I can't remember the complete story, but Shia Labeuf was I guess just your average celebrity actor that people loved to hate until he did something weird - I think it was copy some graphic novel frame for frame into a short movie and put it in a festival, without permission from the original author. Blah blah blah, public backlash people people care way too much about shit like this and there's more attention on him, he get's weird or it's all of a sudden obvious that he's weird. We wrote an apology letter to the guy, which in turn was also plagiarized (I think this is hilarious), which pissed off more people. He started wearing a paper bag on his head in public appearances with apologies written on it, etc. Whatever, he's weird or he's an artist - who the fuck cares.
So then, he puts on this performance art show, which basically translates to "anyone doing anything anywhere and just deciding to call it performance art instead of what they're actually doing" which consisted of him sitting in a room with a bag on his head and members of the public entering to interact with him, although he wouldn't actually do anything - just sit there. Some people thought it was brilliant - every single one of those people has a liberal arts degree and thinks too much about things most people don't think about. Before entering this room, you get to pick an item (one of which being a whip) to take in with you and do whatever with.
So, chick picks up a whip, whips him, fucks him I guess, and then leaves. He later says it was rape. Piers Morgan and some other people say "You know, I don't know if that's actually rape" and people jump out of the woodwork because you can never EVER victim blame and rape isn't what you get to say it is. That's how this story got my attention, an article about how this is rape and to deny that is to deny the possibility that a man can be raped and BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS BLAH.
And here's the thing. HERE IS THE FUCKING THING - "Men's right's activists" or "MRAs", who I personally think are the most misguided loose affiliation of people ever, are right on that side. Piers Morgan is a fucking clown but he has a point - if you're going to define what went on here as rape, you're kind of diluting the meaning of the word, which kinda has implications. I don't know if I really give a shit about that all BUT HERE'S THE REAL FUCKING THING: The internet has enabled an entire sub culture of people being complete pussies. This weird whirlwind of people being offended and appalled totally ignores the fact that this dude was pretty much sitting there with a bag over his head and just let it fucking happen for the sake of art. He acts like he was raped because he was forced to make the choice between going along with his art project and, you know, doing something to prevent an event from happening to him or to ...stop it or something.
The obvious defense to that is "Lack of consent is the same as rape", which, sure, makes sense (commas motherfucker). I'm sure there are many situations of legitimate rape where people didn't put up a fight, but it seems like the next logical question to "So, you didn't do anything - physically or verbally - to indicate that this was unwanted?" would be "why?" A legitimate answer could be that you were scared you were going to get your throat slit or your face punched off. No wanting to compromise the sanctity of your art would be a completely illegitimate answer. It seems pretty simple and I have no idea why so many people just can't grasp it...especially in the joke situations like this one.
