Talk: Rape

Winn Adami was raped

From Talk:Winn Adami.

Yes, okay, let's take this to the talk page indeed. Winn meets a man who she believes to be a Bajoran farmer in "'Til Death Do Us Part". It is actually Gul Dukat in disguise, claiming to be a guide sent by the Prophets. As "Anjohl" he becomes close to her, and eventually they have sex for the first time in (I believe) "The Changing Face of Evil". During "When It Rains..." Dukat is blinded by the Pah-Wraiths and thrown on to the street. She doesn't learn his true identity until "What You Leave Behind", when the Pah-Wraiths resurrect him from the poisoned wine and in doing so restore his Cardassian image.

And she is horrified. She is beyond horrified, she is disgusted with Dukat for fooling her, she hates herself for having had sex with him. She never once consented to having sex with Gul Dukat. Had she known Anjohl was Dukat, she would likely have had him executed on sight. It doesn't matter if she was the one to initiate the relationship with Anjohl, it matters that she had sex with Gul Dukat and was never given the opportunity to say no to Gul Dukat. That is rape. You want to stick with what canon tells us? That is what canon tells us. That Gul Dukat had sex with Winn Adami and she was not allowed to say no because she was not allowed to know who he was.

People have reverted my edits because it's an "improper use of legal terms". Well, rape by deception (also known as rape by fraud in some jurisdictions) actually is a crime. It's not universally recognized as yet, but people have been prosecuted for it and have gone to jail for it. More and more places are considering legislation to make this a crime. In Israel, "In 2008, the High Court of Justice set a precedent on rape by deception, rejecting an appeal of the rape conviction by Zvi Sleiman, who impersonated a senior official in the Housing Ministry whose wife worked in the National Insurance Institute. Sleiman told women he would get them an apartment and increased NII payments if they would sleep with him." source. That is effectively what Dukat did: posed as a guide from the Prophets and told her (basically) that if she was in a relationship with him then she would achieve higher standing with the Prophets. It is only a victim who can say that he or she was raped, and Winn states quite clearly that had she known she was having sex with Gul Dukat she would have said no.

The show might not explicitly call it rape, but when have tv shows (especially in the 90s) wanted to openly discuss such issues? Winn Adami never agreed to have sex with Gul Dukat. Gul Dukat nevertheless had sex with Winn Adami, while altering his appearance in order to trick her into believing he was someone else. Ergo, Gul Dukat raped Kai Winn Adami. 149.130.215.172 01:48, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

Nothing in this essay changes the fact that the term wasn't used in the show. That's what we're here to cover. This isn't the forum to analyze the show and compare with with real-world present day law.--31dot 02:02, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

In terms of real-world law, I was explaining why the person who took out the term "rape" because of present day law was wrong - it is present day law. In terms of the rest of this ... are you honestly trying to tell me that because Winn never says the word "rape", we can't? I highly doubt that if Worf pulled a phaser, walked up to a random security guard, and shot him in the face you would say I couldn't call that "murder" just because we don't know exactly what murder is defined as under Federation law. The fact is, IN THE SHOW, Gul Dukat has sex with Winn Adami without her consent, and that is rape. It's not explicitly verbally stated, but it is shown. 149.130.215.172 02:12, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure why such a charged term should be used by us when it wasn't in the show. You might have a point about it being shown, but by your own admission, the definition is not "universally recognized" and until it is we shouldn't apply it to observed situations.

It would also seem the writers of the episode didn't think it important enough to use that term, which would have been quite simple for them to do.--31dot 02:19, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

Um, no, the fact that a definition isn't universally recognized doesn't mean we can't apply it to observed situations when it is beyond obvious, eg, man disguises himself, man therefore removes woman's capability to consent to the person she is in actuality having sex with, man and woman have sex, therefore man has raped woman. Until early this year/late last year in the U.S. the FBI definition for rape still had the word "forcible" in it, meaning for example that a frat boy drugging a girl's drink at a party and then having sex with her wasn't legally considered rape at a federal level. But if you asked people in, say, 2009 or 2010 if that was rape, they would say yes.

