The whole grudge on Spike Take 2

[Black Eye Guy]

I agree that he isn't at fault for the set up, Buffy had been leaving and coming back to him, and telling him it was over and No before.

But I think where it's different is, I don't think No always means no, there is a no that means yes and a no that means no. Any other time they had sex Buffy was saying No, but her body was saying yes, this time was completely different, she was physically trying to crawls away from him.

In real life if it happens people do say, 'She was asking for it' or they don't care that they've done it but they still get charged with attempted rape, if what he did was try and force her to have sex with him (whatever his justification in his head) that is him attempting to rape her.

I guess I just can't see it any other way, it would be 'Reckless Endangerment' if he was driving a car or something but because this involved sex it would be classified as attempted rape.

 

[Misty]

Well I think that if someone's holding Spike responsible for his actions in Seeing Red, then they should Angel responsible for his actions in season 2 because it's not only fair but it makes more sense, because it's how I feel. But the good thing is that both paid for what they did.

 

[InsaneMystic]

In real life if it happens people do say, 'She was asking for it' or they don't care that they've done it but they still get charged with attempted rape, if what he did was try and force her to have sex with him (whatever his justification in his head) that is him attempting to rape her.

Only if the victim made it clear they don't want the sex to happen. I'm not sure how other countries' laws see it, but over here, if you have sex with someone passed out from being drunk or otherwise unable to give consent, you won't be charged with rape, but with "abuse of a person unable to resist" - definitely a crime, but one which carries a considerably less severe sentence as punishment. (I'm not arguing said law would apply to the bathroom scene, - Buffy clearly was able to, and did, resist - just that sex without permission isn't automatically rape from a legal perspective.)

I don't think Buffy made it clear to Spike she didn't want the sex to happen, even though she tried with all her might. That's where the history of those two - "no doesn't have to mean no" and "violence is acceptable as foreplay", for both of which Buffy cannot be absolved of responsibility - and Spike's "handicap" of soullessness (and thus, lack of empathy) have to be considered in his favor.

I guess I just can't see it any other way, it would be 'Reckless Endangerment' if he was driving a car or something but because this involved sex it would be classified as attempted rape.

Rape is the use of unwanted sex as a weapon, and I really don't see Spike doing that here. He's "merely" using supposedly consensual sex as a tool of persuasion; like I said above, that's definitely a shady thing to do - but noone can argue Buffy did anything else than that in Gone. If one is rape, then so is the other.

To stay with your car analogy - it is rightly classified as murder if you wait in your car for someone and then run him over - you just happen to be using a car as a weapon and not a knife or gun.
If you, however, park your car on a hill and leave it with the handbrakes loose because "I'll be back in a minute, nothing bad ever happened when I did that before", and said car then rolls downhill, runs someone over and kills them, it's not murder, even though you are responsible for the victims death. You're not using the car as a weapon, you're just recklessly negligent about the physics of objects on inclined planes.
If a DA were to charge with murder in the second case, any conscientious jury must arrive at an unanimous "not guilty", because intention does count.

I neither see the intention to hurt Buffy in Spike's actions in the bathroom, nor a clear signal of no consent from Buffy (that is, not clear from Spike's perspective), so it can't be attempted rape to me.