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What ’Anatomy Of A Scandal’ Can Teach Us About Rape Culture
25 Plays3 years ago
[Trigger Warning] Episode contains discussions of multiple kinds of rape. The Queens dissect the Netflix show "Anatomy of A Scandal' and the nuances of rape culture, public sentiment, male entitlement, and the court system.
The people are R-worded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NTkXIidCU0
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
So this episode, we're going to talk about the Netflix show Anatomy of a Scandal, which we think has a lot of good themes about rape culture and the way that it's portrayed in the media, as well as the complicated emotions that everyone feels when a woman who is accusing a man of rape is not a perfect victim or morally compromised in some way, as well as a lot of the red flags and entitlement that comes from men who feel that they are entitled to women, which I think this show portrays really well.
00:00:28
Speaker
We'll get into a brief discussion and summary of what the show's about.
00:00:31
Speaker
And then in the latter half of the episode, we discuss the complicated topics around rape culture and what might be considered gray rape, where rape when you're already in a relationship with someone.
00:00:43
Speaker
So stay tuned for that.
00:00:45
Speaker
As always, check out our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy.
00:00:49
Speaker
If you want to discuss this episode further with us on our Discord, as well as listen to other bonus episodes and submit a question for our Roast to Scroat grab bag episode, which we just had last week.
00:01:01
Speaker
So let us know what you think and check us out again at patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy.
UK Perspective on 'Anatomy of a Scandal'
00:01:14
Speaker
What's up, queens?
00:01:15
Speaker
Welcome to the Female Dating Strategy Podcast, the meanest female-only podcast on the internet.
00:01:19
Speaker
I'm Ro.
00:01:20
Speaker
I'm Savannah.
00:01:22
Speaker
And I'm Lilith.
00:01:23
Speaker
And today we're going to talk about Anatomy of a Scandal, finally.
00:01:26
Speaker
Anatomy of a Scandal.
00:01:28
Speaker
Which you previewed a few weeks ago.
00:01:30
Speaker
I've been previewing this, like, did I preview this in, like, the Rexit episode, like, months ago, right?
00:01:34
Speaker
I've been wanting to talk about this for a while, but Savannah was gone, and I'm so glad Savannah's back.
00:01:38
Speaker
So, Savannah, first of all, as someone from the UK, what did you think of this?
00:01:42
Speaker
What did you think of this TV show?
00:01:42
Speaker
What did you think of this?
00:01:45
Speaker
So people are complaining it's too Americanized.
00:01:47
Speaker
Like, did you get that sense?
00:01:49
Speaker
To some degree, yeah.
00:01:51
Speaker
But it's always funny seeing how things like the House of Commons is depicted because it's not like that at all.
00:01:56
Speaker
Like the House of Commons is bigger, it's more rowdy and you have the speaker, you know, always saying that order, order.
00:02:03
Speaker
That was John Burkowski.
00:02:04
Speaker
He's not there anymore.
00:02:05
Speaker
But yeah.
00:02:06
Speaker
You know, some of the dialogue in the Commons, like bringing up the rape stuff, that would never be allowed in the House of Commons because it's all about referring to my right honourable friend.
00:02:16
Speaker
And there's just some stuff that just wouldn't be allowed.
00:02:19
Speaker
Like, there have been MPs who've actually been kicked out for saying something that wasn't even rude.
00:02:23
Speaker
It was technically true.
00:02:24
Speaker
But you just have to be prim and proper.
00:02:26
Speaker
So it's like more rowdy but more polite at the same time?
00:02:29
Speaker
What?
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:02:31
Speaker
It's really, really weird.
00:02:32
Speaker
LAUGHTER
00:02:33
Speaker
It's really weird.
00:02:34
Speaker
Like there was one MP, I think he was the MP for Bolsover in the North.
00:02:38
Speaker
He called David Cameron dodgy Dave.
00:02:40
Speaker
And the speaker at the time said either take it back or leave.
00:02:43
Speaker
And he refused to take it back.
00:02:45
Speaker
So he was kicked out for the rest of the day.
00:02:46
Speaker
So it's always rowdy, but quite respectful at the same time.
00:02:49
Speaker
Totally different to the Senate or the Congress in America.
Plot Summary: James Whitehouse's Scandal
00:02:52
Speaker
So for people who haven't seen this show, can you give it an overview?
00:02:55
Speaker
Give the series an overview before we jump into specifics about it.
00:02:59
Speaker
Okay, okay, okay.
00:02:59
Speaker
So Anatomy of a Scandal, it's a six-part miniseries.
00:03:03
Speaker
It's got Michelle Dockery and Rupert, was it Rupert Friend?
00:03:06
Speaker
Is that how you pronounce his last name?
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, Rupert Friend and Sienna Miller as well.
00:03:10
Speaker
And Sienna Miller, yeah.
00:03:12
Speaker
I thought they were really great, strong acting all around, but basically Rupert Friend's character, James Whitehouse, he's an MP, a conservative MP in the House of Commons.
00:03:21
Speaker
A Tory MP.
00:03:22
Speaker
Oh yeah, they don't call them conservatives, they call them Tories.
00:03:25
Speaker
The Tories, yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
He's a Tory, but he's not like other Tories, guys.
00:03:29
Speaker
He's a progressive Tory.
00:03:31
Speaker
He's one of the good guys, okay?
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:35
Speaker
At least that's how the show sets above it first.
00:03:37
Speaker
And then, yeah, so he has an affair.
00:03:39
Speaker
He's married with kids, but he has an affair with one of his co-workers, like a researcher or something, someone that he works with.
00:03:47
Speaker
Shit, what's her name?
00:03:47
Speaker
I can't remember.
00:03:49
Speaker
Olivia Litton, which, by the way, is absolutely not allowed.
00:03:52
Speaker
It's against the codes.
00:03:56
Speaker
What, having an affair?
00:03:57
Speaker
No, having an affair with the member of your staff is absolutely not allowed as an MP.
00:04:01
Speaker
I'm sure it happens all the time.
00:04:03
Speaker
It does, but it's just not allowed.
00:04:04
Speaker
They just have risky sex.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, so he has an affair.
00:04:09
Speaker
The show hinges on there's an incident in the elevator where they have sex.
00:04:14
Speaker
She says it was rape after they break up.
00:04:17
Speaker
So he breaks up with her.
00:04:18
Speaker
Then they have sex in an elevator.
00:04:20
Speaker
She argues it was not consensual.
00:04:21
Speaker
That was rape.
00:04:22
Speaker
He says it was just like a heat of the moment, like passionate, blah, blah, blah kind of thing.
00:04:26
Speaker
And then there's some stuff that happened in history, you know, with how do I explain what happened with the school?
00:04:31
Speaker
Like, what the fuck was with that school, Savannah?
00:04:33
Speaker
Like, what the fuck is with your school system?
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, so basically, I'll just rewind.
00:04:38
Speaker
So James Whitehouse was having an affair with Olivia Litton.
00:04:41
Speaker
She then accuses him of rape.
00:04:43
Speaker
And basically the whole series is hinged on this trial.
00:04:47
Speaker
Now, it's really quite cool how they do it.
00:04:49
Speaker
So they do flashbacks to when James and his wife, I've forgotten her name, I think it was Sophie, when they were all in Oxford,
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, Sienna Miller's character is called Sophie and she's married to James Whitehouse.
00:04:58
Speaker
And so they do a flashback to when they were all at Oxford.
College Flashbacks and the Libertines Club
00:05:02
Speaker
Now, James and the Prime Minister, I think he's called Tom in the series.
00:05:06
Speaker
They were both in a clique or like a fraternity, as you would say in the US, called the Libertines.
00:05:12
Speaker
Great name, by the way.
00:05:14
Speaker
And what's interesting about the Libertines is that, but it's actually based on a real life, like elitist, pompous piece of shit club called the Bullingdon Club.
00:05:23
Speaker
And if you search online for Boris Johnson, David Cameron, George Osborne, all our top politicians, they were all once part of this Bullingdon Club.
00:05:30
Speaker
Now what it is, it's this ultra wealthy, like super elite club at Oxford that basically they go around to hotels, to restaurants and they just smash it.
00:05:39
Speaker
They are very, very obnoxious.
00:05:41
Speaker
They've been banned from so many different places.
00:05:44
Speaker
And the reason is they'll basically go into a restaurant, they will wreak havoc and they'll pay for the damages in cash because they're all rich men or they're all like rich kids.
00:05:52
Speaker
The uniform alone for the Bullingdon Club is like three and a half grand.
00:05:57
Speaker
So even to just like wear the uniform, that will cost you like three and a half grand.
00:06:01
Speaker
And all the medicine, all male club as well.
00:06:03
Speaker
And all of them are from private schools such as Harrow, St.
00:06:07
Speaker
Paul's or Winchester.
00:06:08
Speaker
So
00:06:09
Speaker
And that's what the Libertines was based on.
00:06:11
Speaker
And in the series, you see the Libertines and James and Tom, when they were students, engaging in really, really bullish, shitty behavior.
The Trial and its Complexities
00:06:19
Speaker
And so there is a particular incident where Tom, who is the present day prime minister, he supplies another member of the Libertines with heroin.
00:06:29
Speaker
And that member ends up falling to his death.
00:06:31
Speaker
And Tom and James basically run away from the scene and cover it up, basically in the flashback.
00:06:36
Speaker
In another flashback as well, we see James essentially raping a student that named Holly on her way back from a party.
00:06:44
Speaker
He basically rapes her and whispers in her ear, you're such a prick tease.
00:06:47
Speaker
And she was a virgin at the time.
00:06:48
Speaker
And what's interesting, and so the twist is that the barrister who is prosecuting James for the rape of Olivia Litton is actually the student he raped at Oxford named Holly.
00:06:58
Speaker
But it's not known who she is until towards the end of the series because he's
00:07:02
Speaker
If it came out that she was connected with a defendant or she knew him in any way, then she would be disbarred and she wouldn't have been allowed to take the case, but she took it anyway, knowing that he was her rapist.
00:07:14
Speaker
And so the series moves on.
00:07:16
Speaker
We see the flashbacks.
00:07:17
Speaker
We see how initially when James is accused of rape, Tom, who's the prime minister, basically stands by him publicly, despite being told by his advisor, basically drop him directly.
