I think he kissed her back a little when she pressed him against the Tardis. Or rather, he does pucker up his lips a bit thereby making it easier for her to kiss him rather than keeping his mouth resolutely closed and shaking his head around the way you might under serious attack, which could arguably be counted as responding.
However: 1. He spent plenty of the time resisting. 2. It doesn't matter whether he kissed her back a bit if he was saying "No!" and trying to push her off. Which he was. Furthermore he doesn't kiss her back and then change his mind (although if he did, that doesn't invalidate is as assault in any way) - he resisted verbally from the outset.
Frankly Ash I saw this comment yesterday and decided to leave it well alone as the poster is clearly several chapters behind everyone else in their copy of Rape Culture For Dummies.
So he kissed her back, which you agree. And then if the Doctor felt assaulted by her? Why did he take her to Venice?!
People who are sexually assaulted tend not to kiss back their attackers, nor do they invite their attackers to romantic holiday destinations.
I'm sorry, I just do not see your argument that it was sexual assault, when the Doctor kissed her back, and at no point told her to stop because it was wrong, he was telling her to stop because she was getting married tomorrow.
And there was no need to be so rude and say I am clearly several chapters behind in 'Rape Culture For Dummies', just because I happen to disagree with your interpretation of something. Discussions on these topics are always very emotionally charged, and for you to wade in with open insults is I think deeply offensive.
there was no need to be so rude and say I am clearly several chapters behind in 'Rape Culture For Dummies', just because I happen to disagree with your interpretation of something
I wasn't disagreeing with your interpretation of whether the Doctor kissed Amy back or was being assaulted or not.
I was to your assertion that when someone responds to sexual contact, then resists, it can no longer be considered assault. That idea is repellent, offensive, backward and ignorant.
Well, I'm sorry, I'm still at a loss. If it was sexual assault as you claim, why on earth did the Doctor take her with him on his continuing adventures? Why did they continue to be friends? Are you arguing that the Doctor is such an abused victim that he's unable to break away from Amys controlling sexual violence?
My reading of the scene was that Amy tried to jump his bones, he was startled, he started to kiss back, but then he remembered that she is engaged and it would be terribly terribly wrong. Which is what he said.
At no point did he say 'Stop you're assaulting me', instead it was 'Stop, you're getting married tomorrow! And I'm too old for you!'
And I'm not saying that in all cases responding to sexual contact then resisting means its not assault. I'm saying in this case of the Doctor and Amy, I do not think it was sexual assault.
I'm not saying that in all cases responding to sexual contact then resisting means its not assault.
You used the criteria that the Doctor kissed her back as the single invalidating factor in the definition of the event. In what way, exactly, was that not a blanket judgement? You're welcome to take it back, of course - I'm always happy for people to say "No, that's not what I meant, I said it wrong." But you did say it.
If it was sexual assault as you claim, why on earth did the Doctor take her with him on his continuing adventures?
There's a strong argument that I once sexually assaulted the person whose ring I now wear. I continue to be good friends with people on whom I have at some point in the past made unwelcome physical advances. I also continue to be good friends with people who have in the past made physical advances on me that made me uncomfortable.
I'm trying to get away from the semantics here. Much though I got sucked into the argument, I don't really care what people call what happened at the end of that episode. What bothers me is whether people felt that what Amy did was okay - not when she kissed him - but when she persisted in kissing him when he was plainly uncomfortable.
You and your friends didn't read the situation as uncomfortable. You persist in saying that as he didn't say "I'm uncomfortable" that meant he wasn't uncomfortable. You persist in saying that he wouldn't have continued to be friends with her if she'd made him feel uncomfortable. I say that that tells me something about you, your friends, your understanding of sexual politics, and your world view, and I say that I don't like it.
I feel that people here are hiding behind the semantic argument "It doesn't count as assault because..." to try justify the fact that they weren't made to feel uncomfortable by a scene that others think was clearly displaying disrespectful, inappropriate behaviour on the part of Amy. Whether it's because it was female on male, because it was funny, because it was a character that they like perpetrating that offense, I don't care. I just don't care. The fact is that if you watched that scene and Amy's behaviour didn't make you squirm in your seat, then I think you are missing something.
Well okay, thank you for explaining your position. I can definitely see a lot more clearly where you are coming from on this now. Which I very much appreciate.
(And indeed I did not intend for it to be a blanket statement, my opinion was in this case the Doctor kissing back, along with the other stuff I've mentioned, said to me that if she wasn't getting married the next day, he'd have been totally into her. Indeed I think he is totally into her, which is probably a large part of why he then rushed off to take her and her boyfriend to Venice the next day.)
