If 'Maleficent' Is About Rape, What Does It Mean?

This article contains major *spoilers* for the movie Maleficent!

How on earth was I going to justify that this woman would curse a baby?
  ~ Screenwriter Linda Woolverton in Huffington Post

The recent Disney movie Maleficent tries to provide a backstory to explain the eponymous villain's mean streak.  In the original movie Sleeping Beauty, the villain shows up at the christening of King Stephan's daughter because she feels sleighted for having not been invited (and she wasn't invited because, well, she's so villainous).

The movie centers around a past relationship between Maleficent and King Stephan.  And the foul deed that starts the cycle of revenge is that Stephan cuts off Maleficent's fairy wings (in case you wondered why Maleficent didn't have wings like the three good fairies).

Stephan is only able to do this because Maleficent trusts him implicitly for friendship's sake, and Stephan, for the sake of his courtly ambition, drugs her and then, with too much compunction to kill, decides to take her wings as trophies of the pretended kill.  People have since wondered of this violation of trust is a metaphor for rape, and Angelina Jolie has reportedly confirmed that this was an intentional metaphor.  As is commonly reported, rape is very often committed by someone the victim knows, and rape also often occurs with the help of a drugged beverage.

What might presume that Stephan's ambition is a metaphor for men not feeling manly without some conquests under their belt in this post-sexual revolution, enlightened age, in fact feeling like undesirable nobodies.  Stephan's conquest makes him a somebody, and in the place of the woman who loved him he instead chooses a trophy wife.  

But here's where it really gets interesting.  Because of this violation, instead of getting back at Stephan, Maleficent goes after the child made possible by the violation.

And as you've had ample warning about spoilers, Maleficent stops seeing her rapist in the child, and instead sees a soul much like herself; she emotionally adopts the child, becomes her guardian, and repents of her murderous rage.  In the end, she risks her life to save the child's.

In the last two years, there have been stories brought up about women who have killed their babies on sight immediately after birth because of their hate for the rapist, and how traumatic this is for the mothers (strangely without considering how awful this might be for the children killed), as though this sheds some special light on abortion as a medical and social (and spiritual!) remedy.  And in this same time period Disney has given us an intentional metaphor for rape that unintentionally argues that the child should not suffer for the sins of the rapist.  Maleficent even experiences something like abortion regret partway through the film.

Which reminds me of this much ignored half of a much reviled comment:

"I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."

The DRape Equation and the Alleged Rarity of Rape

The last time I wrote about the Todd Akin controversy, I said I would delve into some other aspects at a later point.  Here we go.  

Let's begin by saying that Akin's comments were unfortunate even if he could have better defended his gynecological statements.  Why?  Because rarity isn't a good basis on which to argue.  It distracts from the main issue that Akin tried to articulate as well: that there is a person that simply doesn't deserve to die for someone else's terrible crime.  

In defense of the several rape victims whose kneejerk reaction to Todd Akin's comments was that he was saying victims who get pregnant are likely not victims at all (none of the several complainants that I read actually acknowledge that they had an abortion, curiously), there is a habit, in both men and women, to wonder what a woman has done to bring it on herself. (Even in the Peace Corps: “In the weeks that would follow, I received emails from the Peace Corps on how I could have prevented this.”)  And I think that many are projecting negative attitudes they have by attributing them to conservatives -- largely due to the lens through which the Left has many people viewing this political conflict.

I can't help but revisit the Todd Akin uproar, since that was the peak moment of in the throwing off any truce in the Culture War (so that the election wouldn't be about the economy).  There were some thoughtful left-leaning souls blinking in wonderment as the Left effectively sensationalized it, though they apparently thought that Akin's statement had connotations that were as ugly as the silly notion (not too silly to spread through repetition) that Republicans wanted to legitimize rape -- an insinuation that made it unnecessary for anyone to  discuss Akin's words in context.  Akin specifically addressed this ludicrous insinuation by saying "I want tough justice for predators," as though there were some sorts of rapes he condoned, ones that weren't legitimate rapes but cases where "she's asking for it."