00:07:27
Speaker
And so, spoiler alert, James is ultimately acquitted of the rape.
00:07:32
Speaker
But throughout the series as well, we see Sophie, who is his wife, suspecting that the barrister prosecuting him is actually Holly because Sophie and Holly were like roommates in the first year at Oxford and they studied together.
00:07:45
Speaker
And so, you know, she confronts Holly, who now goes by the name of Kate, who just denies it because if she admits it, then she's admitting to something deeply unethical.
00:07:55
Speaker
But so after James gets off the trial, he's happy.
00:07:58
Speaker
He's like, I've got my life back.
00:08:00
Speaker
And he tells his wife that he said something that Olivia Lytton claimed he said when he raped her.
00:08:08
Speaker
So don't be such a prick tease.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:10
Speaker
Did you say don't be such a prick tease?
00:08:12
Speaker
And James admits to it and says, I did say that, but I couldn't admit to that in court.
00:08:17
Speaker
Otherwise, you know, that would have looked really bad.
00:08:20
Speaker
And that was when Sophie realizes that he was the rapist.
00:08:23
Speaker
And he was lying the whole time, yeah.
00:08:25
Speaker
He was lying to her the whole time, too.
Sophie Whitehouse's Dilemma
00:08:27
Speaker
And he was lying the whole time.
00:08:28
Speaker
And also, after that, before she leaves him, James confesses that he was involved in the death of the student.
00:08:34
Speaker
Him and Tom were involved.
00:08:35
Speaker
The series concludes with Sophie going to meet Kate and telling her, "'I know that you're Holly.'"
00:08:41
Speaker
Kate doesn't deny it at this point.
00:08:43
Speaker
But then Sophie tells Kate that I've basically gone to the press and exposed the prime minister and my husband for being involved in the death of that student.
00:08:52
Speaker
And that's going to bring down Her Majesty's government.
00:08:54
Speaker
And that's how the series ends.
00:08:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:57
Speaker
So thank you for that amazing summary, Savannah.
00:09:00
Speaker
I think you watched it a lot more recently than me.
00:09:02
Speaker
Thank you.
00:09:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:09:03
Speaker
I did it in a day, in the morning.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:05
Speaker
So what's the purpose of us discussing this?
00:09:07
Speaker
So like, let's give an overarching reason why we thought this would be a good thing to discuss on the podcast.
00:09:12
Speaker
Okay, so first of all, the entire time I was riveted at the edge of my seat, I really enjoyed the show.
00:09:17
Speaker
I think, first of all, the thing I love the most about the show is that it shows the gradual shift.
00:09:24
Speaker
A man who's a well-loved public figure is accused of something horrible like rape or, you know, could be domestic violence or some other crime against women.
00:09:33
Speaker
How does the public respond when a beloved male public figure is accused of terrible behavior like that?
00:09:40
Speaker
right?
00:09:40
Speaker
Especially the wife, actually, because he lies to her at first and says, I'm not a rapist.
00:09:44
Speaker
It was just an affair, you know, yada, yada, yada kind of thing.
00:09:47
Speaker
He trickle-truths her throughout the whole thing.
00:09:50
Speaker
He trickle-truths her throughout the whole thing.
00:09:51
Speaker
And then she slowly realizes like, holy shit, I've been defending a literal rapist this whole time kind of thing, right?
00:09:57
Speaker
And basically, you know, given that this came out, or I watched this right before the Johnny Depp trial, right?
00:10:04
Speaker
There's a lot of parallels actually with the Johnny Depp trial.
00:10:06
Speaker
Like,
00:10:06
Speaker
the way that they smear the woman, the way that they, you know, have too much empathy for the man and all the Darbo and the victim blaming and everything.
00:10:14
Speaker
It's just, it's a whole phenomenon.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:18
Speaker
And it also, I think, highlighted really well the way that the women...
00:10:22
Speaker
who are married to these men or attached to these men, the weird situation that puts them in.
00:10:27
Speaker
Because throughout the series, you know, Sophie, who was married to James, it was, you know, she was advised that you have to attend court each day.
00:10:35
Speaker
It will look really, really good.
00:10:36
Speaker
And during Olivia's testimony, we see that, you know, Sophie walks out.
00:10:41
Speaker
She's had enough.
00:10:42
Speaker
And then she decides I can't go and sit there whilst they're talking about the affair and the rape.
00:10:47
Speaker
I just can't do it.
00:10:48
Speaker
And you see James like literally just have a go at her and saying it would have looked so good if you were there.
00:10:53
Speaker
Just, you know, not caring about the wellbeing of his wife as well.
00:10:58
Speaker
He has to sit there and listen to, to how he shagged his mistress and how they fell in love and how his mistress turned around and said that he raped her.
00:11:06
Speaker
Just complete disregard for her feelings.
00:11:08
Speaker
Like,
00:11:08
Speaker
It's so humiliating.
00:11:10
Speaker
Imagine having to go to court every day, even if, you know, because even in the story, he said that he cheated on her.
00:11:15
Speaker
From the get-go, I was like, wait, you're just going to accept that he cheated on you?
00:11:19
Speaker
Like, she was weirdly cool with that from the beginning.
00:11:22
Speaker
But the things with Sophie as well became apparent.
00:11:24
Speaker
Even though she went to Oxford...
00:11:26
Speaker
She didn't have a career of her own.
00:11:27
Speaker
I think she wanted to get into creative writing, but because she was raising the children, she just became like a stay at home mum.
00:11:32
Speaker
And that tends to happen a lot to, especially women who marry these upper class British men is that they sort of, even they don't have to stay at home, but they sort of lose their own identity and just become like the wife that they parade at events or at, you know, parliamentary elections when they win.
00:11:48
Speaker
They don't have an identity of their own.
00:11:50
Speaker
And I think this series especially hit close to home because in the UK, you know, we've got 650 MPs.
00:11:55
Speaker
At least 50 of them are under investigation for sexual assault and sexual harassment, like in the past year.
00:12:01
Speaker
Damn!
00:12:02
Speaker
To have been convicted.
00:12:03
Speaker
So that's a tenth of our legislature.
Real-World Relevance and Themes
00:12:06
Speaker
One in seven.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:07
Speaker
And that's at least, there's more, there's definitely more, but at least 50 are under current investigation or have been under investigation and two have been convicted in the past year and sent to prison for it.
00:12:18
Speaker
So it was a very, very, you know, topical one.
00:12:21
Speaker
And I think it really did a good job of showing just the complex interplay between a rape accusation and class and privilege as well, basically.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:32
Speaker
I wanted to talk about Sophia a lot, actually.
00:12:34
Speaker
I want this episode almost to hinge on her character because I feel like, first of all, Sienna Miller did a great job acting her.
00:12:41
Speaker
She did.
00:12:41
Speaker
Or performing that role.
00:12:43
Speaker
But she was a mistress once as well, by the way.
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah, oh.
00:12:48
Speaker
I don't know much about her personal history, but she was really, really good.
00:12:51
Speaker
I really liked her portrayal of the character, Sophie.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, but I think it really shows like, you know, people bash, you know, the conservative trad wife kind of character, right?
00:12:59
Speaker
And I feel like this show did a really good job sort of portraying some of the mixed incentives or the conflicting incentives that conservative women face.
00:13:09
Speaker
I don't even want to say conflict.
00:13:10
Speaker
I'd say like the self-destructive almost choices that they're forced into because of being a conservative trad wife, I guess, works out if your husband's great and he doesn't cheat on you and everything's fine.
00:13:20
Speaker
But as soon as he cheats on you, yeah, you're in a totally powerless position.
00:13:23
Speaker
From the get-go, she was supportive of him.
00:13:25
Speaker
She's like, divorce is not an option.
00:13:28
Speaker
She said from the very beginning, like, I would not even think of divorcing my husband, right?
00:13:31
Speaker
Just think about how much that would mess up her life, right?
00:13:34
Speaker
She lives in a big, beautiful house.
00:13:35
Speaker
What's that really expensive neighborhood where all the politicians live?
00:13:38
Speaker
What's that called?
00:13:39
Speaker
It can be Westminster or Kensington.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:42
Speaker
So they live in a super expensive house.
00:13:44
Speaker
You know, they have kids.
00:13:45
Speaker
Kids go to this private school.
00:13:46
Speaker
Like, you know, all the other families would judge them probably if they got divorced.
00:13:49
Speaker
Like it would really mess up her lifestyle.
00:13:51
Speaker
And she doesn't have a job of her own.
00:13:53
Speaker
So just leaving a man who's cheating on you and it's just not an option.
00:13:57
Speaker
And she talks about how her mother was the long suffering wife and she doesn't want to be like that and so on.
00:14:01
Speaker
And it's like, it's unfortunate, but that life sets you up for that life.
00:14:05
Speaker
It sets you up to suffer.
00:14:06
Speaker
I had such a hard time feeling bad for her as a protagonist because of the fact that how like shit she treated Holly at college.
00:14:12
Speaker
And I'm like, Oh, I know this type of woman.
00:14:14
Speaker
Like basically she's coasted her whole life.
00:14:16
Speaker
And I know it's supposed to set it up so that we feel kind of bad for her once, you know, the scandal comes to light, but it also kind of shows how she's completely complicit in exploiting others for her own benefit until like, it doesn't benefit her anymore.
00:14:30
Speaker
So I...
00:14:30
Speaker
Was sort of on the fence, especially when it came down to her trying to destroy Olivia because of the affair.
00:14:36
Speaker
Like her immediate reaction is like, well, we have to absolutely destroy her.
00:14:39
Speaker
I mean, I think she's supposed to be complex, but I don't necessarily think that she's supposed to be sympathetic because there was parts where I was like, eh.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing.
00:14:48
Speaker
I'm not necessarily sympathetic to her.
00:14:49
Speaker
I'm just looking at her life and looking at the dynamics that are going on and being like, damn, that's really shit.
00:14:55
Speaker
Well, she's going to be fine.
00:14:56
Speaker
That's the thing about it.
00:14:57
Speaker
It's like she could choose to divorce and like, it's not like she's going to be broke, especially in light of a scandal.
00:15:02
Speaker
She more than likely would get a favorable divorce settlement.
00:15:05
Speaker
So that's what I'm saying.
