I know this probably belongs on the earlier thread but it got filled up by the time I got back so..
I wanted to make the point that anyone who uses the 'she's a burlesque dancer, she's no Miss Innocent' line to downplay the damage that has been done to Georgina, is effectively using the same logic as 'she was known to be promiscuous' to downplay rape.
No-one has said this explicitly, but several have sailed perilously close, even if they hastily qualify it with 'Oh, I'm not excusing what RB and JR did'.
Well, actually, you are.
Consent, in both cases, is not given as a blanket permission. Because she consented to sex with RB (normally considered a private act) does not mean that she consented to having that fact made known to either her GF or the world.
A useful comparison would be with a woman who consents to have sex with a man whom she loves, likes, or finds attractive, only to discover that his friends have been hiding in the wardrobe watching, and either wanking or laughing.
Similarly, Georgina's subsequent (and to me rather distasteful but understandable) decision to tell all has no bearing whatsoever on her position in this affair.
She is still the victim, however she behaves after the fact. Her complicity now in this ludicrous frenzy is NOT retroactive:
she was not complicit then, which is all that should matter.
May I also remind those who refuse to see misogyny at work here, that one of the lines sung into Sach's answering-machine was:
"I had sex with your granddaughter.
But it was consensual and she wasn't menstrual."
For me this is the crux of it, and reveals the misogyny which underlies the whole episode. Brand's fear of/disgust at the menstruating female body indicates his fear of/contempt for women - since for misogynists a woman is her body. It is effectively a public expression of his contempt for Georgina, for being disgustingly female.
And while we personally do not think like this, we know that much of culture does (hence 'feminine hygiene').
For this reason, I doubt that there is a single one of us who would not feel ourselves abused, were the image of us having sex whilst menstruating to be forced into the public consciousness in this manner (because of course although he says she wasn't 'menstrual', that assertion both contains and articulates the possibility that she was).
It reminded me of the time that a whole crowd of pissed rugby fans got onto my train and sang song after woman-hating song, almost all of which involved soemthing about menstruation and ended with the woman being debased in some way. Most of the other passengers were female.
It was incredibly upsetting and humiliating, but I had two revelations:
The first was 'fuck, your type of man really hates us, don't you'.
The second was 'fuck, you're not accidentally doing this in front of women themselves because you're pissed at all, are you? The whole point is to - occasionally - go public with your contempt, to make us anxious and afraid and to remind us that you can.
That's what I think RB and JR were doing - though I doubt that they were even conscious of it. And I don't, of course, meaning reminding Georgina as an individual - I mean they were reminding us ALL. Just as when JR habitually talks about the tits of whichever smart female guest he has on his talk show that week, he is reminding us all that ultimately, that's what we are to him and the rest of misogynist culture - a pair of tits.
Disclaimer: I know that many men do not feel like this; but the ones that do, really do - and our culture tends to reflect their needs and beliefs.