No, ability to consent is not "only" informed by culture and how "we are used to thinking of individuals"— there are real physiological, psychological, and neurological factors, not only sociological factors, that determine whether a person is able to give consent.

Whether it's true that that's the best option doesn't change whether it's abuse. If the toss up is "My husband rapes me but anywhere else I'll be raped AND beaten," and it's true, that doesn't mean it's not abuse. If a child is one of the parties in the marriage and they're having sex, it is rape. You can't really…

Sure, maybe. I guess what I'm saying is, that's irrelevant when you're talking about a person from the United States going to an African country on a mission trip and having sex with a child.

What I'm saying is "a better fate" is not the same as "a positive situation," and it's still rape. In fact, it being "a better fate" (whether that's accurate or not) is how many abusers convince their victims not to leave, no matter what culture we're talking about.

White people (not all actually white) make up that amount of the population according to the census, but we still see a hugely disproportionate amount of white people and males in media—lead roles are 90% white (which means POC as a whole have only 25% of the roles they would if equally represented) and 75% male. So…

Like I said, the FBI class in the show still skews white and still skews male, even though they have a distinct interest in recruiting people who speak many languages (the bilingual and multilingual U.S. population is definitely less white than the general U.S. population). You don't have to be a natural-born citizen…

I disagree that "if she was treated well and she was better off than she would otherwise have been, it was a positive situation." If there was no sex, maybe it's neutral. But being a not-as-violent rape or being a "less-bad" rape (not sure what metric you'd use to define that) doesn't actually make a situation where…

Literally I said people who avoid having sex with children. Um yes Bill Clinton having sex with Monica Lewinsky is less clearly rape than if he had sex with a 14 year old. Not all "temptation" is equal.

Right but age affects consent, and you're acting as though it doesn't.

The US is only about 62% white according to the U.S. census (millions of whom are actually Arab, like the secret twins in the pilot), and the main cast was at least that white. The rest of the FBI first years were even whiter. It makes sense to focus on a diverse group when you're talking about a terrorism plot where…

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you don't know that sex can lead to your pregnancy, you're not capable of fully consenting.

You brought up "seduction," I just repeated it. Any way you define seduction the way you used it was making a huge assumption— that you could tell it wasn't rape because it was (somehow) obvious that he didn't "set out to seduce her."

A 14 year old girl in the bleak situation that you're describing definitely knows the connection between sex and pregnancy, if she understands sex at all, which is definitely necessary for consent. I'm not talking about whether she could get a conviction for rape— that's not what makes him a rapist. When "temptation…

You forgot Nimah and her secret twin which, with the fact that they're Muslim (or at least Levantine pretending to be Muslim to get the closed room), is clearly intended to trick people into thinking they will be responsible, but it's pretty clear that's a red herring; so far all the more "subtle" clues point to Liam.

Even if the hypothetical person you've created saw him as her "protector" or "provider" (not likely that risking having a baby would be the move of someone trying to be "protected") and wanted to sleep with him, he is from a culture that very much recognizes that children cannot consent (even Mormons who married girls…

Why do you assume he didn't set out to seduce her just because he felt guilt (or that seduction is the only way he could have initiated sex, or that it matters who initiated the sex)? While many sociopaths are rapists, the vast majority of rapists are not sociopaths. You're making huge bounds in order to excuse this…

Still majority white and majority male. Goddamn. "Shoving it in our face"?

Pretty sure he thinks having non-white, non-Christian, non-straight, or more-than-20%-female main characters constitutes "PC propaganda/foolishness."

(literally true)

Yeah TV tropes usually doesn't have a very good sample of examples because they seem to be added randomly, but I was linking the entry to show you that it's not a trope I created in my head from thin air. I agree that it is very rare to see that, and we did see that, and likely will again, but him having a different…