00:15:06
Speaker
It's more or less like to be trying to paint her as, as like having to
00:15:10
Speaker
make a difficult choice when she has so many options.
00:15:13
Speaker
Actually, to me, I didn't come across sympathetic so much as like privileged, but that's my observation of the show.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:20
Speaker
Maybe if you are privileged, like the idea of not being invited to like the, all the rich wife, husband,
00:15:27
Speaker
Although rich husband and housewife events, like the idea of not being invited to those events because your ex-husband now has a second wife or married a secretary or whatever.
00:15:36
Speaker
You know, like I don't know if you watch the Betty Broderick show, but, you know, if you're a rich housewife and you get divorced, it can really put a cramp on your style kind of thing.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, she could have just divorced him.
00:15:46
Speaker
But again, it would have like significantly impacted her life in a way that like, I don't know, that would seem really important to rich, privileged people, you know?
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:55
Speaker
The only thing I'm sympathetic with is with when you have small children is that it can be really hard to suddenly split your family and then have to like share your children.
00:16:04
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense.
00:16:05
Speaker
And I think if they had gone with that angle, it might have been a lot more sympathetic.
00:16:09
Speaker
But like the idea, I'm not going to be invited to this like posh rich person's club and...
00:16:13
Speaker
And it seemed like even her friends were somewhat sympathetic at first to the cheating.
00:16:17
Speaker
And it's like she came in kind of defiant about the cheating where she was like, oh, we're going to stand strong together.
00:16:22
Speaker
And her friend was and her friend when they're picking up their kids from school was like, well, yeah, you know, if a little cheating got in the way, there'd be no intact families in this entire school, et cetera.
00:16:30
Speaker
And just making comments like that.
00:16:31
Speaker
So it's sort of it sort of painted that.
00:16:34
Speaker
this is culturally what they're used to and that an affair is just part of the lifestyle of living this upper crust life privilege.
00:16:42
Speaker
Right.
00:16:42
Speaker
But I think where it gets complicated is like, yeah, her trying to destroy the other woman, even though she knows her husband's at fault.
00:16:50
Speaker
And I think she kind of slowly comes around and understands that he was at fault here, but it was sort of like the knee jerk solidarity, despite the fact that he admitted he had this affair and
00:16:59
Speaker
And then even when it came to the rape, her basically just outright denying that he was capable of the rape on top of that.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:06
Speaker
I mean, that's the whole time watching the show and she's standing by her rapist husband defending him.
00:17:11
Speaker
I was thinking like how embarrassing for her.
00:17:13
Speaker
That is like clown behavior, right?
00:17:15
Speaker
Like, and there's so many women like that where there's a Canadian celebrity, Jacob Hogarth, who was convicted of rape recently.
00:17:22
Speaker
And the whole time his wife just has just been standing by him showing up to court, you know, being in the PR shots and stuff.
00:17:29
Speaker
I don't get it.
00:17:30
Speaker
Why would you?
00:17:30
Speaker
This is not only did your man cheat on you, but you're now standing there defending a rapist.
00:17:35
Speaker
Like, I don't get it.
00:17:37
Speaker
What causes women to embarrass themselves like this?
00:17:40
Speaker
What was the name of the man or the position of the man?
00:17:43
Speaker
I didn't quite understand.
00:17:44
Speaker
I think he's some kind of PR rep for... He's like probably like a political advisor for the PM.
00:17:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:50
Speaker
They manage like their image and or like director of communications or something like that.
00:17:54
Speaker
And like number 10, really annoying smarmy dude.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like he had a big part of that where basically he was pressuring her to show up because the optics of her not showing up means that he's like implicitly guilty.
00:18:07
Speaker
But I'm of the opinion that if you do a crime yourself, you should have to defend yourself yourself.
00:18:13
Speaker
But also, if you think about it, though, just remember, though, that Tom and James go back to Oxford.
00:18:18
Speaker
And this is a problem in even in real life British politics is that the politicians all went to Oxford together.
00:18:23
Speaker
So they're all friends.
00:18:24
Speaker
So and obviously, you know, Tom knows that James covered for him when he basically was responsible for the death of a student.
00:18:31
Speaker
So they have these weird sorts of, you know, you cover for me, I cover for you thing.
00:18:36
Speaker
And that's where it was coming
Critique of Political Elite and Gray Rape
00:18:37
Speaker
from.
00:18:37
Speaker
Oh, so is that why they do all these fucked up things?
00:18:39
Speaker
So that like, they've all done fucked up things, they all cover for each other?
00:18:43
Speaker
Yes, they've all done fucked up shit, so they all cover for each other.
00:18:46
Speaker
That's the British establishment.
00:18:47
Speaker
So it's kind of like in a gang, like when you murder each other and keep it separate, or murder people and then keep it secret?
00:18:53
Speaker
Is that basically it?
00:18:55
Speaker
It's like the Scroats Code of Honor, but the British establishment version.
00:18:59
Speaker
Jeez.
00:19:00
Speaker
That's running your government?
00:19:01
Speaker
Fuck.
00:19:02
Speaker
And it's like, they give each other jobs.
00:19:03
Speaker
Like, you know, George Osborne and David Cameron were best friends.
00:19:06
Speaker
And when Cameron was PM, Osborne became Chancellor of the Exchequer, basically in charge of the country's economy, despite knowing fuck all about economics.
00:19:15
Speaker
I hate the rich.
00:19:16
Speaker
Like...
00:19:17
Speaker
That's another thing.
00:19:18
Speaker
This show made me hate the rich so much.
00:19:20
Speaker
I felt like some sympathy.
00:19:21
Speaker
I'm like more thinking like, what are the things that are important to them?
00:19:24
Speaker
What do they value?
00:19:25
Speaker
This show really made me realize that rich people do not give a shit about like normal people.
00:19:29
Speaker
That was another thing.
00:19:30
Speaker
It's like they only give a shit about their only interpersonal drama.
00:19:33
Speaker
They're running a whole country at no point.
00:19:35
Speaker
These are all people in government.
00:19:37
Speaker
At no point, except for maybe Rupert Friend's character, he was talking to a little old lady at the beginning who, you know, got caught up in a crosswalk.
00:19:44
Speaker
And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna like, make the crosswalk indicator line longer so that disabled people can get through or something like that.
00:19:50
Speaker
He's the only person and he's a rapist.
00:19:52
Speaker
He's the only person this whole show who seemed to actually give a shit about like governing.
00:19:56
Speaker
like actually giving a shit about people.
00:19:58
Speaker
And so, but even for him, it was all a performance, right?
00:20:02
Speaker
That's the fucked up thing.
00:20:03
Speaker
Like what, did he ever actually mean any of that stuff?
00:20:06
Speaker
Or was he just, is that just part of his public persona?
00:20:09
Speaker
You know?
00:20:09
Speaker
I think they said he was well liked.
00:20:11
Speaker
So I'm guessing that,
00:20:12
Speaker
Overall, he must have been known for being fairly sincere in his politics, but I think that's part of why he's painted as complicated up until the last minute of the show, because otherwise, you know, like the people's politician.
00:20:27
Speaker
I don't think they make it clear that he's dishonest.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah, but you can't be a people's politician if you're a conservative and you went to Oxford.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:35
Speaker
not that's the biggest joke like they just don't have a clue it's like a plot hole yeah i mean that's british politics in a nutshell like a lot of the people legislating just have no idea you know what life is like for the average person whereas in the united states we let all of the average people legislate and some of them really need to not be there because they don't know what they're doing or talking about
00:20:58
Speaker
There needs to be a balance somewhere, to be fair.
00:21:00
Speaker
You could go for it.
00:21:01
Speaker
It doesn't have to be Oxford versus... You can literally be anybody and legislate in the United States, which has its pros and its cons.
00:21:10
Speaker
You'd be like a failed restaurant, like shooting bar owner and then become a fucking congresswoman and then say the most insane shit on Twitter and then somehow become famous and a millionaire.
00:21:20
Speaker
Fuck this shit.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, you can be a high school dropout, have literally no idea what you're talking about on any given subject and be part of our legislator.
00:21:28
Speaker
So...
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, you just have to go up on stage and just be like, 9-11!
00:21:33
Speaker
And like, I like guns, and I pray to God, and then boom, they'll elect you in America.
00:21:38
Speaker
By the people, of the people, for the people.
00:21:41
Speaker
But the people are retarded.
00:21:44
Speaker
LAUGHTER Not my words, the words of a great philosopher.
00:21:49
Speaker
LAUGHTER Which was?
00:21:54
Speaker
Some random guy on the internet.
00:21:56
Speaker
A random gif.
00:21:57
Speaker
LAUGHTER
00:22:00
Speaker
Sorry to drop the R-bomb, but it's hard to say the R-word, but... Sorry.
00:22:06
Speaker
Just trust me, Bert.
00:22:09
Speaker
That's what we're saying.
00:22:12
Speaker
Just trust me, Bert.
00:22:20
Speaker
No, I saw this gif.
00:22:22
Speaker
It's like some old guy.
00:22:23
Speaker
Just like, I don't know who he is.
00:22:25
Speaker
He's some kind of like guru or like spiritual leader of some kind.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah, Rajneesh.
00:22:31
Speaker
You know, that's the US contrasted with David Cameron giving the most disingenuous apology for being born into wealth.
00:22:38
Speaker
He was like, I'm sorry I was born into wealth.
00:22:40
Speaker
I was like, bitch, you're not sorry.
00:22:42
Speaker
Sorry, I was born rich.
00:22:44
Speaker
Sorry, not sorry.
00:22:45
Speaker
Sorry, I've got money.
00:22:47
Speaker
Like, bitch, no, you're not sorry.
00:22:48
Speaker
Anyway, but, you know, going back to Sophie as well, we see her and James's relationship develop at Oxford.
00:22:54
Speaker
Now, Sophie is sort of the coasting, sort of exploitative... Well... I'm just here to party, kind of girl.
00:23:00
Speaker
I don't know.
00:23:01
Speaker
But yeah, not really taking her studies seriously.
00:23:03
Speaker
And you have Tom, who is a member of the Libertines as well.
00:23:06
Speaker
And she knows this too.
00:23:07
Speaker
So she knows the background of the Libertines, what they get up to, but she's still really, really drawn to Tom.
