I watched the The Body last night (You know, because it's Christmas-y).

I read a recent post about some sexual harassment problems in the world of sci-fi & fantasy publishing. One of the predictable responses was from a woman saying, basically, that women should just walk away and stop "taking it".

This typically leads me to the reaction towards rape survivors that they "should" have used their uber-ninja skillz to disable their attacker (this often comes with a side of what the other person "would" have done had they been in the survivor's position).

This leads me to Buffy in Seeing Red.

I've come to the point where I don't have a problem with Buffy's characterization in the AR. Why?

Well, cause of her reaction in The Body. During traumatic situations, even the strongest person can panic. In The Body, she regresses to a little girl state, forgetting how to do CPR, panicking, and eventually breaking down. Why? After all, she's seen death before. She's been around dead bodies...a lot. But The Body is personal. It's her mother.

In the AR, she starts off relatively composed until Spike escalates beyond what their earlier encounters had entailed (my post on S6 and consent, if you hadn't seen it). Once she gets thrown to the floor, though, she panics. Yes, she's been assaulted before. She's been attacked before (she is the Slayer, after all). But the context of the AR has her in a particularly vulnerable state (In her bathroom, wearing only a bathrobe) and attacked by someone who she was formerly intimate with (in a way that starts out much like their earlier sexual activities).

And...I don't have a problem with that from a characterization perspective. When someone you know and have feelings for (as Buffy confesses moments before the AR) assaults you, you're not exactly in the best of mental states to be Hardcore Slayer Chick and deliver a no-nonsense smackdown. I think the expectation that women should be able to do this is dangerous as it completely overlooks how easily one's brain can just shut down in such a situation. Even female soldiers, women who are trained to remain composed in combat situations, are raped by their fellow soldiers.

I do have problems with the writers' decision to go there, as I've discussed before. The commercial break right in the middle of the scene is particularly abhorrent to me. "Oooo! Will Spike succeed in raping Buffy? Sit tight through these advertisements to FIND OUT!!!" *rollseyes*

There are many ways our culture makes women "unrapeable". They've had sex before, they've been drinking, they were wearing a revealing outfit, they were walking home alone, etc. I don't want "they're too strong" to be added to the list.