Expert claims MAFS promotes a ‘rape culture’

Could the nation’s highest-rating reality TV show Married At First Sight promote a “rape culture”? One expert believes so and explains why.

Could the nation’s highest-rating reality TV show Married At First Sight promote a “rape culture”?

Dr Alecia Simmonds, a writer and academic in law and history at the University of Technology, Sydney, has published an opinion piece in today’s edition of the Australian Book Review, titled ‘Forced Marriage: MAFS and reality television’s chamber of horrors’.

In it, she writes that MAFS promotes a rape culture.

She asks: “If you have ever wondered why it took the last state in Australia until 1992 to outlaw rape in marriage, watch an episode of MAFS. When marriage presupposes sex, and consent is assumed to last for an indefinite period of time, your rights to bodily integrity are suspended, or in the least not taken seriously.”

Off the back of her original piece, she told News Corp MAFS places enormous pressure on the couples to have sex and rape culture emerges as a product of this pressure.

But she is not alleging that any criminal activity has occurred on the reality TV show.

Dr Simmonds said rape culture is a term that describes a culture where rape is normalised and made legitimate according to the rules of that culture.

“It is a term that helps us to understand the social conditions in which rape is made possible — conditions which constrain women’s capacity to consent, which sexually objectify women, and which mistrust them when they report sexual violations,” she said.

Ines makes dramatic return to MAFS

Sam slams MAFS ex in fiery post

MAFS shame: Basic was three times the limit

Relationship guru, fans slam MAFS experts

MAFS expert and psychologist John Aiken. Picture: Channel 9

“In MAFS we have a show that tells participants that the rules of marriage require consummation, or sex, which then creates an environment where it is difficult to say no to sex. MAFS places enormous pressure on the couples to have sex and rape culture emerges as a product of this pressure — a person’s capacity to consent or to freely express sexual desire or will is limited the minute they enter the show, it is limited by the therapists telling them that sex means ‘progress’ and a lack of desire means ‘pathology’.”

In her opinion piece, she references Ning Surasiang and Mark Scrievens and their relationship which has hit many obstacles as they struggled to become intimate during the show.

“We see this very clearly with Ning in the early part of the show when she admits to feeling no sexual desire for Mark and feels shocked and violated when she wakes up to find him in her bed without any underpants on,” she said.

“In MAFS we are told that Ning has suffered from abandonment in the past and she is now afraid of men, and so it is converted into her problem rather than his.

Ning Surasiang and Mark Scrievens who are on MAFS as a couple. Picture: Mark Scrivens/Instagram

“This is a clear case where women’s voices are disbelieved or seen as a product of their psychological problem and where their capacity to consent is constrained.”

More recently, Ning and Mark did not consummate their marriage while on a romantic Blue Mountains getaway again.

Ning told 9Honey that “there was a lot of pressure from everyone to do the deed”.

“I think he didn’t want to confuse things and he probably wasn’t really sure about us outside of the experiment yet,” Ning said.

“And maybe I had a little too much wine and was too dehydrated from the hot spa. Who knows.”

Mark also said there was an “unbelievable amount of pressure”.

Dr Simmonds also cites in her piece that the “most extreme example of rape culture” on the show was the crude scene where Dino Hira told the other grooms on a boys’ night out that he wanted to “take baby steps” with Melissa Lucarelli, who had been celibate for eight years.

But another husband told him Melissa has said that she “wants to be slammed”.

Dino and Melissa were on MAFS this year. Picture: Nigel Wright

The guys are then seen chanting “slam her slam her” while bashing their beer glasses on the table.

The episode was slammed by TV viewers for being crude at the time.

“A world where ‘being a man’ means having a voracious sexual appetite, and where having sex means men aggressively claiming women’s bodies is a world characterised by rape culture,” Dr Simmonds said.

“It is a world that eroticises male dominance and female submission and that normalises non-consensual sex.”

Endemol Shine Australia, the company that produces MAFS, said they had no comment to make when approached by News Corp Australia.