00:23:13
Speaker
And what's interesting is that the night that James and Tom are involved in the death of that student,
00:23:19
Speaker
he actually goes to Sophie's room and he tries to tell her what's happened but she's like like no no dear you know there there I don't need to know.
00:23:27
Speaker
Oh yeah let's talk about the scene.
00:23:29
Speaker
You know we see the foundations of a screw and it's only like 20 years later that Sophie is finally able to connect the dots that this guy is a piece of shit but the signs were there all along.
00:23:39
Speaker
Another thing I like about this show is like over
00:23:42
Speaker
the course of the show, her realizing all the times her husband was a piece of shit.
00:23:46
Speaker
Like him cheating at Monopoly with their own kids.
00:23:50
Speaker
Like how fucked up is that?
00:23:51
Speaker
Right?
00:23:51
Speaker
Right.
00:23:55
Speaker
And then why did I was like the whole time?
00:23:57
Speaker
I'm like, sis, why did you not see that as a red flag?
00:23:59
Speaker
Like that?
00:24:00
Speaker
Come on.
00:24:01
Speaker
And like her talking to the parents and the parents being like, oh, yeah, he was always a cheater.
00:24:05
Speaker
He's always been like that kind of stuff.
00:24:07
Speaker
He's always been a piece of shit.
00:24:08
Speaker
You knew that when you married him kind of thing.
00:24:09
Speaker
And then, yeah.
00:24:10
Speaker
And then the night that that student dies, he goes and asks Sophie for an alibi and she covers for him.
00:24:15
Speaker
Not only does she say, no, I don't want to hear about it.
00:24:17
Speaker
She actually provides an alibi for him.
00:24:20
Speaker
Right.
00:24:20
Speaker
And let's face it as well, he was also probably prepping for an alibi for the rape as well because he rapes Holly on the way to Sophie's room.
00:24:29
Speaker
Yeah, so he was already looking for an alibi.
00:24:32
Speaker
And so she basically covered for an associated murderer and a rapist.
00:24:37
Speaker
Yeah, I want to say like to any women listening, like, obviously, if you're 30 minutes into the FDS podcast, you're probably not the sort of woman who would do this.
00:24:45
Speaker
But I just want all women to know, like, never cover for your man.
00:24:48
Speaker
I can't think of anything that would be like worth it or like morally justifiable.
00:24:53
Speaker
And that wouldn't put you in like undue risk.
00:24:55
Speaker
All of them would put you in risk and all of them you're covering up for shitty behavior.
00:24:59
Speaker
And then the crazy thing is that he then learns that you are the type of woman who will be silent and who will cover for him.
00:25:06
Speaker
And will enable him as well.
00:25:08
Speaker
And will enable him.
00:25:09
Speaker
Like, keep in mind, ladies, like when you're vetting men, they're also vetting you.
00:25:12
Speaker
They're vetting for compliance.
00:25:14
Speaker
They're vetting for, are you going to, you know, encourage or enable my depravity?
00:25:18
Speaker
They're looking for a woman who will allow that.
00:25:21
Speaker
And if you allow that, they will do more of it.
00:25:23
Speaker
And you will be the victim of it next time.
00:25:25
Speaker
So that's actually the biggest reason why I wanted to talk about this show is because like you can see in those early phases of their relationship, like all of this could have been prevented if she'd noticed the red flags and just didn't accept them and just didn't date and marry him.
00:25:38
Speaker
What were some of the red flags in the early phases of their relationship?
00:25:42
Speaker
I'd say the company that he keep is really important.
00:25:45
Speaker
If a guy or a man is surrounded by low value people, doesn't matter how rich they are or not, that, you know, that is, is a huge, is a huge red flag in and of itself.
00:25:55
Speaker
Cause I see some women try to say like, Oh, but you know, my partner's friend is an asshole, but he's one of the good ones.
00:26:02
Speaker
No, if he was one of the good ones, he wouldn't keep shitty people as friends.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:06
Speaker
The fact that he was in a club called the Libertines.
00:26:10
Speaker
Doesn't Libertines literally mean like morally loose, like sexually lascivious behavior kind of thing?
00:26:16
Speaker
Like, hold on.
00:26:17
Speaker
What's the definition of Libertines?
00:26:19
Speaker
I don't actually know what it means, but I know that the kid was asking about it.
00:26:22
Speaker
And Sophie couldn't tell them.
00:26:23
Speaker
So I assumed it was something unsavory and foul.
00:26:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah, there's an adorable scene where the child is like, what's a libertine?
00:26:29
Speaker
And the mom's like, oh, it's someone who likes to have fun.
00:26:31
Speaker
And so the daughter's like, I'm a libertine.
00:26:33
Speaker
And you know, when kids like they learn words, they start saying inappropriate things because they don't know what they mean.
00:26:37
Speaker
And so she goes around calling herself a libertine.
00:26:39
Speaker
I'm like, oh, it's hilarious.
00:26:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:41
Speaker
So a libertine is a person, especially a man who behaves without moral principles or a sense of responsibility, especially in sexual matters.
00:26:48
Speaker
That's the dictionary definition.
00:26:50
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:26:51
Speaker
And so the name itself was a massive, massive red flag.
00:26:54
Speaker
Let's be real.
00:26:55
Speaker
Like the libertines, basically, you know, the exports to rapist island is basically what it meant.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:00
Speaker
Men who are on their way to rapist island.
00:27:02
Speaker
Like, yeah, there's a scene where they grope a girl who's like serving them drinks and stuff.
00:27:06
Speaker
Like it may as well call your club like philanderer, seducer, womanizer, hedonist.
00:27:11
Speaker
debauchee, adulterer, degenerate.
00:27:14
Speaker
Like these are all the words that are like, when you Google like libertine definition, those are the words that are associated with it.
00:27:20
Speaker
And it's like, none of them are good.
00:27:22
Speaker
And it wasn't as if like the libertines was like a club that I'm not saying it's ever okay, but they're opportunists.
00:27:28
Speaker
These groups, these wealthy elite clubs, they will go out of their way to cause damage and destruction and to sexually harass, especially women.
00:27:36
Speaker
They will literally go out of their way to do it.
00:27:38
Speaker
And they know exactly what they're doing as well.
00:27:39
Speaker
They hide it behind the guise of drinking, but they, it's very coordinated and very deliberate.
00:27:45
Speaker
And that should have been a huge red flag.
00:27:47
Speaker
And also the fact that as well is that Sophie was kind of brought into James's tears after he was crying about what happened to the friend who fell after Tom supplied him cocaine.
00:27:59
Speaker
And she was like, I've never seen him cry before.
00:28:01
Speaker
Was it cocaine or was it heroin?
00:28:03
Speaker
It was either heroin or cocaine.
00:28:04
Speaker
I think it was heroin.
00:28:05
Speaker
And that's another thing as well, is that a lot of times, like, male tears can be a sign of manipulation just because a guy is crying about something, especially when it's in relation to something shitty that he's done.
00:28:17
Speaker
That doesn't mean that he's sorry.
00:28:19
Speaker
Oh, that's when the crocodile tears go flying.
00:28:23
Speaker
When they're being the worst, that's when they start crying.
00:28:26
Speaker
I don't know if you saw that video of like, I caught my boyfriend cheating on me and then he started crying.
00:28:31
Speaker
Like, I don't know if you saw that video.
00:28:32
Speaker
It's like the most pathetic thing ever.
00:28:33
Speaker
He's like, oh, my girl caught me cheating.
00:28:36
Speaker
Like, what?
00:28:36
Speaker
It's like, why?
00:28:38
Speaker
Like, it's obviously he's just trying to make you feel bad and lower your guard until you do what he wants.
00:28:43
Speaker
One of the things I really wanted to talk about that I thought was interesting about this case is portraying instances of rape with someone you've had a previous sexual relationship with and how difficult that is, difficult to impossible that is to prove in court and how quickly the issue of consent and how entitled men feel around consent when they've had sex with you already is.
00:29:06
Speaker
Because I think part of the frustration and part of like triggering part of the rape is the extent that like this is a woman who actually liked this man who had had sex with James before, who was probably still interested in having sex with him.
00:29:21
Speaker
But at a time where she did not want to have sex with him, he didn't respect her.
00:29:24
Speaker
No, because he was in a fit of rage over some bad press.
00:29:27
Speaker
Right.
00:29:27
Speaker
So I think this type of rape isn't often portrayed in media.
00:29:32
Speaker
And so I'm kind of glad that this show does actually show that.
00:29:35
Speaker
And it shows how difficult it is to prove in the court of law, how unsympathetic of a character that Olivia ultimately came across as because of the fact that she, first of all, is like the other woman in an affair and with a man she knows is married and is still obsessively trying to get with him, despite the fact that
00:29:50
Speaker
Yes, he's married.
00:29:51
Speaker
She knows he has a wife, etc.
00:29:53
Speaker
And the fact that he broke things off.
00:29:54
Speaker
So in any type of public perception situation, she's not likely to get a lot of sympathy, not from men nor from women, because of the fact that she's the other woman and because of the fact that she knowingly had consensual sex with this man within the relationship, but also in the workplace, right?
00:30:10
Speaker
You come later and you say this man violated me, which he did.
00:30:14
Speaker
But at the same time, because you've agreed to these things prior, then people start to think like that it was reasonable for him to assume that you would have sex with him again in that moment, which makes it really, really difficult for you to try to prove a rape case.
00:30:27
Speaker
This gets really sticky.
00:30:28
Speaker
And even if they weren't like an affair partners, and even if this has been his wife, there is like a point where in a lot of relationships, and I would love to see this portrayed in cinema a lot.
00:30:37
Speaker
more often where men start to really feel sexually entitled to women, if not from the very beginning.
00:30:43
Speaker
But sometimes they start to get this idea that like, oh, I can just have sex with my significant other whenever I want to.
00:30:48
Speaker
And this, her body's mine and she's my property.
00:30:50
Speaker
And that type of behavior, like they just start to kind of like push women into sexual situations that they're not comfortable with and disregard their no when they don't feel like it, right?
00:30:58
Speaker
Because they start to take it for whatever reason less seriously.
