It’s been a case of conflict,confusion and shame mixed into one, when it comes to talking about feminism.
Our society holds various opinions, stereotypes, stigma and bias when we talk about women rights. Some support it by saying that women have been long denied rights and now we should empower them to achieve equality. On the other hand, some say women are being provided with more than adequate privileges on many spheres, leading to misuse of the power, killing of meritocracy and unfairness. Well, to be honest, I believe there is never black or white, it’s always grey. So, it’s true that some women do exploit the empowerment and some make the best out of it!
Now let’s discuss about something which actually triggered me to write this article. Sometimes I try to write down points about the topic to understand it better, like writing down events in that topic, pros and cons of the topic, conflicts, etc, and ultimately the final article represents my conclusion about it, which kinda the summary, hence helps me for understanding it better. The readers too might use this for understanding the particular topic, but again, these are my views after all, so take it with a grain of salt ;) Initially I thought of writing it in my diary, then I realized that I need to share it with everyone so that I can invite other people’s opinions as well. So here I go, thinking out loud:
The show GUILT, shows that a boy, seemingly innocent, have been disturbed by #metoo movement where a girl accused him of rape. The boy is very popular in college and this girl (who accused him of rape) had a crush on him. Everyone felt that it is just the way the girl wants to be famous and take down that boy’s then present gf, hence she was doing is drama of rape. Ultimately it is proved that the girl is right and boy actually did rape her. Now here lies my confusion about the conclusion put in the show that the buy actually raped her.
What is rape
Wikipedia says “Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person’s consent”
So to prove that a person did rape someone two things need to be proved:
- The accused person did sexual assault involving sexual intercourse on the victim.
- The victim did not give consent for the sexual intercourse.
Now, in GUILTY the things that were shown are:
- The boy sexually assaulted the victim and had sexual intercourse.
- The girl provided consent to the accused of sexual intercourse. In fact, she approached the accused, seduced him, offered alcohol, pulled him to his hostel room and then offered him the consent.
- The accused was with his friends, which was not comforting to the victim hence she asked them to leave. But when they didn’t leave but the accused still moved forward with the process of intercourse, she slapped him. Now out of anger, he forcefully had sexual intercourse with her without her consent.
Now can we say that the accused is guilty?
No
The victim provided the consent and escorted the accused forcefully to his residence. Since she has provided the consent, any sexual intercourse between them can not be regarded as rape, happening at that particular moment.
Yes
Even though she initially did provide him with the consent, but later (friends not leaving and the slap) she refused the consent, still, the accused proceeded with the intercourse. Hence it is rape because just before the intercourse she refused the consent.
So what is the actual answer, Yes or No? Well, this is complicated. I think, neither yes nor no is applicable here, because it is true that that the girl did provide consent, however, she revoked the consent after the mishap. But it should be noted that the process of intercourse was started when she provided the consent, hence the continuing process can’t be regarded as rape. But we can also think of the process as two phase and the second phase of the process, which happened after the mishap as a new process (or phase) of intercourse for which consent was not passed. Hence the second phase of the process can be said to be rape. So this judgement is hard to passed and there are multiple other factors like persuasion, invocation, toxicity, intension, etc which needs to be taken note of. But as the show clearly pass the judgement in the very bollywood-sh dramatic scene, I believe is wrong. A situation like this needs to be dealt with more care and guilt shaming or stereotyping should be reduced!