I don't agree with your assessment that because the writers didn't put the word "rape" in that means they didn't think it important. They could've had any number of reasons for not putting it in, ranging from what the network would allow, to what the executive producers would allow, to what time would allow, to what they thought would be in character. Speaking of character, let's look at the time frame here: Winn finds out the truth about Dukat's identity. Within ~20 minutes of audience time, which can't correspond to more than ~40 minutes of character time, during which Winn and Dukat are almost entirely alone in the Fire Caves, until Sisko comes, and when Sisko comes, he comes in guns blazing (almost literally). We don't see all those forty minutes. Maybe she flies into a screaming rage and berates Dukat for raping her. Maybe she just sits there, in shock as her life and her plans falling apart all around her, too horrified to say anything about her rape other than "to think that I took Gul Dukat to my bed...". Listen to her words. She is too shocked, too disgusted, to even say that they had sex out loud. That is not the writers thinking that a term isn't important, that is an accurate depiction of a huge number of rape victims, who have trouble admitting even to themselves that what happened was rape even years after the fact. She's traumatized. To require a statement of "I was raped" from her twenty minutes after the fact when she's alone with her rapist in order to call it rape is just ... you can't require that. That's just being blind to how some people react to their rapes. So you can't say that it would have been simple for the writers to put that in. No one but Winn knows both the true identity of Anjohl and that they had sex while she was unaware of his true identity, so it's not like anyone else can just say that either.

I'm also curious why your objection seems to center around the fact that the word "rape" is so "charged". You act like it's some terrible affront to Dukat when, in reality, if people have gotten to the last episode of DS9 and still cling to the belief that there's a decent person under the genocidal serial rapist, well, pointing out one more instance (after the "comfort women" on Terok Nor) isn't going to change much. It doesn't matter if the term has a bad connotation, it matters if it is true and accurate, and based on what we are shown in canon it is 100% true and 100% accurate.149.130.215.172 03:17, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

First off, I've locked this page until some consensus is reached, and that clearly hasn't been done yet.

Second anon, I suggest you read Help:Talk pages to learn how to indent correctly here. As for how this discussion is labeled, "tagging" this as part of rape culture clearly shows you have a bias that this must be identified as rape, a term which is charged and is not clearly defined in all cultures. I'm not condoning rape in any respect, nor am I suggesting this situation isn't what could be called rape in most western cultures, but you are clearly trying to paint anyone that disagrees with you as supporting "rape culture", and that will not stand. Describing the situation doesn't require the term rape, nor the extra language to make it clear that you think it was rape by talking around the word in legalese. They had sex, and if we need to "comment" on the event beyond that at that point in the text, a simple link to the Wikipedia definition already provided above in a bgnote should be good enough, since MA is not a soapbox nor a place for commentary on the subject. You could also simply work in more of her reaction to the part where she learns his true identity, since if there are quotes from the show to support what has been said, then clearly there is some direct information from canon that can be used. - Archduk 3 10:02, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about the indenting - I've been trying to indent properly but every time I refresh the talk page it changes, so I'm not sure what to do about that.

Okay, I have to leave for work soon, but I do have a couple comments. First, I'm not "tagging" this discussion with "rape" and "rape culture" to prove a point, I'm providing a trigger warning so that people who are triggered by discussions of this sort will know not to read the section. I'm not making any accusations (in fact, I provided the warning before anyone replied to my original post), but comments that boil down to "she didn't use the word rape immediately after it happened, therefore it's not rape" are triggering to some people, so I'm glad I did put the warnings. Second, yes, I talked around the word "rape" in my last edit, but there was also nothing in that edit that contradicted canon. Yes, Dukat took away Winn's ability to consent to sex with Dukat. Yes, he gloated over what he did to her in the Fire Caves. I'm not giving commentary, and I certainly wasn't soapboxing on the page itself, although I understand if you believe that I was doing so here on the talk page (I disagree, but understand). But even if you don't want me to use the word "rape" because it's a "charged" term (something I still haven't heard the rationale for), there is no getting around the fact that Gul Dukat never asked for Winn's consent, in fact Gul Dukat went to considerable lengths (his Bajoran disguise) in order to ensure that Winn would not be able to give consent. That is not commentary, that is irrefutably canon. That is a point that needs to be in the article. Maybe not in the exact spot where I've been adding it in, but it should be there. When I get home tonight I'll go through the episodes again and pull some quotes/scenes to use.149.130.215.172 16:38, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

As AD said, if there is canon information that would help better describe what happened missing from the article, then it can be added without using unnecessarily charged language. Rape is a charged word; merely being accused of rape is enough to ruin a person. It shouldn't be tossed around lightly. --31dot 21:15, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure the warning was necessary; users read this, or any, website at their own risk. We can't warn people of every conceivable "trigger" there is.--31dot 21:21, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

Okay, this is not a discussion about trigger warnings so all I'm going to say on that topic is that I use them as a matter of courtesy and whether you use them or not is not really my business, although I do wish you'd respect them a bit more.