I do still disagree with you though.
I don't think she did persist in kissing him, it took her maybe... 30 seconds? Before she realised it wasn't going to happen, and then she stopped. And up until that point she did have a lot of reasoning to think it was going to happen. (And then there is that greater issue I think of how the Doctor visited her as a little girl, imprinted himself on her, and then returns when she's a hot and sexy young woman. Which is potentially very dodgy if they had ever gone down the Doctor/Amy romance subplot.)
Of course I'm not saying I think your interpration is wrong. As said elsewhere, I think it was one of those scenes that different people are interpreting in very different ways.
I will respectfully disagree with your assumption that me and my friends holding this alternative interpretation tells you anything negative about our understanding of sexual politics however.
Again you're making an assumption here that if a person is into you they are therefore up for whatever you want to force on them. The Doctor absolutely fancies Amy - certainly a bit at least. That doesn't mean he wanted to be jumped by her and it just cannot be used to dismiss the concept that she was wrong to act as she did. This application of information is just so problematic on so many levels.
I think the part I find problematic is, okay. I don't think it was sexual assault. Leaving that to one side, because what I think really doesn't matter a damn in these situations. The person whose opinion really matters, is the victims. If they decide something was sexual assault, then it was sexual assault.
So in this case, did the Doctor think he was sexually assaulted? And, I just don't think he did.
Which... maybe this whole thing was meant as a comment on the RTD era of Ten?
I'm sometimes not entirely clear in expressing my opinions, particularly when I start off in a debate feeling insulted. I assure you though, I do think the only person whose opinion matters is the victim.
Why on earth would you go and round up someone's fiancee and take them both to Venice together if you were into them???
In fairness, this is totally in-character for the Doctor, particularly given that he has some reason to believe that it's vital that Amy get 'sorted out' somehow and has decided that this means he needs to fix her relationship.
Well, first of all, I think the Doctor and Amy have a lot of flirtatious chemistry. And the Doctor having a bit of a history when it comes to picking up young women to travel with...
Only as we have seen with Rose, when he gives in to these feelings, it always ends badly, because they die, or go away, or something happens. So when he picks up yet another young woman who has a crush on him, it makes sense for him to distract her by fixing things between her and her fiancee, to get him off the hook as object of attraction, no?
I mean, if the Doctor thought she had sexually assaulted him, his Tardis was right there, why did he take her with him?
I'm not saying she was right to do it. I agree, jumping on somebody who genuinely isn't into you, is absolutely not on.
But I don't think this makes what Amy did, a sexual assault. I think that's far too strong a word for it because my personal feeling is that calling it a sexual assault does a dis-service to people who have been sexually assaulted.
I mean, if the Doctor thought she had sexually assaulted him, his Tardis was right there, why did he take her with him?
Because just because someone sexually assaults you, it does not make them a bad person, just a person that did something you'd rather they hadn't.
And you're not using the word assault in the legal or dictionary sense. Somone has already commented that when they were spat on the police recorded it as an assault, and I've also quoted a case where pinching someone's bottom counted as an assault. You're possibly thinking of a "serious assault".
Yes, you're right. When I hear the phrase 'sexual assault', I think of a serious sexual assault. Something absolutely black and white out of order wrong which should result in very serious consequences for the committer thereof.
Is it the same impulse, to defend the drunken snog, that winds up as defending Roman Polanski... hmm. I will have to think on that.
It reminds me of the debate on racism recently where I became very aware that generally the younger generation have a quite different interpretation of what a racist is, than older generations.
To me, for example, a racist is the skin head thug out on the streets smashing in peoples faces. Because that's what I encountered in my formative years. So to hear somebody being accused of being a racist, who isn't a skin-head thug, is quite shocking to me (an extreme example, but you get the gist I hope). It's an extremely powerful word. In the same way as 'sexual assault' is extremely powerful.
Yes, it's exactly the same thing that popped up all over the place in the RaceFail discussions (and also in the Racebending stuff for the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie). People say "It's racist to do X" and then people react (essentially) saying "But if I did a racist thing then I'm a racist, and I'm not a thug, therefore the thing I did isn't racist, therefore you're just being nasty to me!"
Because, hopefully, we're mostly no longer having to talk about why it's wrong to kick people to death in the streets for having a different coloured skin, and have now moved on to cultural inequality and power relationships, which are a lot more subtle, and ingrained.
Yeah, and I think perhaps for people like myself who were on the streets fighting the Neo-Nazis, it's quite deep-grained offensive to hear somebody being called a racist, who doesn't fit into our/my preconception of what a racist is.
