“Girls” Highlights the Fine Line Between Awkward Sex and Rape

I’ve never known quite what to make of the sex scenes in Girls. While I appreciate the show’s desire to examine how flawed and awkward sex can often be, the fact that the characters so often seem unsatisfied with their sex makes it difficult to distinguish an off night from sex taking place without consent. More often than not, the scenes that are hardest to read are the ones involving Adam (Adam Driver). Nowhere was consent in the show more confusing that this week’s episode, which made many people pause and say, “Wait. Was that rape?”

I know that Adam is supposed to be endearingly awkward, but I’ve always had difficulty liking him as a character. I know women who have dated men like him before, and I know the damage that men like him can cause. His blunt dialogue is often hilarious, but I find it hard to laugh at a character who has a history of substance abuse, stalking, emotional manipulation, and violence. He’s too real to be taken lightly—his character makes many viewers profoundly upset. Two episodes ago, Adam started dating Natalia (Shiri Appleby), the daughter of one of his AA peers. In the most recent episode, “On All Fours,” Adam and Natalia had sex for the first time, in one of the sweetest and least awkward sex scenes in the entire series.

The sweetness didn’t last for long, though; by the end of the episode, Adam had fallen off the wagon and raped Natalia. (I won’t recap the scene here, as it’s already been covered extensively elsewhere. See the excellent analyses by Amanda Hess and Marianne Kirby for the necessary background information.) But not all viewers are reading Adam and Natalia’s interactions as rape. In the comment section of her Monday recap of “On All Fours,” Bitch blogger Kerensa Cadenas wrote that she didn’t interpret the scene as a rape, because “it reminded [her] of other uncomfortable sex on the show and also specifically many of the early Hannah (Lena Dunham)/Adam sex scenes from the first season involving forceful and not entirely pleasurable sex.” I completely agree with Kerensa on that point—the scene is very similar to other sex scenes throughout seasons one and two. And that’s the problem: the sex on Girls is so uncomfortable so often that it’s become difficult to decipher which acts are intended to be consensual and which aren’t.

Earlier this week, HuffPost produced a supercut of “awkward sex scenes” from Girls’ two seasons. Natalia’s rape is among those included, furthering the conflation of normal, fumbling, imperfect sex and degradation, coercion, and rape. Watching that scene in the context of Girls’ infamous sex scenes presents more questions than answers: In Season 1, did Hannah really like the aggressive and uncomfortable role-playing scenes she did with Adam, or was she doing it to please him? She wasn’t always afraid to voice her anger when Adam crossed a line, like she did when he urinated on her in the shower, but just because she didn’t specifically say no in other situations doesn’t mean she was completely comfortable with them. If she truly did consent, did she consent enthusiastically? If she did consent enthusiastically, why haven’t we seen her enacting such fantasies with other lovers? To what degree did Adam manipulate her during sex? To what degree are any of the characters enjoying the sex they have, as opposed to just going along with it? It’s hard to tell, which is troubling; as Marianne Kirby puts it, “There is, in fact, a world of difference between not saying no and actively saying yes.”

Perhaps, though, this scene may pave the way in distinguishing the truly consensual sex scenes in Girls from the potentially coerced. I’m glad that this scene exists, because, as Samhita writes at Feministing, “it puts the nail in the coffin [in depicting Adam as] deeply ‘troubled’ as opposed to ‘tortured artist,’” making it more difficult for audiences to sympathize with him. The degree to which this transformation was intentional, though, is difficult to gauge.

What’s most troubling about Natalia’s rape is that it doesn’t feel out of place among the rest of the sexual interactions on Girls, nor is it out-of-character for Adam. Indeed, it feels entirely too normal in the context of the show, to the point where I have to wonder if the writers even realized that a line was crossed. In response to viewers who felt that Adam didn’t know what he had done, Amanda Hess writes that, “When you care even one bit about how your partner feels while you are actually having sex with them, it’s impossible to be so confused.” Hess is right on here—the rape scene shows that Adam was either bluffing about his confusion or was too out-of-touch with Natalia’s desires to care, neither of which create a positive portrait of his character but both of which fit his established traits and history accurately.

Hopefully, this is an intentional move in Adam’s development, rather than a continued muddling of awkwardness and malice.