Second, I fail to see why we should be worried about "ruining" dukat's reputation by pointing out something that the show clearly states happened (more on that in a minute) when we already have proof in canon that Dukat is a) a war criminal, b) someone who oversaw a program of genocide, c) someone who raped multiple Bajoran comfort women, d) someone who tried to send another Bajoran woman out of an airlock after they had a child together. I think he did a really good job of ruining himself long before he raped Winn. Heck, I would think (hope!) that the genocide alone was enough to do that.

Third, you want quotes. Okay, let's talk quotes. Solbor tells Winn in "The Changing Face of Evil" that "Anjohl Tennan" is actually Gul Dukat (I think I said earlier that she didn't find out his identity until "What You Leave Behind", apologies for that one as I hadn't seen season 7 in a while). After an initial period of denial, she looks at Dukat and says "Don't touch me. My life is over. The Pah wraiths sent you to destroy me." Once she knows who Dukat really is, she won't let him touch her arm, much less kiss her/have sex with her. Dukat protests, saying the Pah-Wraiths sent him to save her, and she spits, "Lies. Nothing but Cardassian lies. To think I let you touch me." Now at this point, I'm not sure how much clearer it can get, because what Winn is saying is that not only is Dukat not allowed to touch her now, but that had she known, she never would have allowed it. She is describing a situation in which she had sex with a man against her will, in which she was never given the opportunity to consent to sex. In short, she is describing her rape.

But that's not the end of their conversations about this. In "When It Rains..." Dukat interrupts Winn studying the Book of the Kosst Amojen and this happens:

WINN: Remember your place, Dukat.

DUKAT: I thought my place was in your bed.

WINN: That was before I knew who you were.

DUKAT: Adami, I'm not the same man I was during the occupation. The Pah-Wraiths have changed me.

WINN: But they can't change what you did. Do you really think I could let myself be touched by a man whose hands are stained with the blood of my people?

Bolded for emphasis. There is no way to interpret this other than as a rape. If she had known who he was, she never would have consented. Dukat knew this, Dukat disguised himself as a Bajoran and had sex with her anyway. He created a situation in which he knew she would not be able to give informed consent to their sexual relationship and didn't care. He left her with nothing but grief and hate and anger and self-loathing and all he can do is be offended that she's not sleeping with him anymore! This is the man whose reputation y'all are so concerned about protecting! Calling this rape is not "unnecessary", it is fact.

And if you're still not convinced, let's look at what Winn says when Dukat returns in "What You Leave Behind": " I don't forgive war criminals. To think I took Gul Dukat to my bed. One of the most hated men in Bajoran history." How much clearer does it have to be? She did not consent to sex with Gul Dukat. She never would have consented to sex with Gul Dukat. In fact, she's so horrified/angry at what happened that at this point she is already planning to murder Dukat in retaliation. (There are arguments that could be made that she was planning this as early as when she realized the Pah-Wraiths used blood energy, but I wouldn't want to, ahem, ~speculate on things not in canon~).

Okay, I'm going to sleep. If you want to talk about these quotes more tomorrow, I will gladly give you more of an explanation as to how, exactly, they describe her rape. But for now, they prove that Winn was not aware of who she was having sex with Gul Dukat because of Gul Dukat's deliberate actions to keep that truth from her, that she was never allowed to give consent to Gul Dukat, that she would never have given consent to Gul Dukat if presented with the opportunity, and Gul Dukat had sex with her anyway. And sex without consent is rape. 149.130.215.172 06:06, March 3, 2012 (UTC)

No one has disputed the events in the episode, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to post such a long explanation of them; your point is starting to get lost in your text. What is in dispute is how to describe it- which should stick to terms used in canon when possible. I don't care about Dukat having a "good reputation" or not. We don't have a picture of the RMS Titanic because it wasn't seen in canon, though it was mentioned; we don't have an article on the Democratic Party because the Party itself was not mentioned, though its members were; we shouldn't call this instance rape unless they did. Your explanations are excellent analyses of the events; but aren't canon.

Winn's "war criminals" line just sounds to me like she regrets sleeping with him; she could have easily said she was raped right then, but she did not.

