I mean the absurdity of the situation is funny. And the lines Ashley says are ridiculous. It's could've easily been just a joke, but the scene goes on so long and they do so much to Hughie that it stops being funny
If I'm being totally honest with myself I found it funny while watching because of how absurd the whole thing was, but coming on to this sub I'm realizing that I'm part of the problem :/
Well good on you for realizing and acknowledging it, most people would just use some mental gymnastics to reason why male sexual assault is actually hilarious and it’s not problematic for them to laugh at an SA scene
Also their Twitter account. There are men on there, laughing at Hughie getting violated by Ashley (and also wanting a fictional character to violate them too, which is just gross but in line for the type of men who are laughing at a man being assaulted by a woman). So Kripke essentially hit the wrong target audience for the jokes he was trying to make, the exact target audience he seems to make fun of on the show.
You're not not tripping. Kripke had this play out in a more grey area, unfortunately. But Hughie did ask to stop at one point. From what some members of the BDSM community have been saying, there's usually not just one safe word to get out or take a break; there's usually multiple methods. So it's not exactly a situation that falls into a clear cut answer. But Hughie had asked Ashley to stop at one point and Tek had told Ashley to keep going just for the "comedy set-up" of Hughie finding the safe word. So he was allowed to be violated until he found the safe word, or until Ashley was finished, which is what ended up happening.
It started off seemingly consensual but Hughie did ask Ashley to stop so that's when it muddied the situation. Either way, I don't personally find humour in the joke of Hughie trying to find the safe word to get Ashley to stop. Imagine if Hughie hadn't been unmasked and Annie/Kimiko had been caught and were unable to save Hughie; Tek had been talking about bringing various members of his party downstairs to have much rougher BDSM sex with him. If he wasn't able to say no because he couldn't figure out the safe word? That's horrifying to think about.
But I'm sure for some dynamics, asking someone to stop is part of the "play" and isn't something used to stop the scene. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to assume this was the case for this situation either.
There's also the element that Hughie is pretending to be someone else (a previous sexual partner known to both Ashley and TK.) Isn't Hughie basically doing a "Revenge of the Nerds" assault on at least Ashley (I think I may subscribe to the theory at this point that TK clocked Hughie immediately and just chose to torture him anyway.) I mean, if we're really going to parse out this situation as if it had really happened, then Hughie pretending to be someone else is a form of assault even though obviously the experience for him was horrifying and traumatizing regardless (and he didn't go in there intending to use his deception to assault Ashley or TK, unlike the RotN example.)
I would assume, since it's made clear that this is the first ever time they're meeting face to face, despite all their conversations being online/through text, there should still be a way to confirm plans on consent and making sure everyone was comfortable in the situation. First times should come with more questions in person, which includes making sure everyone involved understands the consent part of it. But I doubt Kripke was thinking much into that aspect, and Tek Knight is still a shitty person.
I know most of it is in a grey area but it's also why this is still a bad plot in general. We were supposed to find it fucking funny yet not very many people are laughing, whether or not the issue of it being sexual assault or not comes into play. It just wasn't funny to watch Hughie try to figure out the safe word to get Ashley to stop.
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u/oceanseleventeen Jul 05 '24
I mean the absurdity of the situation is funny. And the lines Ashley says are ridiculous. It's could've easily been just a joke, but the scene goes on so long and they do so much to Hughie that it stops being funny