They said she gave implicit consent by being at the bar, and by participating in the filming - though she never signed a consent form, and she can be heard on camera saying "no, no" when asked to show her breasts.In what world does this make any sense? What can we do about this? We can have conversations about victim-blaming, and sexual assault, and what it means to give consent, and what it means to live in a rape culture. But that really doesn't seem like enough--not to me, not in this case. What do we do with our righteous anger?
[cut]So let this be a lesson to us all. "Consent" is a flexible thing - at least in the eyes of the St. Louis courts. No means yes, and assault means it's okay to roll the cameras. If there were ever a time to get righteously angry, it's now.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Today in What On Earth?: Jury Decides Consent is Not Required for Girls Gone Wild
Pretty much the only thing I can do in response to reading this is spew expletives.
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I'm so mad about this! Just because she knew it was a Girls Gone Wild camera and she was "playing to the camera" according to O'Brien, doesn't mean she's consenting to someone pulling her shirt down! I can't even begin to understand how it makes sense that Girls Gone Wild is entitled to exploit this woman's body without her permission.
ReplyDeleteThis is more than absurd. It's the age-old "she was asking for it" type of crap that we somehow cannot move beyond. I don't care what she was wearing or what she was doing or how much she was willing to reveal at any given point during the evening or how much she had to drink. The simple truth is that no means no. What is so hard to understand about that?
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