Forget "legitimate" rape; how about "hilarious" rape?

Remember how just using the word "legitimate" in the context of rape made rape victims castigate (Akin wants to deny their experience) , liberals foam (while inwardly cheering), and Republicans disavow?  Wasn't that long ago, and it was the gaffe leftwing pundits had been pining for to cast the election firmly in terms of Culture War rather than economic leadership.  Surely you haven't forgotten "legitimate rape."

Well, I got one better.  Here's a much more riveting phrase.  "Hilarious rape." "Funny rape."  There's a lot of pop culture evidence that a certain class of rape isn't just legitimate -- it's funny.   It's not just men that joke about it.  Women joke about it.  Like genital size humor women embrace it as doubt-your-masculinity humor. Are you a real man?

It's funny because it happens to men.  The prison rape theme permeates the movie Office Space (the music, numerous jokes about  "federal pound-me-in-the-***" prison" and about prison rape as the expected punishment for embezzlement) that it becomes a sort of metaphor for the loss of dignity for the American worker.  Boondocks seems to delight in prison rape humor.  How 'bout going Greek in Get Him To The Geek.

Example of Inappropriate Leftwing Rape Humor

Actually, any sort of anal penetration of men is hilarious.  Whether it is by a gorilla (Trading Places and Ace Ventura II), a bull (Top Secret), or a gigantic gerbil (Nutty Professor II: The Klumps).  Now these bestial rapes happen to jerks.  The latter happens to a college dean who is really jerky.  Comeuppance is best served by some male domination, even if it is a male animal.

It even, strangely, applies to male children.  In the movie Scary Movie 3, which otherwise has a lot of funny if racy humor, it descends to an extremely creepy level when it insinuates that a young boy in the film is habitually raped by a babysitter priest.  Nice anti-Catholic humor.  Is it a good thing to be de-sensitized to child rape?  What about a joke where a young girl is raped by a Warren Jeffs-like polygamist?  Not hilarious?  Why not?  It's just good clean anti-religious-nut humor.  Maybe a little boy doesn't have a soul to destroy or a dignity to rob?  After all, little boys are made of snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails.  Just a thought.  Isn't forced sodomy really funny?

Face of Dean Richmond as a giant hamster mates with him

This is not to say that male-on-female humor has never been joked about in the movies.  I just think there is a lot less of it, it is more taboo, and there tends to be a lot more outrage about it.  (Hey, Al Franken did think it was funny.)

TvTropes explains it as something that is so awful and taboo that it can only be coped with using humor.  So, the reason we don't joke about male-on-female rape is because it's not taboo and we don't consider horrific?  Huh? I think there has to be a better explanation than that.  The double standard reminds me a little of this:

“Pol Pot killed one point seven million Cambodians, died under house arrest, well done there. Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, aged seventy-two, well done indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. Hitler killed people next door. Oh, stupid man. After a couple of years we won't stand for that, will we?”  ~ Eddie Izzard, "Dressed to Kill"

If males declare war on males, maybe it's something they should just resolve on their own.  Male-on-female: that's the strong oppressing the weak because they can.  Now, that is evil.  That makes it a sexist hate crime.  Male-on-male rape is not a hate crime.  It's just guys getting carried away.

Wait, here's a hilarious joke about a man getting his just deserts:

I've been sentenced for a D.U.I. offense. My 3rd one. When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly none of this. I'm a tall white male, who unfortunately has a small amount of feminine characteristics. And very shy. These characteristics have got me raped so many times I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to 5 black men and two white men at a time. I've had knifes [sic] at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't ever think I'd see straight again. One time when I refused to enter a cell, I was brutally attacked by staff and taken to segragation [sic] though I had only wanted to prevent the same and worse by not locking up with my cell mate. There is no supervision after lockdown. I was given a conduct report. I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was. He told me that off the record, He suggests I find a man I would/could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening. I've requested protective custody only to be denied. It is not available here. He also said there was no where to run to, and it would be best for me to accept things . . . . I probably have AIDS now. I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking to hard on all this . . . . I've laid down without physical fight to be sodomized. To prevent so much damage in struggles, ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well, something I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for.

