So apparently Tank is a rapist... wait, what?! · 12:35am Jul 8th, 2014
Fillies and gentlecolts, I present to you the largest concentration of idiocy I have seen in recent memory.
So I'm browsing Tumblr, and I see this screenshot, apparently taken from a discussion about May The Best Pet Win:
Yes, you heard right. Some ivory tower intellectual decided to take the episode about Rainbow Dash finding a pet... and make it about rape. Let's sit down and discuss all the ways this post makes me weep for humanity.
First and foremost, nice job framing rape as something that only happens to women and that is only perpetrated by men. But hey, 90% of the media does that already, so let's move on.
Your claim is that Tank continued to try to compete in Rainbow Dash's contest, despite her constantly belittling and insulting him, which implies that he refused to take no for an answer and respect Dash's right to self-determination. Okay... except that Tank didn't force her to let him compete. She gave him that permission herself (at the behest of Fluttershy). All Dash did was let him participate, which means she'd still have the right to turn him down if he lost. On top of that, Tank didn't get to be Dash's pet simply by asking over and over again. He genuinely impressed her during the final challenge by showing loyalty and concern for her well being, thus convincing her to choose him (even though the other four pets finished long before he did).
Yeah, maybe he should have picked up her signals and gotten the hint that she wasn't interested, except for the fact that, oh yeah, he's a fucking tortoise. A barely sentient animal who lacks the capacity to understand concepts like mutual consent and personal boundaries. Not quite comparable to a guy asking someone to be his girlfriend, is it?
Actually, that's besides the point. The point is that you're talking about rape culture; rape culture; in an episode that ends with Rainbow Dash voluntarily and enthusiastically choosing Tank as her new pet. And the point that Tank doggedly and persistently kept trying to impress her doesn't really hold water when you consider that all he was doing was participating in a contest that was specifically designed for that very purpose. Hell, Dash sang an entire song about letting the pets compete to prove their awesomeness to her, and you're calling Tank a rapist just for showing up to the contest that she herself organized?!
Yeah, THAT'S what's setting up boys for a life of entitlement! "If I want a girl, I just have to do the things that she specifically said I have to do in order to be her girlfriend! Then I'll be entitled to have her, by which I mean she'll choose me out of her own free will because I met the conditions that she herself laid out!"
I mean, Christ, she literally made the animals go through a bunch of hoops to get a chance at being her pet, and the only thing you're concerned about is the behavior of the tortoise who barely even understands what's going on?!
*sigh*
Okay, I'm done. Just wanted to vent.
Ugh, pseudo-intellctuals. Can't live with 'em, period.
This reminds me of a comment I saw a while back about Keep Calm and Flutter On promoting abusive relationships, which was equally as stupid, by the way. These are not mere leaps in logic. These are massive logic canyons that no one in their right mind would or should ever traverse! I'll admit that I probably put more thought into this show than I should (as most bronies do), but some people just take it way too far.