Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

The whole “rape culture” debate is getting ridiculous.Neither man is promoting rape culture and Neal certainly didn’t to anything wrong. He was in a consensual sexually active relationship with Emma. It’s not like SF were keeping track of each state’s laws to find out whether they could bang or not in that particular state. If Emma fully agreed to it and it was perfectly legal in other states to the north/west/south/east of whatever state they were in, then I don’t see why Neal and 17 year old Emma would be considered “statutory rape”. Also, Emma and Neal were breaking the law anyway, so a higher age of consent in one state isn’t going to stop them from doing something they’ve been doing legally in other states.

I wasn’t going to comment on this, since the whole debate is getting old, but I will since you brought it up. This is a pro-SF, pro-Neal safe-space, so people here will naturally defend Neal and Emma’s relationship but won’t support Hook or like CS. I will say though that I agree with you that Neal and Emma had a consensual relationship, and like you said, they weren’t keeping track of which states had the legal age of consent being 16 or 17 or 18. We know they were on the road a lot and that they moved around since they lived in a stolen car. One state over from Oregon in Washington, the legal age of consent is 16. Also, there is no way of knowing how old Bae was in terms of youth when he met Emma. We know he was frozen at age 14 for at least a century in NL, and basically nothing on his wanted poster can be trusted, because it’s all made up. Baelfire’s fake identity as “Neal Cassidy” was entirely made up, including his fake birthday. We the audience know Baelfire was not even from this world, nor was he really born on March 21, 1977. That was just some date Baelfire probably made up, like when he invented his whole persona. I wouldn’t be suprised if Bae made it seem like he was older than he appeared to be when he came through to this land at age 14, so as to avoid going into the foster care system. I’m not defending Bae for getting a teenage Emma pregnant, but I will say that he himself may have been a teenager who obviously lied about his birthday. We can’t take his fake birthday of any ‘proof’ of how old Bae really was when he and Emma had consensual sex.

I can see why people don’t like Hook, I can see why people dislike CS, but Hook does not promote rape culture. Hook is certainly no Prince Charming but he never forces Emma or other women to do anything against their will. If Hook is guilty of anything, it’s probably being a bit sexist, with his season 2 self showing hints of chauvinism.

Look, you know if you come into a pro-SF thread to start a debate about Hook that you’re probably not going to get people who agree with you. You may not even like the replies you read. But here it goes. Hook himself boasted in the season 3 finale about having used the tactic of getting women drunk in order to sleep with him. That tactic is a form of rape because drunk women cannot give proper consent. We’ve also seen Hook try and use alcohol on other women, including Tinkerbell and Emma. We saw Hook make a drunken pass at Tinkerbell, who thankfully turned him down because she realized her own dignity. She was fully sober and so that wasn’t going to work on her. We also saw Hook try and get Emma to drink to the point of excess on their date, so that she wouldn’t be able to “resist his charms” even though she had specifically warned him that she didn’t “plunder” on the first date. Even though Emma was the one asking Hook out, and even though he didn’t force himself on her, he was pushing the boundaries, despite her saying in advance not to expect her to go to bed with him on the first date. I’m not saying Hook is a “rapist” per se, but he did boast of having used the tactic of getting women intoxicated to have sex with him, which is what frat boys are known to do when they take advantage of intoxicated young women at parties. He’d also boasted of having had many a man’s wife, and that his crew had all ganged raped Milha (though that was untrue). That type of attitude is demeaning to women, which is just part of the entire rape culture. Hook’s behavior is problematic, because it endorses sex while under the influence of alcohol to a young audience of mostly women who’re already in love with Hook’s good looks and smooth-talking of the ladies. That is problematic, because they see Hook as being so hot that, there is no problem with him getting women so drunk that they wake up the next day in his bed, not recalling having given him any consent. A&E will never admit to doing that, just as they’ll never admit that Regina raped Graham, whose heart she controlled, but the show does implicitly (if not explicitly) endorse rape culture.

The only character on the show that comes close to promoting rape culture is Regina in regards to the whole Regina/Graham “relationship.” Normally the “rape is a special kind of evil” trope is used when the writers want to make a villain completely irredeemable. Villains can do all sorts of things and still be redeemable so long as they don’t cross that line. Regina crossed that line yet the writers have used the “double standards” trope so that she isn’t irredeemable, in fact they are trying to push Regina into hero territory. Even if the writers hand wave the Storybrooke side of the relationship (Graham kind of gave consent even if that consent is extremely morally dubious), there is no way the EF side of the relationship could be considered consensual. It’s coercion. However, because it’s female on male instead of the other way round, the issue hasn’t been given the screen time it would’ve gotten if it had been male on female. As a result of sweeping the whole thing under a rug, the writers and the show have really missed an opportunity to show a progressive attitude to such a sensitive issue.

I have as many problems with Regina’s rape of Graham as I do of Hook using alcohol to get women drunk to have sex with him. Regina controlled Graham and made him do all sorts of things he didn’t want to do, namely be her sex slave. In SB, she also used his heart to make Graham murder Owen’s father the way Rumple is currently using Hook to suck up magical people into the sorcerer’s hat. So Regina, who’d taken away Graham’s real memories and removed his heart, was still capable of controlling Graham while in SB. I really dislike A&E for not admitting that Regina raped Graham. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a woman raping a man or a man raping a woman, since rape is still rape, which is always morally wrong.