That'll teach him to flout the rules of society!  A final thought about that last hilarious joke.  Does the "doctrine of incorporation" apply to the injunction against cruel and unusual punishment?  You realize that not complying with government allows the government to threaten you with this punishment.  Your punishment is to be locked up with these predators.  Their punishment is to be given free room and board and fresh victims so that they can freely do what they were arrested for doing on the outside.  Isn't that a hoot?  I know, I know.  I need to stop because you are out of breath from laughing.  You can only take so much.

After Akin made his politically ham-handed statement about aborting children conceived through rape, rape victims stated that the ostensible insinuation that they hadn't truly been raped made them relive the trauma and shame associated with their assault.  Do you wonder how male victims feel when they hear these anal rape jokes making light of these traumatic coercions?  Ah, but they are probably too ashamed to say anything.

http://www.mencanstoprape.org/Resources/resources-for-male-survivors.html

Legitimate Rape: What Kinds of Rape Are There?

I'll leave aside the topic of whether Todd Akin was correct about the rarity of rape pregnancies or the cause of the alleged rarity.  I'd like to focus on the semantics free-for-all over the word "legitimate"in connection to rape.

I remember seeing a survey about the prevalence of rape, and I thought it strange that the questionnaire asked women if they have ever realized the "morning after" that someone had had sex with them while they were inebriated.  What I thought was vague was that there was no reference to the condition of their (presumably) male counterpart.  Did they both get drunk and "not know what they were doing"?  If a woman gets drunk and has sex, does it automatically make her a victim?  If a man has sex with a drunk woman, does it make him.  The movie Jaws has a scene in which a married couple mention getting drunk and fooling around.  What if the wife doesn't remember the next morning whether she ultimately decided to have sex or not?  Does she have to remember it being consensual throughout?  What if she has a memory blackout?


People cited Akin's comments as proof of the "Conservative War on Women" in which conservative men and women are working hard to enslave womankind.  These same people didn't seem to find it controversial that Whoopie Goldberg said that while Roman Polanski technically (statutorially) raped a girl under the age of consent when he gave her drugs and had anal intercourse with her, it wasn't rape rape."  It was uncontroversial then that there was "rape" and there was rape rape.  Rachel Alexander in "Using Semantics to Take Down Conservative Representative Todd Akin" explains why she thinks that the poltical turmoil over Akin consisted of word games to avoid discussing the obvious:

It may have been a poor choice of words, but everyone knows Akin was referring to the distinction between what we traditionally consider rape - forcible rape - versus statutory rape and what some claim is also rape, having sex while drunk. Some women will have a one night stand while drunk, admit it to their friends afterwards, then change their mind and declare that it was rape. The FBI updated its definition of rape this year to include the inability to give consent due to intoxication. Any woman who has been drinking can now claim afterwards that she was raped. This may have opened a Pandora's Box considering how many people drink alcohol before sex.

This is the Pandora box I considered.  A man with a few drinks in him might be less cognizant of just how "out of it" his date is.  They are both acting loopy and having fun.  If she hasn't passed out, maybe his awareness of her state is also compromised.  She has drunk so much her memory of it is "blacked out."

On a related note, a very dear family member narrowly escaped being taken advantage of by a creepy guy that slipped something in her drink.  This is a more clear cut case of lack of consent and a deliberate attempt to evade consent.  However, she curiously added that she doesn't think it would have been so traumatic as it would have been had she been taken advantage of while conscious.  What does this mean?  Less trauma without the conscious experience of an assault?  Is there a sliding scale of experienced trauma with the various sorts of non-consent?

