Vergewaltigung oder einvernehmlicher Sex?

Gerade regt man sich im amerikanischen Feminismus über eine Scene in der Serie „Girls“ auf und streitet darüber, ob dort eine Vergewaltigung gezeigt wurde.

Hier einer Darstellung der Szene:

 

Here’s how the first time goes down: Natalia (Shiri Appleby) invites Adam (Adam Driver) into her apartment and perches on her bed. “I’m ready to have sex now,” she tells him. “You’ve been really nice all week,” she explains. “We can do it, if you want.

Adam agrees, and Natalia states her preferences. “I’m on the pill, but will you come outside of me, just in case?” she says. “I don’t like to be on top that much. Or soft touching, because it tickles me and takes me out of the moment. But everything else is OK.” She adds: “I just want to take things kind of slow.” Adam plays at aggression, grabbing Natalia’s set of perfectly fluffed pillows and throwing them to the floor. Natalia laughs. “I like how clear you are with me,” Adam tells her. Natalia responds: “What other way is there?”

By the end of the episode, Natalia has learned that there is another way of doing things. Natalia takes Adam to a friend’s engagement party, where her friends aren’t so sure he’s a nice guy. Ever the suffering artist, Adam bristles when the men in attendance attempt to chat him up about sports. The bride-to-be describes Adam’s face as that of “an old-timey criminal.” A recovering alcoholic, Adam falls off the wagon and orders a drink. They dance all night. Then, he whisks Natalia out of this mainstream celebration and into his darkened bachelor pad. She calls his apartment “depressing.” He tells her to “get on all fours” and crawl into his bedroom.

She consents, reluctantly. “This place is filled with nails and shit all over the floor,” she complains, crawling on her knees. “What is it you’re going for, exactly?”

Adam grabs her from the floor, throws her on the bed, and explains: “I want to fuck you from behind, hit the walls with you.” She consents, numbly. He removes her underwear and goes down on her. She does not consent. “No. Look, I didn’t take a shower today,” she says. “It’s fine, relax,” he tells her. He begins fucking her from behind. He asks her to confirm that she likes his apartment, that she likes the way he looks, and that she really likes him. She consents, limply. Then, he pulls out and masturbates over her. “No, no, no, no, not on my dress!” she says. She pulls off her top, grimaces, and looks away. He comes on her chest. “I don’t think I like that,” she says, when he’s done. “I, like, really didn’t like that.”

What happened here? On the one hand, Adam has fulfilled Natalia’s initial requests—he is on top, comes outside of her, no soft touching. On the other hand, he is no longer being “really nice” or taking things “kind of slow.” This time, no one is laughing. What was abundantly “clear” the first time is now muddied. The first time, Natalia communicates with Adam to do just what she wants; the second time, Adam wields her words against her to do what he knows she really doesn’t. So when Natalia says, “No, I didn’t take a shower,” Adam says, “Relax, it’s fine.” When she says, “No, not on my dress,” he comes on her chest instead.

Interessant ist natürlich der zweite Sex. Vergewaltigung oder nicht? Ich stelle mal Umfragen dazu, getrennt nach Geschlechtern ein:

Für die männlichen Leser:

Für die weiblichen Leser:

Ich füge einen Umbruch ein, bitte erst abstimmen.

Bei Feministing ist man sich einig, dass es eine Vergewaltigung war:

The most recent episode of Girls was slightly spoiled for me as I had glanced at Amanda Hess’s piece on it before I watched it, but I stopped myself from reading the whole thing. Still, I found myself watching with clenched teeth, waiting for the inevitable and uncomfortable, triggering and uncensored moment when I would be watching rape on screen. And then it happened. After they had sex once, the second time Adam raped his new girlfriend Natalia. (…) While it is staged as slightly unclear as to whether what was happening was consensual, the apparent ambiguity only speaks to a collective difficulty in naming rape. There is no question left in the viewer’s mind that Natalie didn’t want to have sex like that. She says “no” multiple times and at the end she says, “That was not OK” and “I really didn’t like that.” And Adam seems confused afterwards as well saying, “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”

Bei Slate ist es „grey rape“:

In their Slate review of the episode, David Haglund describes the scene as “exceedingly uncomfortable sex.” It leaves Natalia “feeling debased, even borderline assaulted,” Jeffrey Bloomer writes. That phrasing is indicative of the way we talk about sexual abuse and domestic violence in this century. There is rape—a crime reported to the authorities, investigated by the police, and prosecuted in the courts. And then there is everything else that is not consensual, but not easily prosecutable, either: “gray rape,” “bad sex,” “they were both drunk,” the “feeling” of being “borderline assaulted.” It’s what happens when a person you want to have sex with “has sex with you” in a way that you do not want them to. And though we have a new, problematic vocabulary for these incidents now, they’re nothing new; this episode recalled Season 3 of Mad Men, when Pete Campbell pressured his neighbor’s German au pair into his apartment and sparked a debate as to whether or not he raped her.

