Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

Rape culture in pro-wrestling


El-P

Recommended Posts

While on the subject of the Flair/Lynch kiss, I have no problem with it as long as Lynch wasn't pressured into doing it. Flair was the scumbag heel, we were not supposed to like him. Plus he was doing it to distract Lynch, not just for his own sexual satisfaction.

Not justifying that spot at all but there does also need to be a wider discussion I think about heel heat in the modern era, especially about how the company draws shot heat for bad actions as opposed to the heel getting kayfabe heat for it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 141
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

The Idea of Rape Culture comes from the part left-wing ideas and I a Left winger of the old left hate how can there be Rape Culture in wrestling if there is is not rape Culture anywhere else and if you calling it an industry Issue alone then so be it that is fine the term Rape Culture has always Irked me

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not "pro wrestling" per say, but the rape culture is online as well. I guess it never left, but it has since bubbled up on my time line. There are real situations outside of the ring yes, but I thought the community was beyond making 'threats' to rape a man's girlfriend/wife all because that man gave Misawa/Kobashi ** 1/2 stars and dislikes Vince Russo. This element is alive and well in 2018.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Idea of Rape Culture comes from the part left-wing ideas and I a Left winger of the old left hate how can there be Rape Culture in wrestling if there is is not rape Culture anywhere else and if you calling it an industry Issue alone then so be it that is fine the term Rape Culture has always Irked me

Dear Lord. Where to even begin.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Too bad. It exists. It's everywhere. It's absolutely not unique to "Da Buziness".

it does not in fact
If you're not a troll account, you live in a country that had female only subway cars to avoid groping. So yeah, rape culture exists.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Going back to the discussion...I think it's important when offering up these examples of 'Rape Culture' spots in terms of the TV product to include the context, which is where the offense or taste or appropriate levels come into play.

 

It's not like we're talking about real life examples where rape culture is a real, horrible thing and there are real victims. We're talking about it being represented on a TV show. The same way that it has been in, say, Game of Thrones, to use an extreme example. Entertainment reflects the world we live in, and when there is rape culture in the world, it is going to be portrayed in entertainment in some form. I think in terms of portraying it, this is one of the most sensitive and dangerous aspects of life to try to comment on, and if you're going to go there, there has to be a level of responsibility of those doing so to not portray it in a way that glorifies or excuses or perpetuates it. And that comes down to how you do it.

 

To go back to the original example, Tatanka, a babyface, forcibly kissing a heel because she was interfering, and the crowd cheering this as a positive act (or at least that would be the idea)...that is positioning sexual assault as a babyface act and perpetuating an idea of a woman "deserving it" if they behave a certain way, and also making your audience complicit in cheering and approving of his actions. Gross.

 

The least you can say about the Flair and Becky spot is that it was a heel doing it to a babyface and the "right person" was committing the sexual assault, but again there's an issue with presentation because whoever said it above was right - that spot was a comedy spot. Flair did it and Woooooo'd and half of the crowd started Wooooooing with him and it was treated as Flair Bein' Flair and even a clever heel distraction instead of a scumbag committing a dog act that has no place as a cheap trick.

 

Of course, these kinds of spots are all well-worn in the business and have been used freely as heel or face spots for decades. Trying to identify, and ultimately undo all these decades of wrestling's treatment and portrayal of women, found in these individual spots and moments, is what we're looking at in this thread. One Tatanka spot on an indy show isn't going to change the world. But it IS part of a long term pattern of using abuse of women for cheap heat one way or the other, and that makes it part of a wider rape culture. You can't remove it from that context.

 

The Rhodes/Golden Lovers stuff is interesting on multiple levels.

 

The first is in them using rape culture and what have historically been very cheap, throwaway spots in wrestling (as seen above) and trying to give them the weight that they deserve. There is a point to it. The love story of the Lovers is integral to the angle and these spots are part of a wider attempt by Cody and Brandi to come between them and break them up. And they're not being played for laughs, this is serious. When Cody did it even Marty Scurll The Villain or whatever the fuck he is was like WTF, this is messed up. The crowd was HORRIFIED. Ibushi was traumatized. As was Omega. This isn't a spot that gets forgotten by the finish of the match, these are BIG moments. They have consequences. The victims of the act are having to process and deal with it. The perpetrators are going to (eventuallly) get some serious comeuppance for being such pieces of shit. That's what it's all building to. I don't think you can reasonably compare this stuff to a throwaway spot, except to say that they're both (very different) portrayals of rape culture in wrestling.

 

The other interesting aspect of this angle is how they are using queerness and pretty much flipping the script on how that has always been portrayed in wrestling too. A queer love story between two men is the angle, they're the babyfaces and we're rooting for them to get together. In this context queerness is OK, it is normal, instead of being abnormal and exaggerated for either laughs or for heel heat/gay fear spots as it has so often been in wrestling. And so you have the straight man (and the straight woman) being the despicable one, sexually assaulting the queer man, and we are horrified by this because we know this is wrong. It certainly isn't funny. And we have a kind of sympathy generated for a queer male character we've never seen before in wrestling, when so often they have been used as the perpetrators of sexual violence to play off masculine fear of homosexuality.

 

Not to mention the way Brandi kissed Omega and said "you liked it, you're a fraud" which is a very fraught idea for bisexuals - the idea that they don't exist, that they're either gay or straight and pretending to like both genders for some reason or other. This is a slur that might not even be fully clear to people who aren't bisexual or familiar with queer culture, but it's a key part of that particular event, and honestly, the extent to which they are using queer culture and rape culture in a realistic, responsible way to help create this story is something we've never seen before in pro wrestling. Frankly, not in a lot of popular entertainment in general. The heat is on the right people, for doing the wrong thing. Again, if you're going to go there, this is certainly a much better way to do so than using a random forced kiss as cheap heat halfway through a match.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Idea of Rape Culture comes from the part left-wing ideas and I a Left winger of the old left hate how can there be Rape Culture in wrestling if there is is not rape Culture anywhere else and if you calling it an industry Issue alone then so be it that is fine the term Rape Culture has always Irked me

Can you just fuck off.

 

I'm sorry, but pretending that rape culture doesn't exist is fucking disgusting and I want nothing to do from you, no matter how funny your posts are to laugh at.

 

I am not blocking you, so I never have to see your posts again. Please stop being such an awful person.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Excellent stuff by Jimmy. And that's just mentioning how wrestling does it. If one were to mention how other types of media encourage dangerous and sometimes criminal behavior towards women, we would be sitting here for days.

 

It's just INSANE to say that "rape culture" is a creation of the new left (as if the right shouldn't worry about subjects like these, what the fuck) and that this doesn't happen in reality. Specially living in a country like Brazil were violence aimed towards women reaches staggering numbers, someone saying anything remotely like that is just flat out stupidity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Excellent stuff by Jimmy. And that's just mentioning how wrestling does it. If one were to mention how other types of media encourage dangerous and sometimes criminal behavior towards women, we would be sitting here for days.

 

It's just INSANE to say that "rape culture" is a creation of the new left (as if the right shouldn't worry about subjects like these, what the fuck) and that this doesn't happen in reality. Specially living in a country like Brazil were violence aimed towards women reaches staggering numbers, someone saying anything remotely like that is just flat out stupidity.

Dude im not of the right I hate the Right wing for economic reasons the whole right are either Neocon warmongers or Brought out Neo-Lib stooges if you from the then us you will never have a truly left-wing party because how the far th=o the right the us spectrum is

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...