So there is yet another wrinkle to this:  A man that is sober enough to realize that his date has passed out while they were getting familiar or realize that she is much less lucid than he is -- proceeding further may show him to be a shady human being (and the more lucid he is, the more shady).  But are these men of the same moral caliber as those that assault women to dominate them, to take their revenge on them, or because the act of violence contributes to the pleasure of it?  Are 1 in 16 college boys like the Indian men that recently brutalized a woman to death?  Perhaps 1 in 10 people you know is a sociopath.  Or maybe Whoopie is right: there is rape and then there's rape rape.

But coming back to Rachel Alexander's point: that some women will avoid responsibility for their participation in intercourse because they were in some state of intoxication (even though they are responsible for what they do behind the wheel of a car in a similar state of mind).  This is likely to get even worse if women find an abortion exemption in claiming rape; would many women claim this to avoid carrying a baby to term?

Reliving trauma is being advanced as an argument for destroying a life.  It isn't always clear from the personal stories on this web page being aimed at Todd Akin's gaffe exactly how the stories do relate to the right to destroy a life that results from a violation, even though that appears to be the point of the outrage.  For example, one of the women on the page relates an account of sleeping with a man at the end of a night of partying.  "I ended up sleeping with him." What are the criteria for determining that rape has occurred?  It is completely swept under the rug by the "rape is rape" chorus.  If the woman is less drunk than the man, is he exempt from child support, or might he be "punished with a baby" for 18 years rather than 9 months?  How does the law distinguish the relative inebriation in order to determine fault?  (Note: Ms. Rothenbach has since replied to this post and I have revised this paragraph based on her clarifications.  I continue to have a concern that in reading these anti-Akin blurbs, people think ever more uncritically about whether there truly are gray areas when it comes to rape.) 

In the movie 40-Year-Old Virgin, the title character attempts to go home with a woman that is falling down drunk who is ludicrously intoxicated after his moral-impaired but otherwise well-meaning friend tells him to "try some wrong."  This ends comically in the movie, but the context makes the potential conquest out to be only a little wrong.  Yet in real life, would it have been be a traumatic event to be relived years later, as it seems to fall into that general "date rape" category for which there are more obvious non-consensual yet non-forcible acts and others where there may be more shared responsibility between the man and woman.  But if the pundits and talking heads are right, 40-Year-Old Virgin actually portrayed a date rape in progress, much to the amusement of the audience.

Curiously, there is a man (identified as Charlie S.) also quoted on that page who claims he was "drugged and sexually assaulted by a female acquaintance" and that this event has caused him PTSD for years.  I won't be dismissive and claim as many women claim that this is necessarily not "legitimate rape" because it is female-on-male.  He believes it is a terrible thing for women who have been in his situation to not be able to terminate their developing baby.  "She will have to have the child, and then her whole life, she will be thinking about the person who did that to her. She will have to say to her son: ‘You are the product of rape.’"  Ryan Bromberger has apparently heard that speech from his own mother, and as a "product of rape" he has some choice words for the anti-Akin crowd.  Apparently, Mahalia Jackson's and Winona Judd's mothers had to tell them the truth eventually.  Were their lives worse for that?

In the wake of the Todd Akin upset, Republicans ran for cover using Akin as a human shield and eagerly threw him under the bus.  Ann Coulter opined that the GOP needs to resolutely give up saving the prenatal children of rapists, since there will never be a majority consensus to protect prenatal children in the context of rape.  She may well be right that these prenatal babies are political fodder and can't be saved.  And it may well be true.  But that is a concession that the GOP has already been making for a very long time.  I think such a concession should be made explicitly if it is to be made at all:  Yes, we believe that these are children that are being punished for a crime they didn't commit, but since this is politically untouchable we have to settle for rescuing who we can.  In the words of a great man, "Sure, a bill of divorce is legal -- but it's there because of the hardness of your hearts."

The leftwing side of this hot potato is, implicitly if not explicitly, that rape is vague so abortion should be allowed for anything that might possibly be unwanted sex.  If she would not have wanted the sex had she been sober and/or has regrets the morning after, well, it was not consensual and there's a tiny heart that needs to stop beating.  And social conservatives, Catholics, Mormons, and evangelical Christians are in an awkward place with there being many sex acts that may or may not qualify as statutory rape (all rapes recognized as crime are "statutory") that result in pregnancy, and definitely many situations that leave women thinking "I didn't choose this and therefore I shouldn't have to deal with this."  Even many women, especially single women, who consider themselves Christian are afraid to not have that option available in case they find themselves "with [unwanted] child."
  