I would be more than willing to do as AD suggested and post a link to the rape by deception WP article in a bg note placed in that area, stating something to the effect of "Some jurisdictions consider this a form of rape, but that was not said in the episode" combined with a better in-universe description of the events, as we've all said could probably happen. I think that's a reasonable compromise here.--31dot 11:14, March 3, 2012 (UTC)

While I'm sure we could argue all day about if Don Draper is the biggest rapist of all time or not, since the crux of this argument is that changing a name is enough for it to be called rape now, with the change in appearance simply being icing on the cake as it were. Since rape is somehow now defined as a crime only a man can commit apparently, I'm just going to throw out that definition and use the Webster one along with the Dictionary.com one, both of which do not cover this new real world, and apparently controversial, legal definition of rape, unless you think we should now label all "outrageous violations" as rape, regardless of if there was sex involved or not. That said, MA is not original research, and since all the rape victims I know aren't going to turn around a kiss their rapist let along walk into a cave alone with them, I still think a simple link, even without explanation, to the Wikipedia article is more than enough if we aren't just going to stick with what was said. - Archduk 3 19:00, March 3, 2012 (UTC)

31dot, well, this is the first time I've been told I've brought too much evidence for my side to a debate. Color me amused. If at any point I did lose you, please tell me and I'll be more than happy to go over it again. Especially since I'm beginning to get the feeling that I lost you at "Winn never consented to sex with Gul Dukat," which I really hope isn't the case. You certainly seemed to be concerned for Dukat's reputation, with your "being accused of rape is enough to ruin someone" comment; I read that as applying specifically to Dukat, apologies if that wasn't the case.

That said, I have to disagree with the equivalence you're attempting to draw between Winn's rape and the RMS Titanic. We don't know what the RMS Titanic looks like, therefore any picture of it would likely be inaccurate. We do know what rape looks like, it looks like a person being made to have sex without their consent, and we saw it happen to Winn. In addition, it is rarely, if ever, easy for a person to admit they were raped, so expecting her to cheerfully admit to it while she's in a room alone with her rapist is preposterous and definitely this side of offensive.

Archduk3, if you want to argue definitions, I can happily do that for an eternity and a half, starting with the FBI definition, but all three definitions have one thing in common: lack of consent, which is the true issue. The compromise I put forward below should be enough. And you're glossing over the fact that not only did Winn do both of those things as part of a plot to murder Dukat for violating her, they in no way erase the fact that she never consented to sex with Dukat.

Right now, I think it's obvious that I'm never going to make either of you see something that should be beyond blatantly clear in the show. I've accepted at this point that rape-by-deception in those words isn't going to get in the article, so I'm (reluctantly) okay with it being in the background section. As long as the reworked version of the article text makes it clear that Winn never consented to sex with Dukat, and in fact was unable to consent to sex with Dukat due to his actions, and then in the background note explain that it's called rape-by-deception in current jurisdictions, I think that's the best I can hope for. I would gladly re-word the page to make this clear, but as it's been protected, I can't. I can wait for the protection to expire or post my edit here, whatever works best. 149.130.215.254 04:33, March 4, 2012 (UTC)

I fail to see how the text doesn't already convey that, since it clearly says he was disguised at the time. We are not going to bend over backwards to explain it without a consensus to do so, and that is why the page has been protected, to stop you from changing it before that happens. I still don't see any reason to do anything but provide a link, and to be honest I don't really see why we even need to do that. We don't point out every "murder" like this, and in most cases we just say someone was killed, thereby avoiding the legal term "murder". Why do we need to do otherwise here? We don't need to insult our readers by giving finger to nose detail, and MA is not a soapbox. If you have a quote of anyone on the staff talking about this as a rape, then by all means mention it, but a Star Trek wiki isn't were you should be going for detailed information on what does and doesn't constitute rape, and every action see on screen, or in this case not see on screen, doesn't need us to stop and comment on it, especially since that is what MA is not. - Archduk 3 05:11, March 4, 2012 (UTC)

I've moved this to the talk page for the rape article, because if the text at Winn Adami isn't going to say rape, any relevant bg info should be here. Depending how this works out, a link can be added to here from there. If it is decided to call what happened to Winn rape, it would still have to be listed here anyway, so I don't think the change in venue will matter much to the discussion overall. - Archduk 3 09:40, March 4, 2012 (UTC)

