Spike wanted to have sex with Buffy and she didn't anymore. She clearly didn't cause she was screaming and crying. Any other time(such as Smashed/Wrecked or Dead things), she said "no" and "stop" but we can see her face expression which meant "keep going".
[...]
Also, there is no way she has a responsibility in this. She had a responsibility because she started a relationship with a soulless killer. After the bathroom scene, Buffy should grab a stake and kill him. That should be the end of Spike.
Just because she didn't call it rape, doesn't mean it isn't.
I disagree with that. It was never that clear cut with the face expression. As always in life, it's not black and white.
And it's not just the "starting a relationship with a soulless killer" bit that's on Buffy's side of the responsibility count. She - and she alone, Spike is
100% innocent in that regard! - has also devalued the use of "no" as a sign of lack of consent. If you ever, even just once, say "no, stop" and mean "keep going" you
immediately lose the right to call sex over your no "rape". You have
proven that your no doesn't need to mean no, so there's always room for doubt that it
could have meant "keep going", so your "no" is worthless as an indication of whether or not it's consensual sex.
Buffy is responsible for making "no" a mixed signal.
Whitewashing her of that responsibility is just appalling to me, and it's totally counter to the whole female empowerment concept (not to mention a slap in the face of
real rape victims). Victimizing men (and ignoring Buffy's responsibility
is victimizing Spike and sets a very bad example for other sexual situations) is not feminism but reverse sexism. If Buffy had "played innocent victim" and voted for killing Spike, I'd have lost all respect for her; it'd have been totally unworthy of a role model for a supposedly strong woman. If she had staked him for the bathroom scene, she should have killed
herself right afterwards... and good riddance, at that.
Plus Spike is able to sense fear or lust in others just like any vampire. So the fact that he kept going, saying these words to her, and she was so desperate clearly proves that he wanted to rape her because she was now resisting. True resistance. And she felt fear. There is no way that he believed she still wanted him.
She could have changed her mind midway through, she did so many times before. To see the difference in the situations requires a level of empathy that
cannot be expected without a soul.
She accepted Spike in s7 and felt sorry for both him and herself cause now he has a soul and he is totally different.
I very, very much doubt that Buffy only started to feel sorry for both of them after he got the soul. Feeling sorry for Spike goes back all the way to her break-up speech at the end of "As You Were", feeling sorry for herself even longer, to her breakdown in Tara's lap in "Dead Things".
Also, really, you got to make your mind up about whether a soul makes a difference or not. If you expect empathy without a soul, I really don't see where the big difference is supposed to be anymore. The whole character journey of Spike proves that the "different person" thing is not as clear cut as years of Angel's rationalization made us believe. (I
still think there's more similarity than difference between Angel & Angelus, too, and that his famous "no, actually..." in Doppelgangland was the biggest Freudian slip we've seen in the whole show.)
Sadly, even in S7, Buffy always puts too much weight on the soul, in itself. Everything seems to
scream out to me that it's less a matter of having the soul, more a matter of
how you're using it. (Warren; decent demons like Clem;
) She's truly been ruined by Angel's twisted rhethorics.
I think you missed my point, since my point was that Spike would have admitted to rape, or what we would call rape, ignoring a no and going ahead, but for him that's not evil, since rape was a seduction technique, and he thought it would end well.
I'm not a hundred per cent he thinks like that, but I think it's possible, and that was my point. I'm not saying seduction is always rape, which is what you thought I said, right?
Ah ok, I got you wrong then.
In that case, I
don't think that's what Spike would have thought. In the way you mean it, I don't think he would have "admitted to rape".
I think that he would say (and I'd absolutely back him up in that) that he was going in for seduction, and seduction only; rape never figured into it at all. Spike doesn't hurt people he likes, at least not in ways he doesn't assume said people would enjoy. It simply goes against his grain; he does have primitive, rudimentary ethics without a soul, even
without a chip - just see him upholding the bargain with Ford in "Lie To Me" even when it brings him no profit anymore. Having seduction turn into accidental rape without him noticing crossing that boundary (which the whole "accidental" concept is about, right?) is what I see Spike being shocked about at the end of the bathroom scene. It really makes no sense to me trying to imterpret his expression as disappointment and frsutration about not "getting inside her" again - he's shocked about the revelation that his soullessness risks him violating even the limited ethics he has. He did not want to hurt Buffy, yet he accidentally did so, so he goes out to remedy the situation.
If that's enough to warrant him getting staked, shoot me. No really, please do, I've arguably shown less moral fibre than Spike in the bathroom scene, many,
many times in my life.