00:31:01
Speaker
I think it'd be interesting to talk about and hopefully see again in cinema about this kind of scenario, because I think a lot of women who experience sexual assault, especially sexual assault within a relationship, it starts very much like this, because it's not likely if they had continued their affair in any type of way that that would have been the last time.
00:31:17
Speaker
And the sad part is, if she had still considered the affair even after the rape, then people would still be blaming her for that and saying that like, oh, well, you went back to him, etc.
00:31:25
Speaker
Even though the relationship he has with him is kind of complex and that can override your ability to see and understand when someone's violating your boundaries in a serious manner.
00:31:34
Speaker
I think it becomes more clear that this is his MO when they flashback to the rape that he has with Holly.
00:31:39
Speaker
But I think like basically he gets drunk or he gets like in a fit of entitlement rage and he just decides that like, oh, I'm entitled to this woman's body and seems to completely disregard what she's saying and doesn't at any point like seem to notice or acknowledge that if she's even saying yes.
00:31:54
Speaker
And then just takes the absence of like her fighting him off aggressively as a complicit consent.
00:32:00
Speaker
And that's just really, really false.
00:32:01
Speaker
And that's like a really dangerous narrative to keep perpetuating.
00:32:05
Speaker
But at the same time, I think realistically, most courtrooms and in most of our culture, nobody would actually see that as rape.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I think that would be true of men and a great deal of women alike.
00:32:17
Speaker
That is such a good point.
00:32:17
Speaker
I think this is the first time I've ever seen in media this type of sexual assault because they always portray the victim as completely like innocent and likable.
00:32:27
Speaker
You know, sometimes it's someone they know, but usually it's someone they, the rapist is like a random stranger jumping out of the bushes or like a soldier or something like
Media Representation of Rape
00:32:35
Speaker
that.
00:32:35
Speaker
You know, the woman's often portrayed like fighting him off and stuff, but real rape in real life often does not go down like that.
00:32:42
Speaker
Often it is a man that the woman knows.
00:32:44
Speaker
Often it is
00:32:45
Speaker
the case that she doesn't fight back or she, you know, she's not agreeing to the sex, but she just sort of doesn't have the ability to fight him off because, you know, he's stronger than her.
00:32:53
Speaker
She knows that if she resists, he could hurt her more badly and so on.
00:32:57
Speaker
Right.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:57
Speaker
I would like to see actually more portrayals of like, quote unquote, like realistic rapes, you know?
00:33:02
Speaker
I think the incident with Holly is juxtaposed against the incident with Olivia to kind of show that men like this, they don't stop at one rape.
00:33:12
Speaker
They tend to start to think that women are here to sexually service them.
00:33:15
Speaker
And so, but the thing is, is that for most women, they start to blame themselves in that situation and they don't realize that this is this guy's boundary pushing MO.
00:33:24
Speaker
Some guy like that would probably get away with like dozens of rapes like that before anybody started to call him out on this sexually predatory behavior, because it would always be portrayed as like, well, as some kind of understandable sexual confusion or like miscommunication between the two rather than entitlement.
00:33:41
Speaker
it's really, really difficult to explain unless you've experienced it.
00:33:45
Speaker
And so when we have these discussions about like Me Too and women coming forward with their sexual assault, a lot of these guys have like, quote, no idea they were raping.
00:33:52
Speaker
And like these other men will go up for them and be like, oh, he's my friend and he would never do something like that.
00:33:56
Speaker
But it's like the truth of the matter is, is that a lot of times these situations are a case of, I can't remember who coined this phrase, but affluenza, where a man feels that he's sexually entitled to women.
00:34:07
Speaker
Like, and he feels it so strongly that he's
00:34:10
Speaker
Absolutely ignores whatever that woman wants at any type of situation.
00:34:14
Speaker
It's a different type of rape than like, you know, a guy who hides behind the bushes.
00:34:17
Speaker
He's like a psychopath, right?
00:34:19
Speaker
Who like drags a woman, hides the bushes.
00:34:20
Speaker
That's the thing.
00:34:21
Speaker
People all assume that that's what a rapist is.
00:34:23
Speaker
Like everyone thinks that a rapist is like a creepy guy who can't get women that you know that he's a rapist from seeing him right based on his like behavior.
00:34:31
Speaker
He's probably weird or whatever.
00:34:32
Speaker
No one ever thinks that a man who's like, who has social skills, who's married, who, you know, can clearly get women consensually, right?
00:34:38
Speaker
People never think a man like that could be a rapist, even though it's extremely common.
00:34:43
Speaker
It's affluenza.
00:34:43
Speaker
It's basically the Stanford rape case, the swimmer that had raped a woman behind a dumpster who was, I think, drunk and unconscious.
00:34:50
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:34:50
Speaker
Brock Turner.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:51
Speaker
Brock Turner.
00:34:52
Speaker
Like there's a certain level of privilege and entitlement that men have where they feel like the lack of a no is a yes.
00:34:59
Speaker
Right.
00:35:00
Speaker
Or they think they can just impose their will on other people.
00:35:02
Speaker
Exactly.
00:35:03
Speaker
You know, it's like Donald Trump, for example, him talking about how he could, you know, when you're a celebrity, you can just go up and grab women by the pussy.
00:35:09
Speaker
Like, where does he get that idea from?
00:35:10
Speaker
He's got that same male entitlement affluenza, especially if you're powerful.
00:35:14
Speaker
So I think more discussion needs to happen about this kind of...
00:35:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:40
Speaker
like the entire exchange between Sophie and Holly, where like Sophie's basically trying to pawn off all her work on Holly and just basically being kind of dismissive and exploitative of her.
00:35:50
Speaker
And then juxtapose that with how James is exploitative of her.
00:35:53
Speaker
It kind of shows you how that entire situation works in tandem, especially for women who are working class or perceived as lower class or less attractive or something.
00:36:00
Speaker
You know, in a lot of ways, she's exploited on multiple levels by the same family, right?
00:36:05
Speaker
I want to say that that's why they were trying to not
00:36:08
Speaker
Neither of these characters, even Sophie, even though she kind of has a sort of a hero arc at the end, these characters are ultimately totally sympathetic because it's showing how women can also be complicit in exploiting others because of a sense of entitlement.
00:36:21
Speaker
Right.
00:36:22
Speaker
And one of the ways that it manifests is obviously like Sophie pointing out for work, but in men, it can be very, very sexualized.
00:36:29
Speaker
You know, your point made me realize something, Ro.
00:36:31
Speaker
Like, probably the most common type of rape is, like, you know, a husband or a boyfriend, you know, just, like, regular, like, marital rape, right?
00:36:39
Speaker
That's probably the most common form of, like, sexual coercion.
00:36:42
Speaker
Like, I'm thinking of all the times that I've been in a relationship and I didn't want to have sex when my boyfriend was, like, badgering me or being, like, emotionally withholding or whatever.
00:36:50
Speaker
And I eventually just, like, capitulate and I just, like, have sex with them just to, like, it's, like, you know, maintenance sex almost, like, just to, like, shut them up, right?
00:36:56
Speaker
I've never seen that sort of thing portrayed on
00:36:59
Speaker
TV.
00:37:00
Speaker
I've just realized I've never seen that portrayed in media.
00:37:02
Speaker
Like, can you think, like, maybe I'm missing something, like, for any listeners listening.
00:37:06
Speaker
I can't think of it.
00:37:07
Speaker
I can't think of it either.
00:37:08
Speaker
Comment, you know, somewhere, let us know or send us an email or something because, like, I cannot think of a single piece of media where that dynamic of, like, man wants sex, woman doesn't want sex, man just badgers her, compels her into sex, and they continue on having a relationship.
00:37:22
Speaker
And how, like, sadly, extremely common that is, and yet it's never portrayed in media.
00:37:27
Speaker
Right, because I feel like it's almost like violating to watch, right?
00:37:32
Speaker
I found the rape between James and Olivia on the lift to be a little bit triggering because I kind of know what it's like to really actually want a guy and have him still violate your sexual boundaries in a really confusing way.
00:37:44
Speaker
And because our culture sort of grooms women to sexually acquiesce to men's desires and through things like racism,
00:37:49
Speaker
maintenance sex and never portrays, it never really shows like what that does to your dignity, self-esteem and self-worth and what it does to like your overall sex drive.
00:37:57
Speaker
You know, even things like maintenance sex are acquiescing to a guy who badgers you.
00:38:01
Speaker
Like, I mean, the few times I've done it, I've just sort of felt like resentful and eventually like it was just sort of beneath me to do, right?
00:38:08
Speaker
Like you just end up feeling like a receptacle for a man's sexual desire in a way that's really not like healthy.
00:38:14
Speaker
It's dehumanizing.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yeah, physically or emotionally healthily for you.
00:38:18
Speaker
But all the other mainstream outlets, like they never portray this because I don't know if it's because they're trying to romanticize the reality of it that like you should just sort of think of yourself like as a whole that's like not that doesn't necessarily enjoy the sexual experience because you're trying to make sure that your husband is satisfied.
00:38:35
Speaker
But like, what are you doing to yourself to make that happen?
00:38:38
Speaker
I think they don't portray in media because it's like too dark.
00:38:41
Speaker
And because a lot of like writers in Hollywood are men, right?
00:38:44
Speaker
When they write these scenes, they think they write it like, oh, yeah, she was totally into it kind of thing, right?
00:38:49
Speaker
Because like, that's what they tell themselves anyways, because they don't want to see themselves as rapists.
00:38:53
Speaker
I don't think they would ever portray that side of the equation.
00:38:55
Speaker
You'd need like a female writer, probably.
00:38:57
Speaker
I feel like only a woman knows what that is like when you're in a relationship and you love your man, but you don't have sex and he wants to have sex and he just makes you have sex.
00:39:05
Speaker
Right.
00:39:06
Speaker
That's rape.
00:39:06
Speaker
But like, it's so normalized.
00:39:08
Speaker
And you're not likely to go to the police for it because you're not likely to be believed or I mean, there's no legal recourse for that.
00:39:14
Speaker
There's no way to prove it.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah, it'd be really hard to prove it if like, yeah, you had sex with them consensually yesterday and now you're saying you were raped.
00:39:21
Speaker
You don't necessarily have any physical scars from it.
00:39:23
Speaker
You don't have any bruises.
00:39:24
Speaker
You don't have any like, yeah.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:26
Speaker
They'll be like, walk it off and do something else, you know?
