I just finished watching the first episode of the new season of The Real World. In the course of the hour-long show, one of the roommates, Ryan, said so many things that pissed me the fuck off that I don’t know if I can watch the rest of the season. How did he infuriate me? Let me count the ways.
- “Is that what you’re wearing? Girl, you’re going to get raped out there! That’s like asking someone to rape you! [...] Hey, I’m just telling you what you’re asking for.” (to female roommate before they go out for the night.) Yay! Victim-blaming language!
- “Jemmye and Knight are destined to make out. Jemmye likes to drink, and Knight just has to strike at the right time.” Let’s take advantage of girls when they’re drunk! That’s not rapey at all!
- “I’m just trying to look out for you, because you said you black out easily.” (To female roommate, as he takes her drink away.) YES. US DELICATE LAYDEEZ NEED TEH MENZ TO “LOOK OUT FOR US” BECAUSE WE CANNOT HANDLE OURSELVES.
- At the gay bar, a dude kisses his neck, and he proceeds to act like he’s contaminated. The gay roommate (Preston) comes over and puts his arm around him, joking that that he’s gonna turn gay because he has the “gay cooties” now. “That’s what happens when one of us touches you!” Ryan’s response? “When one of you guys touches me, I feel like killing myself.” (You can watch a clip here.) Oh, now we’ve thrown in homophobia!
- Preston gets understandably upset about that last statement, and when he says so, Ryan accuses him of “blowing this out of proportion.” Of course! The minority who was just offended by a blatantly homophobic remark and told that he makes someone “want to kill [themselves]” needs to not be so sensitive about shit!
- “What are you laughing at? Were you even there? Or were you blacked out on some dude?” (To female roommate when she defends Preston.) Slut-shaming!
- “You’re fucking trailer trash.” (to same female roommate as above. This is the same roommate that was “asking to get raped.”) Because she’s from the south, get it! The girl didn’t even grow up in a fucking trailer.
I will have to disagree with the commenter on MTV.com that said:
I LOVE RYAN!!!OMG!!!his decent,emotional AND decent!I have alot of respect and love for him already,the girls….ummmm….Not so!
Because, hey, Ryan? I’m pretty sure I hate you.
I'm Britni, a snarky bitch and generally awesome person. I write about sex, love, and bullshit. If sex-positivity, discussions about BDSM and kink, queer issues, and topics that are completely inappropriate by society's standards make you uncomfortable, then this blog is not for you.
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9 Comments
I don’t watch the show anymore because I feel like I’m getting too old, but I did watch the clip (of the ‘homophobic’ reaction).
The same sort of behavior, if it was a random man kissing a woman’s neck in a bar, would be considered sexual assault. What I found far more upsetting than the ‘I want to kill myself’ remark was the apologetic attitude of the gay guy and the girl commenting about the event.
The gay guy said he should have taken it as a compliment because it meant he was doing something right. The girl said he should have expected it because he was at a gay bar and the gay guy bought him a drink. Both of those? Are responses that are always given when women get too uppity about men making unwanted sexual advances towards them. Should that behavior be expected just because you go to a bar? No. Are gay men just incapable of controlling themselves? No. So why is that okay and it’s not okay for the guy to get pissed about it?
The comment about killing himself was pretty melodramatic, but so was everyone picking on him about not wanting to be kissed by a man he wasn’t interested in. If we expect people to be more sympathetic to women about sexual assault then we’ve got to extend the same courtesy to men, because they can be sexually assaulted too.
People should be decent because it’s the decent thing to do. Period. Victims of sexual assault shouldn’t have to behave in a certain way to get sympathy.
Yeah, this is why I don’t watch those shows. People act like huge assholes because they know the more obnoxious they are, the more famous they’ll get. Who knows what this douche would be like if there weren’t cameras rolling?
And some stranger shouldn’t have randomly kissed him in a bar. That is completely unacceptable, and I would have slugged anyone who did it to me. The whole show sounds like it has a “sexual assault is okay and funny!” tone, which this jerkass both contributes to and is hurt by.
What, so you’re saying the guy deserved to be made to feel awkward via sexual harrassment (point 4) because he’s a dick?