Many left-leaning citizens are surprised to find that there are prominent pro-life organizations that shoot down "personhood" legislation (laws that would declare fetuses to be legal persons for 14 Amendment protection), not because they believe they are wrong, but because such laws will fail to be approved.  (Left-leaners who rely on CNN and HuffPost to be informed are protected from such complexities about the opposition.)  Personally, I think that pro-lifers need to unite in informing the public about the suffering and terror of fetuses that are chased around the womb by a curette or are born breached in order to have their brains vacuumed out (did sex ed not teach you what a partial birth abortion is?) so that teens and adults at least see the fetus as an intelligent feeling creature, if subhuman.  After all, people who merely blink at ads for starving children write checks for abused animals.  Imagine if fetuses had the empathy afforded to puppies?  Planned Parenthood (what ghastly irony in that name!) purposefully cultivates a culture that disanthropomorphizes prenatal babies to a status below that of cats and dogs.

Liberals that claimed authoritatively that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were a political euphemism to desensitize people to the awful reality of "torture" consistently substitute "fetus" for baby or preemie (think of Obama's quip about a "fetus outside the womb").  Now, does that seem ironic to anyone?

I'll address some other time what specifically was unfortunate about Akin's comment, aside from him giving the news outlets the very opportunity for which they'd been slobbering many months.

Todd Akin, Jon Stewart, and Kinds of Rape

On the way home from work I heard a segment that seemed aimed at getting Todd Akin and Mitt Romney mentioned in the same bunch of sentences (look, they have me doing it!) as possible. They didn't say what Todd Akin said. But apparently Akin gave the press the thing it's been salivating over--an excuse to stop the discussion of policy on the merits of policy and get back to 'Republicans want to molest your dog, cook your cat, and leave the toilet seat up.' So I'll weigh in here...

I know of two family members who have been raped. Not "I-got-drunk-and-that-other-drunk-I-was-with-should've-realized-that-I-was-vulnerable." An assault on the mind and body that makes you want to put some very serious hurt on a guy and make him wish he hadn't been born. I take the subject very seriously, and I don't assume that women are "asking for it." Running through Central Park at night wearing a tube top and mini skirt is a very bad idea; it still doesn't mean she deserved it or desired it. (Leaving your keys in your car--after 1960 anyway--is a bad idea; doesn't justify stealing.)

Dennis Prager has one of the more reasoned responses to Todd Akin's statement here.

It's more reasoned than the kneejerk reaction to denounce Akin and distance oneself from Akin as much as possible. But I've heard women say that they think that the stress and trauma associated with brutal assaults (as opposed to alcoholic blackouts or the nefarious cases where women are intentionally drugged) makes it more difficult to conceive, for the same reason that an early fetus, having already started, may be lost due to stress. I don't know if that's true, but it doesn't sounds implausible. All the same, I've never heard any good statistics offered on just what the effects on conception are the stress associated with the various kinds of rape.

Prager rightly notes that Akin's sin sounds like one of ignorance. That certainly isn't unique to Congressmen, and Democrats aren't experts at sounding enlightened. However, I'm not sure anyone knows, Prager or Akin or the various progressive pundits, what the numbers really are. The Soviet soldiers were more notorious for rape than almost any other army (one possible exception: the Japanese army in China). Does anyone know what the conception rate was? There were a lot of babies, but then the Russian soldiers committed a lot of atrocities. Not that I think Akin knows what he's talking about. I'm not sure anyone does.

