On Rape Jokes and Normalizing Assault

[jimhines]

A few people have commented on this part of yesterday’s blog post about sexual assault and excuses:

And then you have the guys who say they’ve never heard such things. Really? Never? As common as sexual assault is in this country, you’ve never heard anyone boasting about a problematic encounter? Never heard anyone glorifying assault, talking about

Comments

[socchan]

I've seen it in at least three Disney tweens sitcoms: Two in ANT Farm (both attracted to the guy who's interested in the main character); one in Austin & Ally (the girl who's interested in the guy is also fat and otherwise "unfeminine"); and at least one in Jessie, which itself is basically "Let's throw a bunch of negative stereotypes in a high-rise apartment in Manhattan and see what happens!" (The character in question is outright referred to as "Creepy Connie".) Conclusion: I watch trash.

On the plus(?) side, Disney also has Gravity Falls, which plays Li'l Gideon's "crush" on Mabel exactly as creepy and manipulative it actually would be in real life*, and blatantly compares twelve-year-old Dipper's crush on sixteen-year-old Wendy to a six-year-old girl's crush on Dipper.

* I'm considerably less comfortable with Mabel's insistence that she owed Gideon an "honest breakup", since what he was trying with her wasn't even close to an honest relationship in the first place, but her turning him down flat when he tried to go for "at least friends" after trying to murder her brother was balm for my soul.