You said yourself, THE POINT BEFORE, that taking advantage of a drunken person is rapey behaviour.
So it’s rapey behaviour if a straight dickhead does it to a woman, but not if a gay man does it to a straight man?
You can’t say “You should expect that stuff at a gay bar”, because that’s EXACTLY the same as saying “You should expect that stuff if you go out dressed like that”.
Yeah, his reaction may have been homophobic, but you just totally glossed over the fact that he was just sexually harrassed. He clearly didn’t want to be kissed, and the gay man kissed him anyway. How is that any different from inappropriate touching of a woman who is uncomfortable with it?
You’ve said it yourself plenty of times: It doesn’t matter what a person does or what their personality is like; if they are sexually harrassed/assaulted, and then you blame them for it/say they deserved it/make them out to be the one in the wrong – that’s victim blaming!
I’m not saying he’s not a dick, but if some random guy came up to me and kissed me on the neck after no flirting whatsoever, and then I berated him for it in any which way possible just to make him feel as awkward and harrassed as I did right then, and you had more interest in my reaction than the fact I was just harrassed, we’d have a problem.
Where did I say he “deserved” anything? Don’t fucking put words in my mouth.
I’m not, but you seem to think victim blaming is a lot more than literally saying “He deserved it”.
It can be as simple as giving advice.
All I’m saying is it had been:
“At the bar, a dude kisses her neck, and he proceeds to act like he’s contaminated. The roommate comes over and puts his arm around her, joking that that she’s gonna turn sleep with him because she has the “cooties” now. “That’s what happens when one of us touches you!” Her response? “When one of you guys touches me, I feel like killing myself.””
..it’d have been a whole other reaction from you:
“How could they treat it like a joke?! Making light of sexual assault, making it look like the victim was complaining about nothing?! That’s how victim-blaming starts..”
I’m just saying there seems to be a double standard where it’s okay for people to make light of sexual harrassment on guys and act like they have no right to complain and it’s okay to joke, but when it’s girls, saying there were complaining about nothing (or at least something they could have avoided) is the start of victim-blaming.
I’m not saying he’s not a dick, just the fact that if it had been a guy kissing a woman’s neck when they didn’t want it, it’d be a whole other story. Because let’s be fair, it wasn’t just a peck on the cheek – neck-kissing is a definite sexual thing. Yes, he took it a little over the top, but you are acting like he was wrong for complaining about it.
Also, Brit, where did http://www.casapalmera.com/articles/consequences-of-alcohol-abuse-and-addiction/ ever say they “deserved” to be raped?
They didn’t, yet your own headline was “Drunk Bitches Totes Deserve To Be Raped”. If you can sensationalistically put words into people’s mouths on inference of what else you can read, please don’t have (another) double standard of not allowing other people to do so.
I’ve dealt with guys grabbing at me inappropriately at bars and clubs, and my response was as follows:
1. Telling them to stop it.
2. Moving away from them.
3. Getting them kicked out if they continued to harass me.
Things like that did bother me, but I never implied that the person doing the grabbing was going to “infect” me by their touch, or otherwise behaved like Ryan did. Beign accosted by someone at a bar, regardless of what kid of bar it is, is not pleasant, and shouldn’t be considered “the norm”. But where Ryan went wrong was loudly complaining about how another man kissing him was akin to infection right by a gay castmember. That was just plain rude and insensitive.
As for Ryan’s other comments, there isn’t much more that needs to be said other than Die In A Fire.
Come on, though. I’m not saying how he acted was right at all.
I’m just saying that if the situation was reversed to a man/woman situation, and the men taunted her over it, that’s an okay thing to do?
I’m not making any excuses for him, I’m just saying that if it were a lesbian who’d just been touched in a way they didn’t want to be touched by a guy, and men were taunting her and she fired back with “When a guy touches me, it makes me want to kill myself”, I doubt Brit’s sole reaction would be “She’s a misandrist”.
Oh no, she’d be coming down on the taunters, saying that sort of thing leads to victim-blaming, because they’re trying to make it out to be a trivial thing that the victim has no right to complain about because they put themselves in that situation.
But no, no mention of that at all. Because he’s homophobic, that takes precedence and the fact he was just harrassed is swept under the carpet.
That IS a double standard.