist.
Now, of course, since Atlas Shrugged is one big polemic, even the sex scenes are indicative of Ayn Rand’s philosophical/moral views about selfishness and worth. But I won’t go into that here. The point is that as long as the hero doesn’t care about the heroine’s feelings and wishes, their scenes with the heroines will still continue to have a disturbing, nonconsensual vibe to them, which can't readily be excused away by the heroine's compliance.
One example of an author writing the opposite is from the Harlequin Blaze novel, Taking Care of Business by Kathy Lyons. The hero is a CEO, as are many Harlequin male leads, but he pretends to be an elevator maintenance man, so the heroine doesn’t find out that he’s wealthy until later in the book. In several scenes, his genius with technology is indicated by his ability to shut down elevators, turn on the heater, tinker with surveillance cameras, all through the use of computers.
Now, if this book belonged to the horror or thriller genre, that ability would make him a fearsome villain. He has control not just over his company, but over the basic day-to-day building functions that most people take for granted. It would be a given that he’d use that power to trap the heroine inside the building and terrorize her.
But such a thought never enters the mind of the reader while reading the book. Because that’s not how Kathy Lyons characterized him. Unlike many other CEOs of Harlequin novels, the hero of Taking Care of Business isn’t domineering or arrogant in the slightest. He’s patient, caring, and listens to the heroine. When he uses his abilities to turn on the heater or tinker with surveillance cameras, it’s all with the knowledge and consent of the heroine and it’s solely used for kinky scenes. There are multiple moments where he and the heroine are engaged in role-play sex and he repeatedly asks her if she’s okay with it. When she tells him to stop, he stops, no questions asked. There’s no dubious consent issue, there’s no instance of him sulking or losing his temper when the heroine tells him no, there’s no infuriating moment where he smugly tells her that he knows that she wants to have sex with him and she just doesn’t want to admit it. Every single sex scene between them is fully consensual.
So, even though the hero does have this unsettling ability to manipulate technology, which could have been used for evil ends, there’s never any danger of him using it to his advantage because that’s not how he’s been written. Likewise, there’s never any danger that he’ll force the heroine to have sex with him, either physically or verbally. There is never any indication that he’d go ahead and rape her if she told him no.
For another (admittedly flawed analogy), if a guy walks up to a store and plans to rob the cashier at gunpoint, but, upon arriving, the cashier cheerfully hands him the money instead of telling him no, the cashier’s reaction still doesn’t change the fact that the man had planned to rob him. It still doesn’t change the fact that the man was willing to threaten and coerce someone to give him what he wanted. And it especially doesn’t change the fact that, after the cashier does give him the money, the man has no regrets about his intention to rob him and in fact contemplates robbing him again later, in case the cashier decides to not give him the money next time.
So, no, the onus for whether or not the relationship is consensual is not on the rape victims or, at the very least, not entirely on their shoulders. If the writer has made it clear, even unintentionally, that the hero would disregard the heroine’s wishes if she was serious and she did mean it when she told him no, then it’s not consensual. Or, at the very least, it was only through the convenience of the plot and intervention of the author that it was consensual.