And I'm convinced, as you say, that this was a major contribution to the whole racefail thing. Because I thought that was so depressing, where people who are all basically on the same side, were falling out with each other so visciously. While all the time the real racist assholes are still out there laughing themselves silly at our sides inability to get along.
(And I'm not convinced we have moved on so much from kicking people to death in the streets. Look at the lot of Muslims in the UK for example, or anybody with brown skin in America. Or indeed that the BNP are still around. Though thank the gods Nick Griffin has had to resign following their election failure.)
I think this is where use of language to lessen hard blows like that comes in. I got very angry when the newspapers kept blythly saying that Gordon Brown called Whatserface 'a bigot' all over the place. He never said that. He said she was 'a bigoted woman'. I think I can safely and categorically say that I am not a racist. I can equally categorically say that I have in the past said racist things. I am about as far as it gets from a homophobe but I have been guilty of homophobia. Being guilty of an indiscretion/prejudice does not mean that you are fit to be defined by it.
Absolutely, I agree. And I think everybody has this to some extent. We all say dumb stupid insensitive things sometimes. It doesn't mean we're dumb and insensitive.
Which I think is one of the problems with the internet as a form of communication. A lot of things divorced from body language, sound quite different.
Also, I didn't think I'd need to divide it out given my long explanation, but to clarify...
You and your friends didn't read the situation as uncomfortable. I say that that tells me something about you, your friends, and your world view.
You persist in saying that as he didn't say "I'm uncomfortable" that meant he wasn't uncomfortable. You persist in saying that he wouldn't have continued to be friends with her if she'd made him feel uncomfortable.
This tells me something about your understanding of sexual politics.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2010-05-25 01:04 pm
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However:
1. He spent plenty of the time resisting.
2. It doesn't matter whether he kissed her back a bit if he was saying "No!" and trying to push her off. Which he was. Furthermore he doesn't kiss her back and then change his mind (although if he did, that doesn't invalidate is as assault in any way) - he resisted verbally from the outset.
Frankly Ash I saw this comment yesterday and decided to leave it well alone as the poster is clearly several chapters behind everyone else in their copy of Rape Culture For Dummies.
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People who are sexually assaulted tend not to kiss back their attackers, nor do they invite their attackers to romantic holiday destinations.
I'm sorry, I just do not see your argument that it was sexual assault, when the Doctor kissed her back, and at no point told her to stop because it was wrong, he was telling her to stop because she was getting married tomorrow.
And there was no need to be so rude and say I am clearly several chapters behind in 'Rape Culture For Dummies', just because I happen to disagree with your interpretation of something. Discussions on these topics are always very emotionally charged, and for you to wade in with open insults is I think deeply offensive.
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I wasn't disagreeing with your interpretation of whether the Doctor kissed Amy back or was being assaulted or not.
I was to your assertion that when someone responds to sexual contact, then resists, it can no longer be considered assault. That idea is repellent, offensive, backward and ignorant.
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My reading of the scene was that Amy tried to jump his bones, he was startled, he started to kiss back, but then he remembered that she is engaged and it would be terribly terribly wrong. Which is what he said.
At no point did he say 'Stop you're assaulting me', instead it was 'Stop, you're getting married tomorrow! And I'm too old for you!'
And I'm not saying that in all cases responding to sexual contact then resisting means its not assault. I'm saying in this case of the Doctor and Amy, I do not think it was sexual assault.
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You used the criteria that the Doctor kissed her back as the single invalidating factor in the definition of the event. In what way, exactly, was that not a blanket judgement? You're welcome to take it back, of course - I'm always happy for people to say "No, that's not what I meant, I said it wrong." But you did say it.
If it was sexual assault as you claim, why on earth did the Doctor take her with him on his continuing adventures?
There's a strong argument that I once sexually assaulted the person whose ring I now wear. I continue to be good friends with people on whom I have at some point in the past made unwelcome physical advances. I also continue to be good friends with people who have in the past made physical advances on me that made me uncomfortable.
I'm trying to get away from the semantics here. Much though I got sucked into the argument, I don't really care what people call what happened at the end of that episode. What bothers me is whether people felt that what Amy did was okay - not when she kissed him - but when she persisted in kissing him when he was plainly uncomfortable.
You and your friends didn't read the situation as uncomfortable. You persist in saying that as he didn't say "I'm uncomfortable" that meant he wasn't uncomfortable. You persist in saying that he wouldn't have continued to be friends with her if she'd made him feel uncomfortable. I say that that tells me something about you, your friends, your understanding of sexual politics, and your world view, and I say that I don't like it.