Reading just the dialogue of these two scenes, it’s easy to project that Adam was confused and that Natalia was unclear. But reading the context of the encounter, that interpretation is untenable. “No means no,” but it is not the only measure of consent. “Borderline assault” isn’t just something you feel after the fact. And though terms like „gray rape“ help some people talk about assault outside of the context of the legal system, they shouldn’t be used to excuse the aggressor—they should help raise the standard of what we all consider acceptable sexual behavior, whether or not the cops are called. When you care even one bit about how your partner feels while you are actually having sex with them, it’s impossible to be so confused.

„Grey Rape“ bezeichnet die Grauzone zwischen Vergewaltigung und einvernehmlichen Sex. Hier soll sie zugunsten des Vergewaltigungstatbestandes eingeschränkt werden.

In diese Richtung geht auch der weitere Text:

Gray rape can be a problematic term — some people use it as a label for rape that they don’t consider „real“ or „as bad as real“ rape. That is totally bogus. I use the term here to mean the kind of encounter that people sometimes have where consent is not given but it is assumed; it’s a term used to describe „nonstandard“ sexual assault and, in some ways, it is a weasel term to cover the conflict we feel about consent. Because that is the kind of thing that happens all the time in our culture. Our rape culture. And it’s the kind of thing that leaves women (not just women) uncomfortable and unsure, both about their own experiences and when they are watching something like the scene between Adam and Natalia. It seems like no one wants to call gray rape just plain rape because then it’s really serious. We’d have to talk about why it is so damn common for women to wind up in sexual situations they don’t really want to participate in but feel they cannot refuse. We’d much rather just call it bad sex and move on. That’s one way that rape culture perpetuates itself. In rape culture, the default status for a woman’s consent is yes. When the assumed state of women is set to „receptive,“ you wind up with these grey situations. „She should have just said no,“ people say, placing the responsibility firmly on the woman involved — but why? Why is the responsibility on her to say no instead of on the initiating partner to secure a yes?

 (…)

But Adam, drunk and in some sort of half-daze, doesn’t seem to be having sex with Natalia for pleasure and good times. He seems to be having sex with her to reassert his power. Which is why the scene actually has stuck with me and made me incredibly sad.

Look, bad sex happens. People try things and we don’t like them; maybe we go along because we care or because we are open to experimenting or because we don’t think we can say no. And people really do have sex for lots of different reasons. But when a man is having sex to reassert his power in a situation, when he fails to secure enthusiastic consent — when he fails to even engage in much foreplay beyond throwing his partner on the bed and eating her out for 10 seconds while she protests — all of that combines in a really ugly way.

Adam is using Natalia, for whatever reason. And he does so without concern for her enjoyment or willing participation. And I doubt he’d see anything wrong with it because she didn’t say no.

That’s how rape culture screws everyone over.

Aus meiner Sicht ist es recht eindeutig keine Vergewaltigung. Sie stimmt dem Sex zu. Er sagt, dass er sie von hinten auf allen vieren nehmen will und sie sagt ja. Er erinnert sich daran, dass er nicht in ihr kommen soll und will deswegen auf ihrer Brust kommt. Sie beschwert sich, dass er nicht auf ihr Kleid kommen soll und er kommt auf ihre Brüste.

Was nicht bedeutet, dass sie keinen Grund hat sich zu beschweren. Sie war offensichtlich nicht begeistert von der Situation, er war insofern unsensibel und egoistisch. Es war sicherlich auch ein Machtspiel, hervorgerufen dadurch, dass seine Wohnung unsauber und billig war. Allerdings hat sie eben bei seinem Rollenspiel mitgemacht. Sie ist auf allen Vieren zu seinem Bett gekrochen. Sie hat sich nichts gegen den Sex an sich gesagt. Sie hat nur etwas dagegen gesagt, dass er auf ihr Kleid kommt. Er hat etwas härteren Sex mit ihr gehabt. Aber auch nichts, was dramatisch war. Vaginaler Sex von hinten und auf die Brust kommen ist nichts, was unvorstellbar ist, gerade, wenn sie gesagt hat, dass er nicht in ihr kommen soll.

Ich würde es unter „Ausprobiert, und entschieden, dass es nichts für sie ist“ einordnen.