I think that's absolutely a fair question to consider. Especially if you're willing to put coercion and sexual assault on the same level, I'm not sure you'd be laughing if the genders were reversed.
Well, it would depend on the situation and on the individual personalities involved, at the end of the day. One of the reasons I don't think it's reasonable to say that Amy coerced the Doctor into anything is that, well, the Doctor kissed back, at least for a few seconds.
The other reason I don't think it's reasonable to say she coerced it is that, quite frankly, it's incredibly obvious that Amy is not able to physically overpower the Doctor. That means that if the Doctor truly rejects it, he is the one who is physically capable of stopping her from kissing him -- which he does. And once Amy realizes that, no, her attempts to entice him by kissing him are not going to work, she stops.
This may be a bit politically incorrect, but I do think that it's just not reasonable to say that a person who is clearly not physically capable of overpowering someone, nor of emotionally abusing them into submission, is engaging in coercion. Period.
Now, that's going to vary from situation to situation. There can be a couple where the woman can overpower the man; there can be a couple where one partner or the other has emotionally abused or traumatized the other into giving in, even though he or she doesn't really want it. And goodness knows that there are couples where the man can overpower the woman.
But I don't think that happened here at all. I don't think Amy is capable of overpowering the Doctor, and goodness knows she's not capable of emotionally traumatizing him into sleeping with her. She kissed him; he kissed back. She kept kissing him in the hopes that he'd be enticed. She gave up when she realized it wasn't working. And apparently at no point did the Doctor feel coerced or threatened or assaulted or what-have-you.
The same Moffat who wrote "Flesh and Stone" also wrote "The Doctor Dances" and "The Girl in the Fireplace," so clearly Moffat doesn't think it's inherent to the Doctor that he'd refuse to have a relationship with someone. And goodness knows that the relationship between the Doctor and River Song has been implied to eventually come to possess a romantic/sexual aspect to it.
Which really has nothing at all to do with the Doctor feeling that Amy's attention should be focused on Rory, not him.
Well, sort of. Even there, the Doctor's a bit conflicted. "Loves a redhead, our Doctor." He even admitted as such in "Amy's Choice," in the scene where he said to Rory, "Yes, but are we disagreeing or are we competing?"
The Doctor's feelings are a bit more ambivalent than that -- I think on some level, he did want a relationship with Amy even if he did not
choose[/i] to have one. One can want something, at least partially, and yet still choose not to pursue it, after all.
Now if only 9 and 10 had of treated Goofy & Micky like that..
Y'know, people say that sometimes, and I'm always astonished that anyone looks at Mickey with any sympathy at the time of "Rose." It was obviously already a dead relationship where he didn't value her and had already cheated on her. I mean, going to the pub for a football match after your girlfriend's almost died? Barking at her not to read your email? What do you think
that was about?
Rose is one thing, where he does come across as very immature, but
Boom Town? One of the highlight scenes is Mickey confronting Rose - not to mention his legitimate anger in
Aliens of London.
Oh, certainly. That's something I really appreciate about RTD's writing -- they're both right. Rose reacted to Mickey's poor treatment by treating him just as badly, in her own way. She needed to leave him, but she could have done so in a manner that was much kinder than that -- just making him feel like nothing.
And besides, dead relationship? Cheating? I think you're letting your Doctor/Rose love color your view of early Mickey - especially the cheating assumption.
That was the first thing that went through my mind the very first time I saw "Rose," before I became a Rose/Doctor shipper -- really, before the character Rose had had a real conversation with the Doctor.
And apparently cheating is what RTD meant to imply there:
From page 683 of The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter, which I just picked up a few weeks ago, wherein RTD is reviewing his first episode, "Rose:"
Russell T. Davies said:
The sexuality is there, too. Straight away, the simple, natural inclusion of sexuality. Rose kisses Mickey. Jackie flirts with the Doctor. The whole thing ends with Rose choosing a new man. Plus, the word 'gay' appears for the first time in Doctor Who. Oh, and look at Mickey saying to Rose, 'Don't read my e-mails!' (Some people think that Rose treated Mickey badly, like she was the selfish one, but will you look at that line?! What on Earth do you think that line means? Seriously? That boy deserved to lose his girlfriend, right from the start!).... Too many TV characters are just 'nice'. Make them selfish -- naturally selfish, as we all are -- and they sing. That leapt out at me, watching Rose again. Long before his mysterious e-mails, Mickey abandons Rose for the football down the pub.
So it seems pretty clear both from context and from RTD's writing that the implication is that Mickey was cheating on Rose, at least on some level.
I mean, hell, maybe Mickey was just in the same predicament that Amy was in years later. Doesn't mean Mickey's a bad guy, mind you -- but he wasn't treating Rose very well, and he deserved to lose his girlfriend.
And, hey, ultimately it was all for the best for him -- it prompted him to grow up into a true leader, into a man who works to protect others. And it led him to discover his apparent real love in Martha.
Man, the whole thing was the most believable scene I've seen in Doctor Who when it comes to dealing with a young human girl viewing The Doctor as some kind of super"human" hero. Given that she had already developed an intimate fetish about The Raggedy Doctor, I'm surprised it took her that long to jump him. She wasn't interested in finding a true-love like Rose, or a soul-mate like Martha. She wanted to get laid because she found The Doctor hot. It's just that simple.
Well, no, I don't think it was actually that simple. She may have said it was, and she may have even thought that it was that simple ("Oh, you're sweet, but I really wasn't thinking of anything so long term..."). Yet in "Amy's Choice," when Rory dies, what does she say? "I didn't know. I honestly didn't know until just now."
Her feelings for the Doctor were more profound than she let on. Profound enough that it took Rory's death before she finally understood them -- understood that she did have romantic feelings for the Doctor, and understood that she loved Rory much more than him.
Just a question to people in a relationship.
If the person you loved or were married to or were going to marry had a fling with someone else would you think it's ok because she's "in love" with you and just lusted for another guy? Would you be calm enough to accept that and not call them a slapper for doing so?
Probably not, but, there again, it's not the job of a person in a relationship to be completely unbiased or fair about it, either.
Sometimes, it takes someone from outside a relationship to point out that, well, sorry, but sometimes people really do love two people at once and don't know at first whom they love more. And that's just life. It sucks if you're one of the two, and it sucks if you had thought your partner would never love anyone else, but it is life. That doesn't make the person who's torn between two people a bad or immoral person.
It just makes them people who haven't yet developed the wisdom needed to make better choices.
