Something really fucking important happened in last night's episode of Girls. Women have been dealing forever with the parameters of rape -- what constitutes it, what validates it, and what makes a rape a rape.
The reason date rape happens so often, and goes unreported, is because sexual activity can quickly get weird and women are at times prone to blaming themselves for allowing intimacy go too far.
Last night's Girls addressed something that we've never seen
handled directly on television before: consensual sex that evolves into something that one partner doesn't want. It's not rape, technically, but it's something that perhaps almost all women will deal with at some point. On last night's Girls, Adam pushed boundaries with his current love interest -- a woman he met last week through a friend at AA -- and the results were horrible, yet very common.
It was established already that the two were sexually intimate. And it was established already that she was a willing sexual partner. But late in the episode, Adam -- after making his date crawl on all fours to the bed -- pushed his partner's boundaries by having sex with her from behind and then, against her will, ejaculating on her chest despite the fact that, during it all, she's telling him not to do it.
Afterwards, she quietly covers her body, before telling Adam "I, like, really didn't like that," stern and visibly disturbed. "I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me," he says, looking for sympathy.
Having a scenario like this play out on mainstream television is huge. This is the type of thing that happens to women -- regardless of age or race or social standing -- all the time. And it seems there's not much she can do about it. Technically, it's not rape, so how can women feel victimized? How can they tell the world they were violated when no discernible laws were broken? How can you complain about saying "no" to specific sexual activities when you've already consented to sex?
