The Debrief
12.27.16 | Kate Lloyd
The Debrief: For every step forward we take in understanding consent and sexual assault, we take two steps back. But how much actually changed this year?
‘Grab them by the pussy’: five words which will, depressingly, forever remind us of 2016. Next year, America will have a leader who openly doesn’t give a damn about sexual consent. He is a man who was chosen by 53% of white female voters, despite multiple women coming forward to claim they’d been groped, pinned down and raped by him.
Ironically, Donald Trump’s win came at the end of a year where ‘consent’ and its definition have been widely discussed. Perhaps, even more so than ever before. From kitch ‘consent pants’ featuring messages like ‘no means no’ to the Bad Neighbours 2’s frat-boy-hating feminist protagonist: the message that you need to ask permission before you perform a sexual act on someone appears to be getting louder. When 'pro-rape pick-up artist' Daryush Valizadeh planned to do talks in the UK in February, 55,000 people signed a petition to stop him. Indeed, comments which went under the radar when they were made in 2013 by film director Bernardo Bertolucci about Marlon Brando performing a non-consensual sexual act on co-star Maria Schneider in Last Tango, caused outrage when they resurfaced this month (he says it was a ‘misunderstanding’).
So, has all the discussion actually made things better for women? Is there a greater understanding that sexual assault doesn’t just involve a creepy man in an alleyway? Are there higher conviction rates and lower numbers of reported sexual assault? Does all this talk translate into change?