I feel that people here are hiding behind the semantic argument "It doesn't count as assault because..." to try justify the fact that they weren't made to feel uncomfortable by a scene that others think was clearly displaying disrespectful, inappropriate behaviour on the part of Amy. Whether it's because it was female on male, because it was funny, because it was a character that they like perpetrating that offense, I don't care. I just don't care. The fact is that if you watched that scene and Amy's behaviour didn't make you squirm in your seat, then I think you are missing something.
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(And indeed I did not intend for it to be a blanket statement, my opinion was in this case the Doctor kissing back, along with the other stuff I've mentioned, said to me that if she wasn't getting married the next day, he'd have been totally into her. Indeed I think he is totally into her, which is probably a large part of why he then rushed off to take her and her boyfriend to Venice the next day.)
I do still disagree with you though.
I don't think she did persist in kissing him, it took her maybe... 30 seconds? Before she realised it wasn't going to happen, and then she stopped. And up until that point she did have a lot of reasoning to think it was going to happen. (And then there is that greater issue I think of how the Doctor visited her as a little girl, imprinted himself on her, and then returns when she's a hot and sexy young woman. Which is potentially very dodgy if they had ever gone down the Doctor/Amy romance subplot.)
Of course I'm not saying I think your interpration is wrong. As said elsewhere, I think it was one of those scenes that different people are interpreting in very different ways.
I will respectfully disagree with your assumption that me and my friends holding this alternative interpretation tells you anything negative about our understanding of sexual politics however.
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So in this case, did the Doctor think he was sexually assaulted? And, I just don't think he did.
Which... maybe this whole thing was meant as a comment on the RTD era of Ten?
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This is all very well but that is not what you said. You are making blanket definitive statements, and then qualifying them endlessly.
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And I'm totally with
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In fairness, this is totally in-character for the Doctor, particularly given that he has some reason to believe that it's vital that Amy get 'sorted out' somehow and has decided that this means he needs to fix her relationship.
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Only as we have seen with Rose, when he gives in to these feelings, it always ends badly, because they die, or go away, or something happens. So when he picks up yet another young woman who has a crush on him, it makes sense for him to distract her by fixing things between her and her fiancee, to get him off the hook as object of attraction, no?
I mean, if the Doctor thought she had sexually assaulted him, his Tardis was right there, why did he take her with him?
I'm not saying she was right to do it. I agree, jumping on somebody who genuinely isn't into you, is absolutely not on.
But I don't think this makes what Amy did, a sexual assault. I think that's far too strong a word for it because my personal feeling is that calling it a sexual assault does a dis-service to people who have been sexually assaulted.
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Because just because someone sexually assaults you, it does not make them a bad person, just a person that did something you'd rather they hadn't.
And you're not using the word assault in the legal or dictionary sense. Somone has already commented that when they were spat on the police recorded it as an assault, and I've also quoted a case where pinching someone's bottom counted as an assault. You're possibly thinking of a "serious assault".
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Hence my post here:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2067455.html
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Is it the same impulse, to defend the drunken snog, that winds up as defending Roman Polanski... hmm. I will have to think on that.
It reminds me of the debate on racism recently where I became very aware that generally the younger generation have a quite different interpretation of what a racist is, than older generations.
To me, for example, a racist is the skin head thug out on the streets smashing in peoples faces. Because that's what I encountered in my formative years. So to hear somebody being accused of being a racist, who isn't a skin-head thug, is quite shocking to me (an extreme example, but you get the gist I hope). It's an extremely powerful word. In the same way as 'sexual assault' is extremely powerful.
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Because, hopefully, we're mostly no longer having to talk about why it's wrong to kick people to death in the streets for having a different coloured skin, and have now moved on to cultural inequality and power relationships, which are a lot more subtle, and ingrained.
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And I'm convinced, as you say, that this was a major contribution to the whole racefail thing. Because I thought that was so depressing, where people who are all basically on the same side, were falling out with each other so visciously. While all the time the real racist assholes are still out there laughing themselves silly at our sides inability to get along.
(And I'm not convinced we have moved on so much from kicking people to death in the streets. Look at the lot of Muslims in the UK for example, or anybody with brown skin in America. Or indeed that the BNP are still around. Though thank the gods Nick Griffin has had to resign following their election failure.)
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Which I think is one of the problems with the internet as a form of communication. A lot of things divorced from body language, sound quite different.
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You and your friends didn't read the situation as uncomfortable.
I say that that tells me something about you, your friends, and your world view.
You persist in saying that as he didn't say "I'm uncomfortable" that meant he wasn't uncomfortable. You persist in saying that he wouldn't have continued to be friends with her if she'd made him feel uncomfortable.
This tells me something about your understanding of sexual politics.
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