00:39:29
Speaker
And even if there is any evidence they had sex, all the guy has to say was, but it was consensual.
00:39:34
Speaker
Like we had rough sex.
00:39:34
Speaker
It was consensual.
00:39:35
Speaker
And then it's your word against him.
00:39:37
Speaker
And the legal system isn't set up in a victim friendly way because the onus is all on the victim to prove that it did happen.
00:39:44
Speaker
You know, the fucked up thing is nowadays with like the acceptance of BDSM culture and all that stuff, you probably could show up to a police station beaten black and blue, say you were raped.
00:39:53
Speaker
And then the guy could just be like, oh, she consented to it.
00:39:55
Speaker
She's kinky.
00:39:56
Speaker
And then the investigation would then hinge on.
00:39:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:58
Speaker
Like, does she have a history of doing BDSM stuff?
00:40:01
Speaker
You know, did she, you know, agree to, you know, this act in one situation, but not in this situation kind of thing.
00:40:06
Speaker
And like, it would be attacking her character, her credibility.
00:40:08
Speaker
She'd be the one who's on trial.
00:40:10
Speaker
Like, how fucked up is that?
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah, because I actually spoke to a police officer who dealt with such a case where it was a BDSM relationship.
00:40:16
Speaker
She had consented to like, you know, let's say, you know, she consented to being whipped.
00:40:20
Speaker
She didn't consent to anal, but then she consented to oral sex.
00:40:23
Speaker
And he was like, how do you disentangle that sort of situation?
00:40:27
Speaker
You can't, like legally, it's really difficult to disentangle because it's possible to consent to two acts, but not the third one.
00:40:33
Speaker
And that was the case that they had.
00:40:35
Speaker
And it was about proving that she didn't consent to the third act that they found really, really difficult when they were compiling the file for the Crown Prosecution Service who decide whether or not to prosecute.
00:40:45
Speaker
And obviously the case was dropped.
00:40:47
Speaker
this is why we need more discussion about like different types of rape in the same way that we have different types of theft there's just different types of rape i could see in that situation you being like someone like olivia feeling like he raped me but do i want to go to prison for like 40 years or whatever the rape sentence is it's like three here but yeah oh and okay never mind fuck the uk yeah
00:41:10
Speaker
What?!
00:41:11
Speaker
I wish!
00:41:12
Speaker
Even murderers don't get 40 years in the UK, like, even actual murderers.
00:41:16
Speaker
Like, rape is like, it's something stupid.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yeah, only in the States can you go to prison for hundreds of years, like...
00:41:27
Speaker
I don't think our rape sentences are actually that high either, but I don't know.
00:41:30
Speaker
But I think a lot of them, depending on the state, some of them are like minimum 10 years.
00:41:34
Speaker
You can still get paroled after like halftime serve.
00:41:37
Speaker
It depends on the crime and it depends on the state.
00:41:39
Speaker
But I know in some jurisdictions, there's really only nothing and felony rape, right?
00:41:44
Speaker
There's no discussion about something in between like sexual battery or something that might be like a year or two and a fine.
00:41:50
Speaker
And I think what happens with
00:41:52
Speaker
Why sometimes women get reluctant to report it as well is because like if you have a complicated relationship with that person and you still otherwise love them, but still want them to be held accountable for their actions, if you otherwise love them and still want them to be held accountable for their actions, you can feel a sense of guilt to go to the police because you're afraid of them being locked up for decades later.
00:42:11
Speaker
Right.
00:42:12
Speaker
That can be a huge responsibility to even put on the victim.
00:42:14
Speaker
Like, I think we have to talk about sentencing as far as like these rapes, but aren't the same as like a psychopath snatching you from the bushes that that requires us talking about the multifaceted aspects of rape.
00:42:26
Speaker
in real detailed language in the same way that we might talk about theft, right?
00:42:29
Speaker
Like something like petty theft or like stealing money out of a vending machine or something like that is quite different than like an armed robbery and going into a bank or is quite different from like some kind of Ponzi scheme, complicated Ponzi scheme where you grift people.
00:42:43
Speaker
Those are all different types of theft, but they all come with very different types of cultural narratives and very different types of sentencing.
00:42:48
Speaker
And I think if anything, this show illustrates that it's time to really expand the language around rape to include these types of incidences.
00:42:56
Speaker
And like, how do we fairly prosecute these and talk about these so that both the victim gets restitution, the perpetrator gets punished in a way that's fair, and that we can make sure that there's more incentive for women to come forward about guys like us who commit these quote unquote, like small, like gray rapes so that their behavior doesn't continue and they keep raping women because they never face any consequences for it.
00:43:18
Speaker
I don't know.
00:43:19
Speaker
It's one of those things where I feel like talking about it can be beneficial in that it increases the woman's awareness and the woman is like, I don't have to put up with this.
00:43:26
Speaker
I don't have, you know, this is what we do with FDS where women are everywhere waking up like, I don't have to do maintenance sex.
00:43:31
Speaker
I don't have to have sex unless I 100% want to have sex kind of thing.
00:43:34
Speaker
Right.
00:43:35
Speaker
But talking to men about this, like, I don't know, like, they rape because they feel sexually entitled.
00:43:40
Speaker
And I feel with these sorts of men, when I talk about how these sorts of incidents are rape, they get extremely offended.
00:43:46
Speaker
It just makes me realize probably most, if not all men, have, like, done sexual coercion in some form towards a woman.
00:43:53
Speaker
Except for maybe, like, a small percentage of men who are, like, you know, not interested in sexuality or just...
00:43:59
Speaker
don't have that kind of drive you know i almost wonder like you know talking about like intimate partner rape and stuff like we should definitely still talk about it but i don't really expect a lot of sympathy from men i don't expect men to like change their behavior i expect them to react very much the same way that they react to fds which is like you know freaking the fuck out basically and having like an extremely hostile extremely negative reaction i don't think any of these guys are going to be like you know what like you're right i did commit a rape to this woman at like 1989 or something like that like they're
00:44:28
Speaker
never going to admit that they're rapists.
00:44:30
Speaker
They're just going to fight this narrative that we're pushing, which is that like women should only have sex 100% of the time when they want it kind of thing.
00:44:37
Speaker
They're just going to make excuses like, oh, you want all these innocent men to be locked up in jail, yada, yada, yada.
00:44:42
Speaker
Like they're not going to have a good reaction.
00:44:44
Speaker
I remember the Yes Means Yes movement was trying to correct some of that.
00:44:49
Speaker
Wasn't there a law in Canada that just recently changed that was basically saying rape is the lack of affirmative consent?
00:44:55
Speaker
Was it Canada?
00:44:56
Speaker
No, in Canada, we had actually a really, really bad law passed recently, which was that rapists and other types of criminals can claim voluntary self-intoxication as a defense so they can get away with their crimes if they say, I was drunk.
00:45:08
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:45:10
Speaker
So if they chose to drink earlier that night and they committed crime, that's an actual defense.
00:45:14
Speaker
Well, that's insane.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah, actually insane.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:16
Speaker
So it's been a huge problem, especially with like rape culture and so on.
00:45:20
Speaker
So yeah, I almost feel like men are trying to roll shit back because it doesn't benefit them to admit that any of this stuff is sexual
Legal Definitions and Societal Backlash
00:45:27
Speaker
assault, right?
00:45:27
Speaker
But we need to arm our troops.
00:45:28
Speaker
We need to prepare our troops.
00:45:30
Speaker
Like this is for the women.
00:45:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:32
Speaker
You know, the whole like, oh, we need to teach men not to rape.
00:45:35
Speaker
I don't know.
00:45:35
Speaker
I feel like they're not going to want to learn that.
00:45:37
Speaker
That's a lesson they don't want to learn.
00:45:39
Speaker
Well, like I said in a previous episode, a lot of these guys feel like the ends justify the means, right?
00:45:45
Speaker
Like it's a W if they have sex.
00:45:47
Speaker
So they don't really care how they got said sex short of forcible rape, which most of them, most of them can recognize as a crime.
00:45:55
Speaker
But everything of, you know, underneath that, anything that's less than forcible rape, they don't necessarily see as rape because they feel more
00:46:02
Speaker
less like yeah first of all entitlement or like they feel like it's a violation of their free speech to not harass you didn't they just try to pass a law or like hold on let me google this india marital rape law did you hear about this so india is trying to pass a law that makes marital rape illegal so making it illegal to rape your wife and the men are freaking the fuck out being like
00:46:21
Speaker
men aren't going to want to get married if I can't rape my wife anymore kind of thing, right?
00:46:26
Speaker
Like the men in India are freaking the fuck out.
00:46:28
Speaker
It's causing this whole like rise of the men's rights activist movement and stuff.
00:46:32
Speaker
And, you know, we did an episode with female political strategy about the surplus of men, right?
00:46:36
Speaker
And how having all these extra unmarried men
00:46:38
Speaker
To begin with, it's dangerous, right?
00:46:40
Speaker
So this law is causing mayhem.
00:46:41
Speaker
Even though it's a law that needs to be passed, it's like the male backlash to it is so extreme and so costly.
00:46:48
Speaker
It's like, what do you even do, right?
00:46:50
Speaker
I mean, yeah, that's because men are constantly legally advocating on their own behalf.
00:46:55
Speaker
But women's organizations, for whatever reason, have all decided to go all in on pet causes instead of like some of the grassroots causes that women need as far as more representation in the family court system.
00:47:07
Speaker
You're seeing a lot more focus on other types of ideologies that they're not as practically concerned as, you know, things of like definitions of rape and family court systems, etc.
00:47:16
Speaker
So absolutely.
00:47:17
Speaker
I don't know where this type of discussion goes.
00:47:20
Speaker
I think it's something we can definitely parse out furthermore in the future.
00:47:23
Speaker
But I think this show, if you were to watch it and you've ever experienced any type of rape in a relationship or sexually violating behavior in a relationship, I think most women, because they don't want to say that they are raped, most women probably wouldn't do what Olivia did because obviously there's the public scrutiny.
00:47:41
Speaker
Your career would be toast.
00:47:42
Speaker
So most women in that situation are going to walk it off.
00:47:44
Speaker
The question is like, should we have to, which I think no.
