What I hear when people argue that Daphne didn't rape Simon is a LOT of unacknowledged baggage about sex and gender:
The myth that women can't rape/men can't be raped
The myth that women's humanity is being denied if they're denied children
The myth that consent can't be revoked
I want to circle back to something, or maybe circle a few things together. Imagine that you are in an intimate relationship with someone you care about, whose feelings and opinions you value. You have trauma that makes it hard to communicate feelings. You are in the middle of sex
Your body, whether you want it to be our not, is aroused. You are feeling incredibly uncomfortable because you're worried about what will happen if you ask your partner to stop. It's not done! It will make them feel bad! You don't know how to explain!
Try to imagine the profound emotional vulnerability of asking your spouse, who you DO want to have sex with, to stop. Now imagine them ignoring you.
It's devestating. It makes my heart drop.
If you can't empathize with Simon in that moment, or you think Daphne is more right...
Why? Because she's a woman, and men can't be raped? Because he's a Black man, so he must be a brute who could physically stop her? Because he wasn't honest with her about his trauma?
What lense are YOU bringing to excuse this rape?
Anyway we have a lot of extremely fucked up ideas about sex that are specifically baked into society to uphold the kyriarchy, and you don't want to just run around upholding the kyriarchy and having a bunch of unexamined toxic biases, do you?
So like, let's ask questions of ourselves about why our knee jerk reactions to things are to excuse spousal rape and not listen to Black people. And then unpack the answers.
TLDR: white womanhood doesn't supercede another human being's right to choose their parenthood, even if it's inconvenient to the white woman or the other person is Black. 🤷
(Bridgerton)
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