If we're counting statutory rape, Buffy was a freaking school counsellor in Him and the guy was a STUDENT. Also: See Surprise.
And yes, Dru was raped by Angelus and Darla when they turned her. Angelus also raped Holtz's wife "repeatedly" and bragged about it. Angelus also threatened to rape Fred.
Cordy was also possessed when we had eye-sporking Connor/Cordy sex.
(including me—I don’t have a problem with it from the perspective of Spike’s story, but I do from Buffy’s: it makes her a victim and reduces her story to something to serve Spike’s story, and on a feminist show that’s All About Buffy, this is problematic
I'm not sure that it wasn't done to serve Buffy's story. It's the old rape redemption cliche in soaps. Whenever they write a female character into being unsympathetic to the audience (and Buffy's popularity had plummeted at that time. UPN market research at the time had her at either third or fourth in popularity... in her own show (I say third or fourth because I can't remember whether Tara was more popular than Buffy at that time. I know that both Willow and Spike were). Anyway, it's fairly standard soap trope that if they have a female character who has been rendered unsympathetic to the audience, the quickie way to solve it is never to write a plot for her where she works toward bettering herself but to quickly victimize her with rape. It's only partially successful, but soaps do it all the time. The fact that Buffy who had consistently been shown to be physically stronger for years prior to that scene only to be written as suddenly extremely physicaly vulnerable for that one scene and that one scene alone has always made me suspicious that Marti Noxon was doing ye old soap cliche. Hell, when she pitched it as a storyline she (and Joss!) specifically compared it to a soap opera (General Hospital). So... consider me suspicious.
no subject
And yes, Dru was raped by Angelus and Darla when they turned her. Angelus also raped Holtz's wife "repeatedly" and bragged about it. Angelus also threatened to rape Fred.
Cordy was also possessed when we had eye-sporking Connor/Cordy sex.
(including me—I don’t have a problem with it from the perspective of Spike’s story, but I do from Buffy’s: it makes her a victim and reduces her story to something to serve Spike’s story, and on a feminist show that’s All About Buffy, this is problematic
I'm not sure that it wasn't done to serve Buffy's story. It's the old rape redemption cliche in soaps. Whenever they write a female character into being unsympathetic to the audience (and Buffy's popularity had plummeted at that time. UPN market research at the time had her at either third or fourth in popularity... in her own show (I say third or fourth because I can't remember whether Tara was more popular than Buffy at that time. I know that both Willow and Spike were). Anyway, it's fairly standard soap trope that if they have a female character who has been rendered unsympathetic to the audience, the quickie way to solve it is never to write a plot for her where she works toward bettering herself but to quickly victimize her with rape. It's only partially successful, but soaps do it all the time. The fact that Buffy who had consistently been shown to be physically stronger for years prior to that scene only to be written as suddenly extremely physicaly vulnerable for that one scene and that one scene alone has always made me suspicious that Marti Noxon was doing ye old soap cliche. Hell, when she pitched it as a storyline she (and Joss!) specifically compared it to a soap opera (General Hospital). So... consider me suspicious.