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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Gratuitous rape scenes

42 replies

WallToWallBastards · 10/10/2015 22:11

could be sensitive or triggering

I've just finished watching the first episode of American Horror Story Hotel. In the first 20 minutes there was a really sadistic and violent rape scene that seems to be irrelevant to the plot (why would it need to be? Confused) I know AHS has form for this in previous series but everything I watch seems to have unnecessary graphic rape scenes, seemingly just for shock value. Even in media where it moves the plot along, why does it have to be depicted, especially so horrifically? I've noticed my friends commenting on how sexy some of the rape scenes are, male and female, and that I'm just frigid Shock and how if you get upset by actually being raped you're overreacting and that men can't be raped and it's not rape if you've consented before and it's half way through the moon phase and you smiled at them and you're wearing a nice bra

I'm now prepared to be told I am very unreasonable and possibly oversensitive but with this, porn, 50 Shades of shit Grey, I'm worried about how desensitised people seem to be becoming to this

OP posts:
spanisharmada · 10/10/2015 22:15

I'm sorry but it sounds like your friends talk some terrible shit. Do they really believe what they're saying? And they say that out loud? In public? Shock

Original poster
WallToWallBastards · 10/10/2015 22:20

I'm not sure if they really believe it or if it's just the new in thing to be so full of wishy washy faux-feminist bollocks liberal but they don't seem to have a public filter, it's awful

OP posts:
OwlinaTree · 10/10/2015 22:20

Get new friends.

DoveCazzoEIlMioCaffe · 10/10/2015 22:23

What Owlina said. Your 'friends' sound ghastly and YABU for remaining friends with them for one second after the first airing of opinions like that.

LemonPied · 10/10/2015 22:23

You need new friends. And I say that as someone who has been raped. Fuck that shit.

Bambambini · 10/10/2015 22:24

These are your friends, you must have something in common with them. No, my friends don't talk like that - how old are you and your friends?

SmashleyHop · 10/10/2015 22:26

I think I read an interview about that scene (if it's the one you're talking about, I've not actually seen it) Supposedly it's "addiction" that is raping the character as he is a drug addict. Not that it makes rape in tv and film any better or justified. It's just their explanation of the need for it.

PiperIsTerrysChoclateOrange · 10/10/2015 22:27

Rape scenes and rape are too different thinks.

Tbh I don't even know why it's called a rape scene for as its all consented. Where real rape isn't consented.

I do think some people gets turned on by watching sex.

Lj8893 · 10/10/2015 22:27

Your friends sound bloody awful!!!!

BSites · 10/10/2015 22:30

I hate how perfectly ordinary people watch rape and torture on screen and think I'm weird because I don't want to.

I'm in the minority on here though and narrow minded, apparently.

Your friends are talking bollocks OP.

mrstweefromtweesville · 10/10/2015 22:31

Can't remember the name of it but decades ago Clint Eastwood made a film that seemed to me to be nothing but rape scenes. I've been wary of film-rapes and rapes in books ever since. I know that people abuse each other, but I don't find it exciting, I find it upsetting. Rape is not nice, even when its by your husband and you've had sex with him thousands of times before. It makes you feel as if you don't exist.

Dear me. If anyone lined up my posts and read them... no wonder the gp giving me a psychological assessment a few weeks ago said sadly "I feel sorry for you"...

Original poster
WallToWallBastards · 10/10/2015 22:36

Piper a rape scene is consented to but they are acting out rape, does it not bother you that people think yeah that looks fun???

Mrstwee that is so awful Sad

I'm shocked that attitudes seem to be going backwards, it's almost a controversial opinion to suggest that being raped isn't actually your fault? Lovely that some of you seem never to have come across that but I've found it even within my family, doctors and police.

OP posts:
elQuintoConyo · 10/10/2015 22:39

Lazy fucking writing. Pisses me right off.

bunique · 10/10/2015 22:43

Was thinking similar about This is England

LumpySpacedPrincess · 10/10/2015 22:45

I'm shocked that attitudes seem to be going backwards, it's almost a controversial opinion to suggest that being raped isn't actually your fault? Lovely that some of you seem never to have come across that but I've found it even within my family, doctors and police

The glamorization of rape is a problem, we need to stop normalising it and see it for what it is.

Savagebeauty · 10/10/2015 22:48

Is it the gimp mask rape?

expatinscotland · 10/10/2015 22:48

I don't watch a lot of films or cable/satelite telly series for the amount of gratuitous shit like this that goes on. Some film was on the other night and it was just some guy in New York fucking everyone and flashing his cock. All I could think of when I realised that was what it was about (and turned it off) was how fucking warped and sadistic and FUBAR to even think up something like that, or act in it.

BitOfFun · 10/10/2015 23:01

Bunique, I disagree specifically about the scene in This Is England; that seen wasn't remotely eroticised, quite the reverse. It was horrifying because it was so mundane and realistic, and, frankly, it SHOULD shock us. Very different to the beautifully-lit princess-in-peril-type scenes you find in dramas like Game Of Thrones, and absolutely pivotal to the storyline. I don't think drama should necessarily shy away from showing the horror and trauma of rape, as Shane Meadows did; it's much more problematic when rape is portrayed just to titillate viewers.

BitOfFun · 10/10/2015 23:01

that scene, sorry.

WMittens · 10/10/2015 23:07

I'd say it's the same principle as someone being killed/murdered in film/TV, which is far more prevalent - it's a dramatisation of what is, in the real world, a heinous act.

The fact that rape scenes garner so much of a response than murder scenes (and other violence) suggests to me that it is in no way being "normalised".

Gabilan · 10/10/2015 23:11

if you get upset by actually being raped you're overreacting

Some people are beyond hope.

The problem though is that this attitude leaches down so then people say things like "how much had she drunk" and think it's a reasonable question.

I've had this argument with my family, over the Ched Evans case, and have told them never to discuss the subject with me again. First time I've ever been tempted to go NC with my own family.

kali110 · 10/10/2015 23:17

Your friends attitudes are disgusting, i'd find new friends.
I Don't have a problem with scenes on tv though and with ahs there's always a reason for everything. You can't understand everything after one episode.

thenumberseven · 10/10/2015 23:20

mrstwee you and I are on the same wavelength on this subject.
Soon as I read original post, that Clint Eastwood movie came to mind.
There are many others, I never watch them. There are ways and ways of portraying this subject. Some movie scenes are just for titillation and it makes me sick..and furious

steff13 · 10/10/2015 23:27

When I clicked this, I knew it was going to be about AHS. That scene was so awful, I couldn't believe it had been aired on network tv. I watched Oz back in the day, and none of the prison rape scenes were as bad as this week's AHS. Just awful.

scatterthenuns · 10/10/2015 23:32

Best rape scene I've ever seen was Pennsatucky's rape(s) in her backstory episode in the last series of OITNB. So sensitively handled, so well acted, about the victim and the lasting effects, and not gratuitous at all.

Anything else is just lazy, shit writing.