I saw the movie GWTW when I was about 12 or 13 (there was a theatrical re-release), and I read the book not long after.

A lot of GWTW is hard to enjoy with any kind of political sensibility. The attitudes toward race/slavery got harder and harder to overlook each time I re-read it.

I'm not sure Mitchell would have called the Scarlett-Rhett scene rape. But I think it encourages a dangerous attitude. At the beginning of the scene, Scarlett keeps saying no when she really means -- well, I don't think she knows what she means. But Rhett (persists? insists? ignores?) until she somehow realizes that she really wants to say yes.

Which means the lesson to young men is, a woman's "no" is, at the least, never the final word. (A lesson reinforced in the scene where Rhett proposes to Scarlett. As much as they're two of a kind in the way they favor getting what they want over obeying the rules, "I'll keep kissing you until you say you'll marry me" is the same attitude he shows later on.) In other words, the attitude that launched a thousand stalkers.

(Sorry -- no point in saying it twice.)

It's not a fantasy for the characters, it's a fantasy for the reader. Scarlett being turned on by the rape makes it okay for the reader to feel the same way.

That would be the point. That it's the reader's fantasy acted out in a safe way. Nobody actually gets raped.

The bigger issue is the way scenes like that undermine "No, means, no." They accrete in the culture and there winds up being this unstated presumption that a man's passion should be all consuming and that women secretly desire to be taken.

But Betsy's point is that it's okay to have the fantasy of being taken forcibly and still have the right to say, "No" and have it respected.

Okay, I'll stop talking about Betsy's arguments in her absence. If I continue I'd probably end up misrepresenting her. But her point, as I understood it, was compelling and interesting to me.

At the beginning of the scene, Scarlett keeps saying no when she really means -- well, I don't think she knows what she means. But Rhett (persists? insists? ignores?) until she somehow realizes that she really wants to say yes.

I'm not seeing where she does say "No".

Aims, it's been a while since I've either read the book or seen the movie, but --

I'm looking at the point when Scarlett first sees Rhett in the dining room. She pretty much calls him a disgusting pig. He isn't exactly suggesting sex at that point, but she's telling him she doesn't want to be near him. Which isn't exactly saying "no sex," but any sensible man who heard her say, "You're drunk" in that tone would write off any chance.

At the beginning of the scene, Scarlett keeps saying no when she really means -- well, I don't think she knows what she means. But Rhett (persists? insists? ignores?) until she somehow realizes that she really wants to say yes.

I'm not seeing where she does say "No".

She physically resists, and pushes him away IIRC.

And lack of the actual spoken word "No" doesn't make it not-rape.

(What I think is most important -- and I don't mean in GWTW, I mean in general, in the real world of real people with complex and often confusing interactions -- is that there be an enthusiastic Yes, rather than merely the absence of a No.)

(Let me be clear: the parenthetical statement just above is NO LONGER talking about Gone with the Wind, in book or movie form. I veered off into a much bigger sphere, and if people want to discuss it, we could move it to another thread rather than hijack this one.)

She physically resists, and pushes him away IIRC.

Ok. But then she makes the conscious decsion to stop resisting and to participate. If there can be a physical "no" instead of a verbal one, surely there can be a physical "yes" instead of a varbal one, yes?

But then she makes the conscious decsion to stop resisting and to participate. If there can be a physical "no" instead of a verbal one, surely there can be a physical "yes" instead of a varbal one, yes?

In general, certainly.

I don't think that in the movie -- but I have to admit it's been a while since I've seen it -- she ever makes a demonstrable clear shift from physically resisting to physically participating (in the Oh Hell Yeah sense).

When Rhett carries Scarlett up the stairs (surely he had back trouble later in life), the vibe I get is the "I have beaten down your resistance, foolish woman, because I am mighty," as opposed to a vibe of "Okay, so, you're cool with this, then? Let's get it on!"

But I think in the culture at the time the book was written, no DID mean yes sometimes, and that was something both parties playing the flirtation game knew. A "good" girl was supposed to say no even if she wanted to say yes, and getting overwhelemd by the man was the only way sex was going to happen. I think that was the standard sexual narrative in play at that time and that tension could add a frisson of excitement. I read a lot of old magazines and a LOT of the romantic stories in women's magazines of that time have that exact game play--and these are stories written for women about romantic love. They didn't want to be raped, they wanted sex to be something that happened to them since a good girl would NEVER, even after marriage, want it outright.

It was a fucked up and dangerous game and based on dishonesty. I am glad it's gone. I do think, however, that every time we see it at that time that it IS about rape--sometimes it is just about the accepted dishonest dynamic and both parties are in tacit agreement to play their parts.

When Rhett carries Scarlett up the stairs (surely he had back trouble later in life), the vibe I get is the "I have beaten down your resistance, foolish woman, because I am mighty," as opposed to a vibe of "Okay, so, you're cool with this, then? Let's get it on!"

In the movie, for sure. There was nothing that showed her internal change from "Drucken ass!" to "Do me now!" - only that weird humming and playing with her hair the next morning.