I think the article I agree with the most about this whole mess came from Kim Voynar, who argues for personal responsibility on both sides of the gender equation.
For me, the scene itself fell on the side of inebriated sex and not date rape, and I find the more vitriolic responses to it rather reactive and indicative of the larger issue of responsibility around sexual behavior and the urge to blame others for the negative consequences of our own choices. Further, I believe that equating this to date rape detracts from the real issue of women who actually are drugged against their will and sexually assaulted, and that there is a distinct difference between that and a woman choosing of her own free will to get herself completely inebriated and render herself incapable of making an informed decision of whether to have sex with a guy.
There's an inherent contradiction that a lot of feminists seem to prefer not to discuss at all: if we say that a woman who is inebriated by her own choice is therefore no longer responsible for the sexual choices she might make while in that state, is it fair to argue that the man she's with, if he's also inebriated, should be responsible for making that choice for her?
Would writers who argue that the sex scene in Observe and Report is date rape also be willing to argue that if a man has sex when he's "too drunk" to make a sober decision, he no longer has responsibility for the consequences of that sex, such as pregnancy or spreading a STD? How can we seriously argue that a man who gets chooses to get too drunk and has unprotected sex IS responsible for the consequence of that choice (and even demand that he pay child support for the resulting infant, should the woman choose not to abort the pregnancy -- a choice over which he has no control) on the one hand, while arguing on the other that if a woman chooses to get herself too drunk to make a sober decision, the full responsibility for that choice must also fall on the man?
Men are not the enemy, and I grow weary of the twisting of ideas of female sexuality and female empowerment into an ugly worldview where the women are always right, the men are always wrong, and women want all of the freedom they see men as having while refusing to accept the responsibility that goes along with it.
That's not the kind of female empowerment I believe in, nor is it the balanced view of power in relationships that I hope to foster in my own sons and daughters (and for those who might wonder, my oldest daughter is 23, and my four youngest -- two boys and two girls -- range in age from 12 to 5). Do I fear for my daughters, as they grow up and have to navigate sexual choices and relationships, and learn to accept adult responsibility for their actions? Yes, I do -- but I also fear for my sons, growing up into a world where some of my fellow feminists would paint them as forever in the wrong, as the bearers of all responsibility for the choices and behavior of the young women they might encounter. I aim to teach both my daughters and my sons that they are responsible for both their choices and the consequences those choices might bear, and I hope that they will all grow up not to consider excessive drug or alcohol use as an excuse for making unsafe -- or plain stupid -- choices.
There is also the bigger sociological issue of whether some women deliberately drink to excess to relieve themselves of responsibility for making choices that, while sober, they might think twice about. The idea that date rape is not a black-and-white issue, but one with many shades of gray that deserve consideration, is not a popular perspective in feminist circles. But I am a feminist who also believes very strongly in personal responsibility and accountability on both sides, not just one, for the consequences of the choices one makes. And I am a feminist who is also a mother ... a mother of both daughters and sons, all of whom will one day have to navigate increasingly murky waters of decision-making around their sexual encounters.
I saw an interesting documentary at AFI Dallas called Haze, which is mostly about the excessive alcohol consumption on college campuses in the Greek system. But there was one bit in particular that struck me in that film where a professor talks about studies on how drinking patterns, particularly among female students, have changed over the past couple decades. He says that many female students these days come to college intent on drinking as much as the boys do. They binge drink excessively -- 15-20 drinks at a sitting is no longer uncommon.
Another professor in the film states that many of the college-age, binge-drinking female students he has interviewed say they do so specifically to absolve themselves of responsibility for promiscuous sexual behavior. I'd like to read an actual study that verifies this somewhere, but the prevalence of overtly sexual behavior by college-age girls at spring break parties and exploitative series like Girls Gone Wild would seem to indicate that many 20-something young women today view their sexuality as something to flaunt and exploit, not hide under a bushel -- and they're using drugs and alcohol to relieve themselves of the inhibitions that might otherwise make them think twice about what they're doing.
Female empowerment is about the idea of women in control of their lives and their choices, not about women choosing to drink and drug themselves into a state of non-responsibility for their sexual decision-making. The depiction of Brandi in Observe and Report is clearly the latter.
Brandi is reprehensible – and offends me as a woman by the way she represents women -- and you could argue that Jody Hill's take on her and the type of woman she represents is completely misogynistic, but Hill just put the stereotype of this young, sexually active, hard-partying woman on-screen. And if you don’t believe that, just take a stroll down the main bar drag in any random college town on a Friday or Saturday night and you will encounter many, many young women like Brandi, scantily clad, tottering drunkenly on stiletto heels, drinking and drugging themselves into total oblivion and talking about the dick they're going to score. Anna Faris plays this stereotype with a brutal honesty that should be, well, sobering. The moment when she yells out "Why'd you stop, motherfucker?" asks us to question our assumptions about what we've just seen.
Responsibility for choices, and the acceptance of the consequences for the actions one makes, has to fall on both sides of the male-female sexual equation -- and that includes the responsibility not to consume alcohol or drugs to the point that you are unable to make sound decisions to begin with. Choices have consequences, and they're not always good ones. Rather than putting all this energy into debating whether a questionable scene in a film depicts date rape as "acceptable," our time would be better spent finding ways to reach out to the women of the younger generation and educate them about their own responsibility to themselves to make smart choices around alcohol and drug use, and the consequences -- alcohol poisoning, accidental overdose, questionable sexual encounters, STDs, unwanted pregnancies -- that can result from those choices.
Observe and Report is a great stepping-stone into raising alI of these issues with both women and men. But the discussion needs to start with the assumption that both men and women have a responsibility to themselves to make intelligent, sober choices and to not put themselves into precarious situations to begin with, not by assuming that the entire burden of responsibility for the decisions a woman makes can be obliterated simply by her own choice to drink too much.
http://moviecitynews.com/columnists/voy ... 90415.html
