Call a Rape a Rape: Bridgerton, Outlander, and Victim Blaming

TW: Sexual assault and victim blaming

I spend a lot of time reading, listening, discussing, and thinking about sexual assault both in media and in the real world. It’s a topic of great importance to me, and to all of us. Sexual assaults in varied forms are so pervasive that almost every woman I’ve ever met has faced harassment, assault, and gendered comments. It’s constant, and it’s everywhere.

Consequently, I have strong feelings about how it’s portrayed and discussed in media. The way we treat rape and survivors on TV informs how we treat them in the real world, and, perhaps just as importantly, how survivors expect to be treated by the people around them.

I’m going to run through three examples of rape in modern media that I think provide good lessons about how we should be discussing sexual assault on our screens. Two are from Outlander, and one is from Bridgerton.

The first, regarding the aftermath of Brianna’s sexual assault in Season 4 of Outlander, has to do with comments I have gotten multiple times with the same sentiment. If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, Brianna is raped by an acquaintance of her parents, Bonnet, though she isn’t really aware of the full connections. After Brianna becomes pregnant, unsure of who the child’s father is, she tells her mother about what happened.

Jamie, Brianna’s father, only knows that Bree was raped and is pregnant. Through a misunderstanding with the identity of the rapist, Jamie beats Roger, the man Bree loves, and Roger is sold to a Native tribe. It’s certainly a mess, but the comments that invariably come up from some are that this mess is somehow Brianna’s fault.

It comes down to essentially one argument, that Brianna should have told the details of her assault to her father. I understand that it’s perhaps hard for some to find fault with a beloved character like Jamie. But survivors do not owe anyone their story. There is absolutely no obligation Bree or anyone else has to talk about their experience with anyone they don’t want to. She confides in her mother, but no one else. That is fully within her rights, and saying that she should have told someone feeds into the victim blaming mentality that is so pervasive in our culture.

Brianna is not responsible for anyone’s actions other than her own; not Jamie’s, not Claire’s, and certainly not Bonnet’s.

Moreover, I hear the blame often lobbed at Claire in this situation, that she should have told Jamie. But Claire has no right to share Bree’s story. For whatever reason, Bree hasn’t yet, or maybe wouldn’t ever, have told her father all the details. She doesn’t need to explain herself, and Claire violating Bree’s trust by giving any more details than Bree is willing to share would be unconscionable.

Essentially, all of that is my long way around to saying that the only person responsible for their actions is themselves. The survivor is in no way responsible for the assault or the aftermath. The only person responsible is the assailant.

Which brings me to Bridgerton.

I think one of the most dangerous things I’ve seen in recent media is the reaction in some areas to the rape scene between Daphne and Simon in Bridgerton, because in many places, it isn’t being called a rape. I can see why some people take the perspective that it isn’t a rape, given the narrative many of us have been educated with regarding marriage, rape, and consent. But that’s why it’s so dangerous, and so important to call a rape a rape.

In this situation, Daphne is under the impression that Simon can’t have kids, though she doesn’t have the details why. The reality is that Simon doesn’t want to have kids because of trauma and history with his now-dead father. His lie to Daphne isn’t a good thing, and is certainly a shaky way to start a marriage.

It is not, however, justification for her behavior.

Once Daphne, through further education about sex, realizes that Simon has been pulling out in order to avoid her getting pregnant, she is furious. And, understandably so. She has been lied to by someone she loves and trusts. But what comes next is appalling.

With utter determination, she takes him to bed and chooses a specific position to force him to ejaculate inside her. Her only design is to accomplish that. She forces a physical act from him that she is fully aware he has not consented to. Married or not, that is rape. Lied to or not, that is rape. Her lack of previous sexual experience has nothing to do with this; she has full knowledge of what she is doing, and what she is doing is rape.

I have seen some comments about this scene as some kind of female empowerment victory. I want to be very clear: this is in no way female empowerment. A fight for consent means for everyone to be comfortable and clear in their sexual encounters that consent is freely and wholeheartedly given. Simon certainly does not consent to this act, and Daphne takes it from him.

Imagine it with the genders flipped. What if Daphne was clear that she didn’t want a baby, and Simon, with full intention, ejaculated inside her. That’s horrendous. It is not different with the genders reversed.

And what is so dangerous about this is that we are supposed to root for this couple. We are supposed to want them to “work things out” when one of them has raped the other. I cannot imagine a situation where the same would be desired by creators or by the audience if the genders were reversed. It’s pervasive misogyny that acts as though men can’t be raped, or acts as though Simon’s lack of truthfulness about why he and Daphne weren’t going to have children somehow justifies this act on her part.

The only person who bears responsibility for an assault is the assailant. Of course it’s not Simon’s fault that he was raped, anymore than it’s Bree’s, or anymore than it’s Claire’s. Which brings me to my third point.

In Outlander Book and Season 2, Claire is raped by the King of France. And let’s be clear: it is a rape.

Consent can’t be given if coercion is involved, and Claire is undoubtedly coerced. Her husband is imprisoned, and his life and liberty hang in the balance. The only way she can save him is to have sex with the King. She doesn’t want to, this isn’t her being aroused and into it, she’s doing it because she feels compelled to do so.

No one says of Jamie, with his own rape at the hands of Black Jack Randall, that it wasn’t a rape simply because he said he wouldn’t fight to save Claire from Randall. It’s still a rape. His “consent” is coerced, so therefore, is not consent.

The same is true of Claire in this situation. She doesn’t want to sleep with the King. It is obligatory, and obligation is a form of coercion. As is the massive power imbalance between a King and a woman alone in the 1740s. Even today, with a boss and a subordinate, a professor and a student, a politician and an aide.

And the reason that it’s so dangerous to lessen this assault, to not call a rape a rape, is that survivors of this kind of assault so often do that to themselves. They’ve been coerced into a “yes” they didn’t really feel, or maybe even just not a “no,” so they internalize guilt. Questions of whether they should have been clearer, should have fought, verbally or physically, or whether they were sexually assaulted at all, are so pervasive in these kinds of assaults.

The way we talk about it when it’s Claire and the King of France, when it’s Daphne and Simon, when it’s Bree and Bonnet, affects how we see it in the real world. It affects how the survivors around us see the situation, and themselves. That’s why it’s so important to have honest conversations about media like this.

If I have a single takeaway from these three stories, it’s that we need to be honest and empathetic about these situations. We need to talk and discuss, to give survivors a safe space where they won’t be afraid they’ll be judged or blamed. Whether that’s for waiting to come forward or for only telling parts, for being in a committed relationship when the assault happened or because they’re a man and societal pressures tell them to ignore it or that it didn’t happen, for being coerced and for not really being sure how to feel, or for feeling guilty because they didn’t say no hard enough…We have to stop blaming the survivors.

Overall, I think we have made steps in the right direction. In many places, women in particular are still blamed outright. “What was she wearing?” and “She was asking for it” are not uncommon. But as a cultural consciousness, I think we’ve started to shift away from that thinking, from the overtly sexist and misogynistic interpretations of rape that have been held for far too long.

But it’s past time to dive into the nuance, to examine the underlying ways we still victim blame. We want to be allies — I certainly do — but that often means looking to the ways in which we still further problematic viewpoints. It’s integral that we continue to discuss, with compassion and empathy for those who have lived it and those who are still learning (which is all of us). But it’s important we talk about it, and talk about it with passion, and with love.

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 800-273-8255