5 Amazing Scenes Where Pop Culture Got Consent Right

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Pop culture often promotes some lousy ideas about consent. Persistence and not taking no for an answer are portrayed as romantic; rape and sexual assault are excused because the victim “wanted it“; lying and manipulating people into bed, and having sex with people too drunk to consent, are offered as light, prime-time humor; rape victims stay friends and lovers with their rapists, with rape being trivialized and even denied.

But pop culture does have its moments. Whether it’s because the creators were thinking consciously about consent or simply had good values, here are five times pop culture got consent right. (Spoilers for Steven Universe, Thelma and Louise, Frozen, The Philadelphia Story, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

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Thus begins my latest piece for AlterNet, 5 Amazing Scenes Where Pop Culture Got Consent Right. To read more, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy! (Please note: AlterNet changed the title, and the title they gave it is somewhat misleading: not all the scenes are sex scenes, and not all of them are exactly right.)

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5 Amazing Scenes Where Pop Culture Got Consent Right
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3 thoughts on “5 Amazing Scenes Where Pop Culture Got Consent Right

  1. 1

    Hey, Greta. I follow your blog in an RSS reader (feedly) and I’ve no problem with clicking through to the Orbit to read the full article, but at the moment the stub article tells me to click through to the Orbit, and only then do I find out that I actually need to click through again to AlterNet, which is kind of annoying. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about it, but if you can have the AlterNet articles direct me to click straight through to them, I’d be very grateful.

    At the moment the stub article ends with:
    “The post 5 Amazing Scenes Where Pop Culture Got Consent Right appeared first on Greta Christina’s Blog.”

  2. 2

    I saw Superbad for the first time a couple of days ago (yeah, I’m a little behind), and I was surprised to discover that consent turned out to be a major theme of the movie, specifically in relation to alcohol consumption.

  3. 3

    I love the 1940 example from The Philadelphia Story. There’s a tendency (among terrible people) to wax poetic about the “good ol’ days” (for whom?) before all this social progress was made. But the truth is that, ideas like consent have always been around. In 2016. In 1940. 1875. Yes, even 228. And sassy but roaring 873 BCE.

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