I've been nothing but civil this entire conversation, but you being patronizing is really trying my patience. 31dot proposed a compromise which I said I agreed with, and I gave an example of what I thought the text of her article should say. Because as it stands, none of this is made clear in the article. It says Dukat was disguised, but the timeline as a whole is muddled and the use of the term "seduction" to represent their relationship implies both consent and romance, both of which are notably absent from the relationship. The edits I've suggested are not soapboxing or original research, they are accurate descriptions of what happened in the episodes, which is more than I can say for the phrase "Dukat seduced Winn". That's why I've said I'll agree with 31dot's suggestion to move rape-by-deception into the bg section on Winn's article. 149.130.215.254 04:43, March 5, 2012 (UTC)

Trust me, you'll know the second I start being patronizing, so maybe you would like to rethink that. While we're on the subject, I don't like being accused of "glossing over" rape very much, so maybe you would like to rethink that as well.

To return to the subject at hand though, I'm fine with a bg note link to here where we should mention what happened in detail. We don't stop articles to start discussing crimes every time it comes ups, we just link to the appropriate article, either in the text or in a bg note. The Winn Adami article isn't about rape, it's about the character, so I don't see why we should stop that article to discuss rape just because what happened to her most likely is rape, but not enough for anyone to mention the word, either in canon or in interviews after that episode was made. In fact, the only quote we have about this is: "The idea of Dukat wooing Winn appealed to us on a very twisted level. Our two bad guys were going to mate! We were howling with glee at the idea!" Ira Behr concurs that the absurdity of the idea was part of the appeal; "The two characters are so worthy of scene after scene after scene. And when we decided that they actually were going to have a physical relationship, it was just dementedly wonderful." That doesn't sound like they were taking about rape at all. As I've said, if you can find any quote that complies with our guidelines on the matter that uses the term rape or even "rape-like" language, then I'll be more than happy to insert it myself into every relevant article, but if we're drawing conclusions about what was seen without a direct mention based on a redefinition of the legal term after the fact, then we should cover it here in the background with a link from there, if a link is even required. - Archduk 3 06:26, March 5, 2012 (UTC)

Mirror Dax

"Benjamin Sisko raped Mirror-Jadzia by having sex with her under false pretenses. She had mistakenly believed him to be Mirror-Sisko, thus removing her informed consent. (DS9: "Through the Looking Glass")."

Much like the above, the overall wording of a background note on this needs to be decided, as the term rape was never used for that event, and to be honest the more I think on this the more problems I have with it. - Archduk 3 15:09, March 13, 2012 (UTC)

Me as well. Regarding this removed note, I could see it being mentioned at Sex- where there isn't really any article text right now- since that's what happened. The Winn/Dukat incident could be discussed there as well. --31dot 19:54, March 13, 2012 (UTC)

A few mentions at sex are called for, though the manner in which they are mentioned seems to still be up for debate (at least as far as a bg note is concerned). About this page though, I've looked into this (if a few Google searches count as that now), and it seems that "rape by deception" is actually not considered rape at all in most cases, and the legal definition of rape is even more shaky, as we can make almost every sitcom and daytime TV character a rapist at some point by using the broadest definition. Where to draw the line on this in Trek is even more complicated, since are we now going to say Riker is rape victim because of "First Contact", or at least a attempted rape victim? What level of deception is "enough" as it were for it to be rape? Not to dismiss the fact that there is a case to be made in some instances where the term wasn't explicitly used, but this is not the forum to be making those cases. If someone wants to write a paper on the subject and get it published, I think then linking to it might be a better idea than linking to the Wikipedia article. that said, I'm still for a small note for the Dukat/Winn thing here, but the mirror Dax thing is getting a little afield from that IMO. - Archduk 3 20:38, March 13, 2012 (UTC)

I would like to suggest the following(leaving links out for now): Some legal definitions of rape include sex under false pretenses, such as Dukat's having sex with Winn Adami in "Til Death Do Us Part" while pretending to be a Bajoran. This concept is not universally accepted, however, and was not mentioned in the episode. Please see Wikipedia's article on rape for more information about how the term is defined.--31dot 22:51, March 13, 2012 (UTC)

Without the "however", that's not too bad. -- sulfur 23:03, March 13, 2012 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] - I think that sums it up nicely, but I would change "accepted" to "recognized", which I think might come off as slightly more neutral, but apparently for reasons I can't put into words, and not for lack of trying. - Archduk 3 23:08, March 13, 2012 (UTC)