00:47:46
Speaker
And what kind of mechanism and legal recourse do we have in the cases of where you're with or you're in a consensual relationship, you've had consensual sex with this person, and then they pull something like that.
00:47:56
Speaker
So before we wrap, so one thing I noticed about this show is that it has been reviewed, bombed on a bunch of different platforms.
00:48:02
Speaker
It's probably like the Tory or probably the MPs are under investigation doing it because it's hitting too close to home.
00:48:09
Speaker
It's probably them.
00:48:11
Speaker
So I want to explain actually like how I felt watching the show.
00:48:14
Speaker
I really like the show, right?
00:48:15
Speaker
So as soon as I finished watching it, I finished it all in one session, binge watched it till like 4am.
00:48:20
Speaker
I went on the internet to see what does the internet have to say about the show?
00:48:25
Speaker
I want to see other people agreeing with me about how amazing it is.
00:48:28
Speaker
And guess what I found?
00:48:29
Speaker
I found almost exclusively negative reviews.
00:48:31
Speaker
This is what I mean about like negative male backlash.
00:48:34
Speaker
And surprisingly, women too, actually, like a lot of women were giving one star reviews and saying like, Oh, the rape victim isn't likable.
00:48:42
Speaker
You know, this is like terrible.
00:48:44
Speaker
Like this Me Too has been bad for men and yada, yada, yada.
00:48:47
Speaker
And I have a grandmother of a 33 year old son.
00:48:50
Speaker
And if my son went through this, I would be so sad and that kind of shit.
00:48:54
Speaker
Right.
00:48:54
Speaker
So I wanted to read some of the terrible reviews of the show and roast them.
00:48:58
Speaker
What do you guys think?
00:48:59
Speaker
Let's read it because it'll really show why this show is so polarizing and kind of illustrate why it's difficult to talk about rape like this.
00:49:06
Speaker
Some of these are super long, by the way.
00:49:08
Speaker
But so I'm just going to read like the interesting parts.
00:49:10
Speaker
One review that really stood out to me was this is a review from Marissa.
00:49:15
Speaker
She writes, I'm usually not a negative reviewer, but I'm only giving this one star because of the way the writers created the ending.
00:49:22
Speaker
Initially, I was enjoying everything about the series.
00:49:24
Speaker
The actors are all top-notch.
00:49:25
Speaker
They deserve five stars, maybe even more.
00:49:28
Speaker
Even the plot was interesting and plot-twisting, which I absolutely enjoyed, but I'll tell you why the series does not deserve a second season.
00:49:34
Speaker
First of all, like, they wouldn't make a second season.
00:49:35
Speaker
It's like a miniseries, so anyways.
00:49:37
Speaker
But she writes...
00:49:38
Speaker
All the episodes were great except for the very last episode.
00:49:40
Speaker
Spoiler alert.
00:49:41
Speaker
Why did the wife just divorce James and be a goody two-shoe?
00:49:44
Speaker
I'm a feminist and ethical, but I also did not like that the wife basically ratted James out.
00:49:50
Speaker
She knew what she was getting into when she married him.
00:49:53
Speaker
She knew he was part of an old boys club.
00:49:55
Speaker
What a feminist.
00:50:16
Speaker
So feminist, right?
00:50:18
Speaker
I'm a feminist, but also why would you leave her rapist man?
00:50:21
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:50:22
Speaker
That's definitely written by a dude, surely.
00:50:25
Speaker
Yeah, definitely written by a man.
00:50:27
Speaker
She says, I did not like the last episode and honestly want to tell viewers to not waste your time watching this show.
00:50:32
Speaker
Just watch Vowda or Ferry and Undercover or Queen of the South or even Hit and Run.
00:50:38
Speaker
What?
00:50:38
Speaker
I've never heard of these shows.
00:50:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:40
Speaker
I am mad that I wasted my time on this series.
00:50:43
Speaker
This is how you know it's written by a man because it started out like, oh, I'm a feminist, yada, yada.
00:50:46
Speaker
And then at the end, it's like, I am mad that I wasted my time on this series.
00:50:50
Speaker
Netflix should not renew this.
00:50:51
Speaker
So now Holly or Kate, instead of being disbarred from being a lawyer, smiles at the end because she got lucky that the wife ratted James and his boss out.
00:50:58
Speaker
I don't like how these women treated these men.
00:51:00
Speaker
Sorry, I did not enjoy the show at all.
00:51:02
Speaker
That's definitely a guy.
00:51:06
Speaker
This is the same review.
00:51:07
Speaker
This is the same person.
00:51:08
Speaker
Sorry, I did not enjoy the show at all.
00:51:10
Speaker
In real life, they worked hard in their careers and one small scandal where it seems that maybe the woman consented, Holly or Kate or whatever her name is, cries and says sexual assault after billions of years later.
00:51:21
Speaker
This Me Too movement thing is just awful.
00:51:24
Speaker
For men, it sets back feminism many, many years.
00:51:26
Speaker
I am super embarrassed being female because it's like how these women cry sexual assault and now men cannot even give compliments because they are super afraid of being called a predator
00:51:36
Speaker
a rapist oh my god this is like an actual like apple review oh my god okay we live in a very very sad society thanks to me too movement i no longer or rarely give compliments okay whereas before they were left and right this series angered me about the me too movement and its negative impact on how society and men and women relate to each other even a basic hug now is very rare because men are afraid of sexual harassment allegations
00:52:00
Speaker
Shame on society and on the series.
00:52:02
Speaker
I am tired of propagating the Me Too movement.
00:52:04
Speaker
Such a shame.
00:52:05
Speaker
Oh my god.
00:52:06
Speaker
The men mass brigaded this shit.
00:52:09
Speaker
100%.
00:52:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'm like reading these comments and like there's hundreds like this.
00:52:14
Speaker
Like exactly like this.
00:52:16
Speaker
And saying like...
00:52:17
Speaker
You know, he was honest.
00:52:18
Speaker
This is a different review.
00:52:19
Speaker
He was honest, foolish, but caring as far as telling his wife every extra detail of the uni party, blah, blah, blah.
00:52:24
Speaker
You know, he's so honest and open with his wife and, you know, yada, yada, yada.
00:52:28
Speaker
And I'm like, you know, another feminist wet dream on this one.
00:52:32
Speaker
The fact that we're trying to promote a privileged male into this mythical rape culture is not interesting at all.
00:52:37
Speaker
More of a fantasy to tell you the truth.
00:52:39
Speaker
a wife who stands by her husband until the very end and then walks away brings no loyalty to her family when we know this is the one family she has and take her kids through even more chaos is not virtuous at all a woman sleeping with a married man oh that's the other thing that's another thing i see a lot in these reviews where they're saying that like why didn't holly get punished in some way like they think it's unjust that holly like the prosecutor they're like well she's sleeping with the married man too like why did why didn't she face any consequences
00:53:07
Speaker
Well, that was, well, I don't agree with it, but it's very different to rape.
00:53:10
Speaker
I don't know how they're equating that.
00:53:12
Speaker
That's the thing I get from these reviews is like, they literally don't see it as rape.
00:53:16
Speaker
I know, I feel like the series kind of leaves it open-ended too, which I think allows a lot of this rhetoric, meaning because they don't really address rape.
00:53:24
Speaker
the discussion of like whether how someone you know and someone you've had sex with before can rape you, then they just sort of leave it open.
00:53:32
Speaker
And so the vast majority of people are going to take this side that Olivia is lying and or Olivia is just a woman scored and that everybody believing this woman and the fallout from it is just discrimination against men.
00:53:44
Speaker
Me too and feminism.
00:53:45
Speaker
Like they're going to use that to discredit me too.
00:53:48
Speaker
Right.
00:53:48
Speaker
And say that like, this is what happens in most of these cases because they don't see this as rape.
00:53:52
Speaker
And in fact, they even, I think maybe they ethically compromised Holly, the prosecutor on purpose to get once again, I don't know exactly what they're trying to do with the narrative exactly, except for so that it's complicated.
00:54:03
Speaker
So they just make everyone sort of ethically compromised in some way.
00:54:06
Speaker
And I think the effect of that is that it ends up drawing sympathy towards the man and
00:54:10
Speaker
even more because like what's wrong with what he did versus like Olivia having an affair with a married man and following him around and getting upset when he broke up things off with her and Holly also having sex with I think he said she was either he was her pupil master he was her teacher yeah yeah so I don't know what a pupil master yeah what's a pupil master
00:54:30
Speaker
Savannah, can you explain this phrase to us?
00:54:33
Speaker
A pupil master is almost like a tutor or like a teacher, but pupil master is often used in like a posh school, like a private school or Oxford.
00:54:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:54:43
Speaker
But it's like a teacher, basically.
00:54:45
Speaker
A pupil master?
00:54:46
Speaker
So.
00:54:47
Speaker
She was sleeping with her pimpomaster.
00:54:49
Speaker
Sorry.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:50
Speaker
And so talking about like the different ethics around that as well.
00:54:53
Speaker
So I feel like they purposely ethically compromise everyone in this situation.
00:54:58
Speaker
But then I feel like it has the effect of minimizing the kind of rape that Olivia experienced at the hands of James, which again is why men hate this.
00:55:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:08
Speaker
Oh, just correction, actually.
00:55:09
Speaker
People master in this context is the name given to an experienced barrister who are people shadow.
00:55:15
Speaker
So they were actually adults when it started.
00:55:17
Speaker
It wasn't like a school thing because like when you're training to be a barrister, you have what's known as a peopleage, which is where you're training.
00:55:23
Speaker
And your people master is the barrister that you're shadowing, basically.
00:55:26
Speaker
So they started as work colleagues, basically.
00:55:29
Speaker
Okay, so that's like less of a power dynamic, like less creepy of a power dynamic.
00:55:34
Speaker
I mean, there is still a power dynamic because he was an experienced barrister, but it's not like she was an underage student when they met.
00:55:41
Speaker
She would have been over the age of probably 21 at least.
00:55:43
Speaker
Yeah, and he has a wife.
00:55:44
Speaker
So also it's like she's also the other woman in this situation.
