Twenty years ago, the feminists developed the theory that rape has nothing to do with sex, that it is instead an act of violence, plus evidence of male hatred and aggressiveness toward women. Maybe this strange motion is the reason why we haven’t heard any outcry from feminists about the new genre of heroes on television soap operas.
I’ll admit I didn’t discover this problem myself, as I am no watcher of soaps. It was discovered by TV Guide and the magazine caught my eye as I went through the checkout counter at the supermarket.
At first I thought the article, called “Let’s Stop Turning Rapists into Heroes,” would be some kind of National Enquirer sensationalism. But alas, the article was for real.
It described a whole series of television soaps where a rapist became a hero soon after his crime. Let me recite the list so you will know I didn’t make this up.
The first rapist listed showed his face ten years ago on ABC’s General Hospital when Luke raped Laura, who eventually fell in love with an married him. The only other time I ever heard of such a disgusting scenario was years ago in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, and I stopped reading that novel when I was figured out how the plot was unfolding.
Whereas rape is (or should be) judged a crime, General Hospital made it look like an act of love. Laura even referred to the incident as “the first time we made love.” There apparently was some flap from women when this sequence aired several years ago, but there has been no particular opposition to the rape-romances of recent years.
On ABC’s now-defunct Ryan’s Hope, Roger unsuccessfully tried to force Maggie into bed, and two years later they were married. On ABC’s Dynasty, Adam raped Kirby one season and proposed to her in the next.
The idea of a woman marrying her rapist is not only absurd, it is downright dangerous. It gives docu-drama authenticity to what is called the “rape myth,” namely, the notion that women secretly want to be raped.
This rape myth is reinforced daily in much of pornography. Are we going to allow marriage to legitimize rape in much the same way that, in the years of Victorian sexual mores, a shotgun marriage could legitimize seduction? Is this one of the achievements of sexual liberation or women’s liberation?
Back in the soaps, we see that rapists not only are accepted by their victims but then emerge as leading men and even heroes. General Hospital’s Luke, who played a minor role at the time of his crime, subsequently become the hero of the show and a star apparently very popular with women.
ABC’s All MY Children has a character named Ross who, in a drunken rage, raped his father’s fiancée, Natalie. For this crime, he went to prison; so much, so good. But he immediately broke out of jail and then became a hero, starring in all sorts of heroic escapades.
CBS’s As the World Turns presents Josh, another character who turns from rapist to hero, very sympathetically. No, he doesn’t marry his victim; instead his victim’s sister falls in love with Josh, and the victim and their mother both accept the relationship.
All these story lines have the effect of desensitizing viewers to the crime of rape. They present rape as the route to success and good sex.
On most college campuses today, date rape is a big concern. It’s a new phenomenon that has come about along with sexual permissiveness and coed dorms. A recent issue of the Brown University monthly magazine said that 95 percent of those surveyed felt that acquaintance rape is a problem on their campus.
The article goes on to relate several typical examples. It’s clear that young men and young women at Brown have very different understandings and expectations of dates, sex, and the meaning of “no.”
A campaign to get the soaps to cease and desist such anti-women garbage would be a good project for the feminists. It’s not only insultingly sexist but socially repugnant for television to teach that rape does pay.
But I’m not holding my breath until they do because the feminists have such a warped idea of what “sexism” is. They would probably prefer to continue attacking as “sexist” a husband who puts his wife on a pedestal and treats her like a queen, and the Scholastic Aptitude Test which uses more questions that involve “science, sports and war” and fewer on “relationships, clothing and appearance.”
