“I Want to be a Macho Man”: Examining Rape Culture, Adolescent Female Sexuality, and the Destabilisation of Gender Binaries in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Abstract

Oppressive, essentialist models of gender identity - whereby women are routinely positioned as helpless victims, and men are antithetically characterised as strong, heroic saviour figures – routinely dominate the action and horror genres of screen media. This polarisation functions as an ideological tool for reinforcing patriarchal dominance, by aligning the masculine role with that of powerful agent, and the feminine with weakness and passivity, thereby deeming men’s governance as a necessity for women’s safety, due to women’s seemingly ‘natural’ role as victim. However, this article investigates how the first two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) destabilise this repressive polarisation through its courageous, commanding female protagonist, who subverts genre norms by adopting the – traditionally male – role of Vampire Slayer. Through examining this characterisation, and its explicit challenge to the active/male passive/female gender dichotomies that are frequently interwoven into the tropes of the horror and action genres, the investigative foci of this article will demonstrate how Buffy dismisses socially-prescribed hierarchies of power between masculinity and femininity, and empowers women in a role where they have routinely been victimised and diminished. I will illuminate how Buffy’s relationship with Angel destabilises traditional heterosexual power relations, and liberates Buffy from the oppressive heterosexual matrix in which female characters, and representations of female sexuality, are routinely confined – most notably, through the series’ treatment of virginity and first sexual experience. Finally, this essay will examine the centrality of rape culture in Buffy, and express how the television series empowers its female characters through rewriting Sharon Marcus’ theory of the ‘rape script’.