“Lie Back and Enjoy It” and the Terrible Messages about Consent from the Outlander Books
We need to talk about Roger and Bree, in this scene from ABOSAA, Ch 6 in particular.
Recently, I was chatting with a friend who brought this scene to my attention. They were appalled that, in general, there seemed to be a degree of apathy around this scene. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but people were not shocked or appalled, which, with the degree of normalization this behavior receives, I certainly wasn’t surprised.
Why should we be shocked and appalled? This scene is straight up dangerous to real people.
Roger wants to have sex, essentially in public, even though it's dark which offers some cover, but obviously not completely. Bree, obviously uncomfortable with this, repeatedly tells Roger to stop, trying to push him away. And he doesn't. He keeps pressing the issue. She takes his hand and puts it on her breast, trying not to hurt his feelings, trying to show that she appreciates the sexual interest but isn’t into it at the moment. She’s dancing around his feelings, bending herself into knots to try and appease him. But he won’t have it. He even lifts her skirts, continuing to press until he gets what he wants.
Part 1 from A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Ch 6
As Bree states, he usually reads her body well, but at the moment, she suspects "he simply didn't care what she wanted." It is clear here that Bree does not want to have sex with him — and whatever her reasons for that are, whether it’s embarrassment, she’s simply not in the mood, or anything, that is VALID — but Roger is not taking no for an answer. Asking for consent is everything, but it has to be safe to say no. This shows clearly that it's not safe for Bree to say no, because Roger will just keep at it.
We even get the line where she tells herself to "lie back and enjoy it," a line repeatedly by untold numbers of people who are pressured into doing things they don't want. Fighting makes it worse. And here's where this becomes a more serious problem: "wantonness was winning." All of a sudden, Bree’s perfectly reasonable concerns about having sex in the open with not only their son, but Fergus and Marsali's son, beside them, simply melt away, and we get a “sex scene.”
Part 2 from Ch 6, ABOSAA
She doesn't make a choice. She suppress embarrassment, but doesn't decide this having sex is what she wants. Absolutely people can decide to have sex for their partners, even when it wouldn't be their idea of what they wanted to do. But this isn't Bree’s choice. There is no indication that she has decided she wants this. She has decided to enjoy it because it’s going to happen anyway. That is not the same thing.
What we get from this is the message that you can ignore your partner's no, that they will and ought to just lie back and enjoy it. The ending leaves off with them perfectly fine, which is an atrocious normalization of a huge violation of consent. It furthers the idea that she doesn’t really mean no when she says it, that some reasons for saying no are more valid than others, and that her no is up for debate.
Part 3, Ch 6 ABOSAA
And this is not one incident out of thousands of pages. This shows up over and over and OVER again in the Outlander books, and it needs to stop. This is not a small issue. It is a pervasive theme across characters and books that normalizes to women in particular that they should just make the best of it when their protests are ignored, and to men that their partner's no is negotiable. I'm not saying it's out of character or anachronistic -- this is not an argument about historical accuracy or lack thereof. I am saying that we need to demand better of our fiction than one that excuses such violations of consent and acts like they're just a part of relationships. They aren't.
Every time we read something or watch something where behavior like that is played off as normal, it is reinforcing in our minds that it is. There is not a moment of questioning here, not a moment where Bree thinks even, “well he shouldn’t have done that, but oh well, I made the best of it.” No, it’s a soft, sweet glow of “I love you” and “thank you” as if that gives a person a right to your body. It is treated as normal, even romanticized and sexualized. The long history of sexual assault being sexualized is an entirely other conversation, but the idea of ignoring a no should ring horribly to our ears, even between intimate partners. Otherwise, it is less and less likely to ring horribly when it happens in real life as well.