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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ok, I agree with a lot of your points - but I’m afraid I completely disagree that Mitch raped Hannah.  He did not rape her, he had sex with her and she did not stop him.  That is not rape.  [/quote]

Rape is sex without consent. She did not consent. She didn't want to have sex with him. She did not go to his room with the intent of having sex with him and was surprised when he came onto her. She was also in a compromised emotional state.

If you don't want to use the word rape for it, okay I guess. I was raped by a male friend 20 years ago and I didn't call it rape for a long time because it didn't fit my mental definition of forcible rape. But that's what it is when someone has sex with you with out your consent. Eventually I just accepted that's what it was. But I get it can be hard to conceptualize when you've been told for years what rape looks like. I also get that it's hard to understand why a person in that situation might freeze up and make an instinctual decision to let it happen rather than fight (it's call the freeze response, as in fight, flight, or freeze). But the truth is that when a power imbalance is especially dramatic, freezing in place and "letting it happen" is a common trauma response, especially for someone who, like Hannah, has a history of childhood trauma.

It was rape.[/quote]

I completely disagree.  To use the word "rape" to describe an unpleasant sexual experience cheapens the word immeasurably.  We will have to agree to disagree.[/quote]

I don't agree to disagree, and I think you should think hard about your decision to describe it as "an unpleasant sexual experience." Just to recap what happened:

Hannah was coerced into having sex *by her boss* who also happened to be a famous millionaire, while clearly emotional distraught covering a mass shooting. Even if you don't want to call it rape, it is, at a minimum sexual harassment.

I do not understand why you are so determined to minimize it. This is a character who winds up overdosing because she is so traumatized by this event. Again, if you don't want to use the word rape, don't, but you don't get to hand wave it away because she wasn't held at gunpoint and she didn't behave the way you think a rape victim is supposed to behave.[/quote]

Are you the infamous "hand-wavey" poster?   :roll:  Look, you can categorize this *fictional* encounter any way you choose - as can I.  Hannah and Mitch had sex.  She didn't want to, yet she also didn't object.  He did not force himself on her; she could have said stop, or walked away at any point.  Was there a power imbalance?  Sure.  Was it inappropriate for Mitch to have come on to her due to this power imbalance?  Absolutely.  Did Mitch rape Hannah?  No, he did not.

I have been in a similar situation myself.  I was disgusted by the end of it and furious with the man and with myself.  Was I raped by him?  No.  [/quote]

Who is the infamous hand-wavey poster? I don't even know what you are talking about.

That's fine, you can define your own experience however you want. But you are not the arbiter of what is rape. It's sex without consent. That's what happened to Hannah -- sex without consent.[/quote]

Guys the show lives in this ambiguity - it's part of what makes this situation so challenging and hard, and it's one of the things TMS does well.

You don't have to figure it out for all time today, if sex with someone who is in a fragile state and doesn't really want to do it, but doesn't say no, meets the definition of rape or is merely upsetting and gross.[/quote]

I agree, but even if you don't think it qualifies as rape, I think it's weird to dismiss it as the PP did with "unpleasant sexual experience." Mitch was Hannah's boss, he was married, and he did this kind of thing a lot. It was, at a minimum, sexual harassment. You can think he'd be unlikely to be convicted of rape and also think it was a fireable offense he'd lose a lawsuit over, and that his behavior made him pretty irredeemable as a character.

I continue to be kind of shocked by the poster on the last page who needed to have it explained what exactly it was that Mitch did "wrong."[/quote]

Yeah! I don't blame you. I will guess you're a little younger, and the PP is my age or older - Gen X - where we grew up normalizing a lot of kinds of sex that now, in retrospect, seem pretty awful. On the other hand, it also feels like there's been an over-correction in these younger generations.

In any case - at the very least, Mitch was a lecherous creep who used his power to have sex with underlings who didn't feel they were in a position to say no. Whatever label we put on that, it's bad and he should not have done it - and he should have faced personal consequences (which he did!), even if not legal ones. But I do think that over and over TMS shows us situations that are deeply ambiguous, and we're supposed to experience all the conflicting thoughts and emotions that you'd really have if you knew these people.[/quote]

The lock on his office door take it a step beyond, though - and shows us a pattern of perhaps more clearly criminal behavior.

But then there's Mia, who loved him - and Alex, who also seems to have gone to bed with him willingly. It wasn't all rape. Again - the conflicts and contradictions.

I think I am only really starting to appreciate that this show might be good? I thought it was awful but I enjoyed it, until now.[/quote]

It really vacillates between great and soapy BS. But I think it's a lot deeper and more thought provoking than it sometimes gets credit for.

I definitely think one of the central features of the Mitch storyline was how all these various people interacted with him and felt about him. He was like 20 different people, depending on whether you were his peer colleague, his boss, his subordinate, his mistress, his wife, his kids, his audience, etc. It's what makes it hard to assess people, "cancel" them, whatever. People are deeply complicated.

But I also think that was kind of the point of Bradley's character in that first season -- she was an outsider who came in at a high level and had no relationship with Mitch, so she could be an avatar for the audience in trying to understand. I've never loved her character but I think she worked best when she was a journalist reporting on the Mitch situation or interacting with people in this world and trying to understand it. The stuff with her family and her love life has been a lot less interesting to me.[/quote]

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