00:55:48
Speaker
talked about this on twitter this narrative that like as a woman you have to be likable in order for you to be seen as like not deserving of rape is really fucked up like or this idea that like only likable rape victims are believed is a really fucked up narrative that like all women we need to banish this shit from our minds like we need to actually banish the idea that like
00:56:07
Speaker
Oh, if a woman is like morally repugnant in some way, or if I don't like her as a person or whatever, then I'm not going to believe her if she has a rape accusation, because this is a narrative that actually puts all women in danger.
00:56:19
Speaker
It doesn't take much for patriarchy to decide that you're not a likable woman.
00:56:22
Speaker
Any woman could, you know, all humans are flawed, right?
00:56:25
Speaker
Any flaw could be used against you if you were to accuse a man of rape.
00:56:28
Speaker
I think in this case, too, what makes it more difficult is the specificity of them being the other woman, because I feel like they could be unlikable and still sympathetic if they weren't specifically having sex with married men, in which case, like sort of violating the girl code.
00:56:43
Speaker
Right.
00:56:43
Speaker
So then they end up with no allies because even women who might otherwise be sympathetic, they look at this as like them trying to choose when they're
00:56:51
Speaker
the lesser of two evils, which is like, do I believe, like, do we center our case around the concept that even like a woman who's engaged in a consensual affair with the man can be raped and obviously they can, or do we look at this as a natural consequence of being, having sex with a man and an unethical man that, you know, in an unethical situation is that sometimes bad things happen and then there's no recourse, right?
00:57:15
Speaker
And I'm not making a judgment on women who come down on either side of that, because I feel like what happens is like a lot of women, like they say the first thing was like a woman can be raped in any situation.
00:57:24
Speaker
And it doesn't matter that she was having sex with a married man.
00:57:27
Speaker
But then like emotionally, they feel very strongly the other way because they're like at the same time, fuck you, bitch.
00:57:31
Speaker
Right.
00:57:32
Speaker
Like, because you knew that was...
00:57:34
Speaker
I was married to him.
00:57:35
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:57:36
Speaker
So it's like, it's a very difficult, like ethical situation, which is why I feel like they specifically put her in that situation so that like a lot of women wouldn't feel sympathy for her in that situation.
00:57:46
Speaker
But even though like legally, it's probably important to assert the fact that
00:57:50
Speaker
yes, you can be raped, even if you're doing something extremely unethical.
00:57:53
Speaker
It's just like, is a jury likely to be sympathetic to a woman who faces consequences of her actions in the middle of some unethical behavior?
00:58:01
Speaker
Because it's kind of like someone who gets shot during an armed robbery.
00:58:03
Speaker
Like, yeah, they shouldn't have been shot and it's fucked up.
00:58:05
Speaker
But at the same time, you're robbing somebody, right?
00:58:07
Speaker
Yeah, but being the other woman, you know, or having an affair is not the same as like robbing someone.
00:58:13
Speaker
It's like, it is shitty, but it's like, I think all women need to reject the premise that like being raped is a natural consequence of being an affair
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:58:20
Speaker
partner.
00:58:20
Speaker
I don't think it's a natural consequence so much as it's like, like I said, maybe that was a, the analogy I use is like, if you get hurt in the middle of a crime, people tend not to feel bad for you, even though you were actually hurt legitimately.
00:58:32
Speaker
And I feel like that's the emotion they're trying to evoke with this narrative of her being the other woman that a lot of women will look at that like something happened to you or like somebody slapped you or hit you or shot you in the middle of an armed robbery.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah, they shouldn't have done that.
00:58:46
Speaker
Yes, it's criminal.
00:58:47
Speaker
Yes, you're going to be in a hospital, but also you tried to commit a robbery.
00:58:50
Speaker
Their sympathies are limited.
00:58:51
Speaker
So I think the emotionally complex part of this is like how, you know, a lot of women, even in that situation may not side with her.
00:58:58
Speaker
And it's like, how do we have these discussions and then be honest on both sides?
00:59:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:02
Speaker
I don't know.
00:59:02
Speaker
My default position is to always side with the woman, even if she's a bad person.
00:59:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's just my default position.
00:59:08
Speaker
Unless she's done something truly heinous, that's harmful to women, in which case, like, her net contributions to womanhood has been negative, has been in the red, then yeah, I probably won't be as supportive.
00:59:18
Speaker
Legally, I think we need to always take the side of the woman in the rape.
00:59:23
Speaker
Like strategically, always.
00:59:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:25
Speaker
Strategically, 100%.
00:59:26
Speaker
I'm just saying emotionally.
00:59:28
Speaker
That's what we don't, we don't make legal headway because emotionally, most women are not going to like ignore the second part.
00:59:35
Speaker
Again, the FDS, like cost-benefit analysis mentality is not a mentality everyone seems to have.
00:59:41
Speaker
I'm looking at it like the same way I looked at almost like with the Amber Heard thing, where like, you know, Amber Heard, she's not a perfect person.
00:59:47
Speaker
She did some bad things too.
00:59:49
Speaker
But the consequences of her losing this trial would be so bad for women that I have to take her side, right?
00:59:55
Speaker
And so same thing with like rape cases where, you know, if the woman is like not an ideal person or whatever, this is why I'm like, I stan Eileen Mornos, right?
01:00:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:04
Speaker
Because it's like the consequences of rape victim not being taken seriously or, you know, a rapist getting off scot-free, the consequences to women are so high that like, even if she's an imperfect person, I'm still going to take her side kind of thing, right?
01:00:15
Speaker
That's kind of what I want to almost like wrap up with.
01:00:17
Speaker
It's important to always take the side of the woman.
01:00:20
Speaker
And if you take the side of the man, you're going to look like Sienna Miller's character.
01:00:23
Speaker
You're going to look like a fucking clown.
01:00:25
Speaker
Yeah, she looks like a clown because she's defending her husband.
01:00:28
Speaker
I think it's a different story.
01:00:30
Speaker
Yeah, she looks like the biggest clown of all of them.
01:00:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:34
Speaker
Defending her husband is a different story than like, meaning like you can both feel morally compromised about supporting another woman, but also like flat out pretending that like is not capable of that.
01:00:45
Speaker
And then trying to destroy her is where it gets, I think...
01:00:48
Speaker
That's way more harmful to women.
01:00:50
Speaker
That's way more harmful.
01:00:51
Speaker
And that's when you become part of the problem.
01:00:53
Speaker
But I think as far as like outside observers, for outside observers, if you're watching this case, and you're part of the jury or something like that, I think it's important to recognize that the legal implications of not believing women in this situation, and then like being focused on retribution, because she was the other woman instead of
01:01:12
Speaker
putting in illegal precedents for the idea that even women in morally complicated situations can be raped and that we should take that seriously is going to be part of the uphill battle of like dismantling rape culture, especially when it comes to the legal system.
01:01:25
Speaker
But that does require a certain level of objectivity and recognizing the bigger battle.
01:01:30
Speaker
Outside of the initial emotional response of just kind of maybe hating a woman who actively and knowingly engages in an affair with a married man, which does also feel like a betrayal from another woman, which makes women less sympathetic when that happens.
01:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, I will say, though, that like even if the woman's done terrible things like like you said,
01:01:48
Speaker
you have to think not just of the individuals themselves, but also what does that mean like legally in like precedent setting, right?
01:01:53
Speaker
You know, today it might be another woman who's being subjected to this, but tomorrow it might be you, right?
01:01:59
Speaker
So even if it doesn't, you feel like this isn't affecting you personally, it could someday.
01:02:03
Speaker
And that's why I feel like all women have a stake in this and, you know, in holding these men accountable.
01:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, you could be in a relationship with a man and a consensual relationship, no cheating, etc.
01:02:13
Speaker
Just a guy that you're dating and he could rape you in that manner.
01:02:17
Speaker
And now you don't have any legal recourse because of the fact that other women in the same situation saw a woman who was engaged in a similar situation, but the man was married.
01:02:26
Speaker
And so they didn't look at the legal precedence and then just felt a sort of hatred towards the woman because she was the affair partner and not understanding the ripple effects of that.
01:02:34
Speaker
which I think, you know, what, just to reiterate what you just said, Lilith is very reminiscent of the Amber Heard case, where when we have unsympathetic victims in mess-up situations, people don't think about the larger legal precedents that's set and whether or not it was right or wrong, and they go off a sense of emotion about trying to punish women who are morally compromised.
01:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to say point out, like, rape is never a consequence for morally, you know, inappropriate behavior ever.
01:02:58
Speaker
It's never a consequence for anything ever, because, like, yeah...
01:03:01
Speaker
But I'm just saying like jury trials that happens all the time.
01:03:04
Speaker
And it's not just with rape.
01:03:05
Speaker
It's like the guy that murders a pedophile who raped his daughter, right?
01:03:09
Speaker
Like juries tend to not give a shit about people who get hurt in the commission of a crime.
01:03:14
Speaker
True.
01:03:15
Speaker
Although I will say that pedophiles that get murdered by the parents of their victim based, super based 10 out of 10.
01:03:21
Speaker
Like, yeah, I support that.
01:03:23
Speaker
Right, exactly.
01:03:24
Speaker
But that's like the same mentality that sometimes causes people to pile on women who are victims of legitimate crimes is if they look at them and they're like, oh, I think exactly that's probably happened with Amber Heard as well.
01:03:36
Speaker
If they think of her like, she's the other woman or she's going to do this, then they look at it like, oh, we're going to pile on this person because they're already an ethically compromised person, rightly or wrongly.
01:03:44
Speaker
But I do feel like we should talk about it and parse that out because I don't think you can talk about rape culture without talking about that dynamic specifically.
01:03:51
Speaker
I agree.
01:03:52
Speaker
All right.
01:03:52
Speaker
So that was Anatomy of a Scandal.
01:03:54
Speaker
Let us know your thoughts if you watch the show.
01:03:56
Speaker
I hope you got some good meaty discussion out of the complicated issues surrounding this and what we can do going forward.
01:04:03
Speaker
Let us know what you think on our website at www.femaledatingstrategy.com forward slash forum where we post a weekly thread and you can discuss your opinions on this episode.
01:04:11
Speaker
Also follow us on Twitter at femdatsrat and our Instagram at underscore the female dating strategy.
01:04:17
Speaker
And join us on Patreon, patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy.
01:04:21
Speaker
Thanks for listening, queens.
01:04:23
Speaker
And for all you pompous Bullingdon bellends out there, die mad.