Prager also trots out the "Feminist Perspectives on Rape" to remind people that there is more nuance to the issue, much as Jon Stewart's "hilarious" rape-rape lampoon tried to imply otherwise. In fact, the "Perspectives" article seems to imply that consensuality can be hazy under some conditions. Is it worse when some person takes something valuable when I've left it unguarded versus braking down my door, bashing my head in with the butt of a gun and taking my valuables at gunpoint? They are both theft. What? Are you saying there's theft, and then there's theft-theft? A thief is a thief. I'm not going to defend Roman Polaski, but if the same events had occurred with a woman of consensual age, would he still be a rapist? (As a grown woman she had claimed that Polanski did not try to hurt her in any way; not all women are so gracious toward their assailants) If not, is he as bad as some of the predators that get a thrill off the pain they cause? Would people have felt the same way if the girl had been 17? 16? Is 13 worse than 17, even if the legal remedies are the same? Jon Stewart can sneer about a spectrum; I suppose he thinks all crimes are equal. (There's crime, and then there's crime-crime.) Somehow, I doubt that is the case. The "Perspectives" itself describes a moral landscape that covers cases fundamentally different from that of the Trisha Meili case. That article doesn't even get into the shades of meaning that venture from the coercive to matters where consent is questionable. If the man and woman are both too innebriated to know what they're doing, who's fault is it? A feminist might reply that the man should never have allowed himself to get that drunk.

Akin plainly says that sexual assault can and does result in pregnancy. And he states that the fetus is an innocent child who should not pay for the crime. This latter part is contested by progressives. But rather than have this debate, they want to speculate on what Akin meant by 'legitimate rape.' It apparently doesn't mean that rape doesn't result in pregnancy. At worst, Akin's statements taken together seem to imply that conception likely means that the sex was consensual. Pundits largely aren't contesting Akin on the science; they are imputing evil intentions to a conservative. At best, Akins' statments imply that abortion is rarely about rape, and that where abortions are made available for that reason, they may well be procured for cases that were more a matter of drinking with some guy without intending that it would end with sex. If Crystal Mangum had become pregnant after the Duke Lacrosse incident, she would have been eligible for the get-out-of-jail-free-card, even though the law later determined that it was not a legitimate case of rape.

However, Jon Stewart can gloat about how little effect the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act actually had given the actual number of understandable terminations of in utero children, not just for rape and incest but for the health of the mother-- which pro-lifers who have been in the abortion business will tell you includes any time a girl/woman is experience stress or fear about having a baby. So, how many of the 191 women Stewart's show refers to fall into something other than "stress is threatening her mental health" category? That's not said. But let's assume for the moment that restrictions for this federal funding were limited to cases where the life of the mother was truly (legitimately) threatened. You do the math and find that the taxpayers were billed $1400 for each case.

Whatever one makes of the "evil intentions" of Todd Akin trying to keep all women barefoot and pregnant and "punish them with babies," the vast majority of abortions in the U.S. occur for the sake of convenience. The more young teenage girls get pregnant and are guided to abortions by altruistic abortion counselors, the more women grow up that are more than willing to buy into the progressive gospel that fetuses aren't babies and so abortion-on-demand is a wonderful expression of women's freedom. The alternative is too unthinkable.

Contra Stewart, there not only is a spectrum acknowledge by feminists, it is the foundation of the slippery slope we slid down at the very beginning. Rape and incest were merely talking points for killing infants in utero, because if you can destroy an infant over an extreme case of unwantedness, why deny more mild cases? It's not wrong until the infant can breathe air. That's the only explanation for why women get 5-18 years for killing their newborns immediately after birth, while Senator Obama refused to outlaw abortions into even the 9th month for fear that it would set a bad precedent. In the 70s progressives marched through the door with a banner that read "safe, legal, and rare" and have been celebrating having accomplished "legal" for the last 40 years. Rare was (and is) a blatant lie, and safe was a terrible joke. The press can't stop talking about the money interests of Big Oil but they won't "follow the money" in the abortion industry--it's too much of a darling project of a certain ideology. I think Todd Akin and Jon Stewart have both said stupid things. Unfortunately, people are still listening to Jon Stewart. Rape and abortion are just too darn funny.