Film Corner: The Proposal

[Content Note: Dubious Consensual Kissing, Unemployment, Sexual Harassment]

You know what would be a super funny movie to take your mind off the shitty economy, horrifying unemployment rate, stagnating wages, rising cost of living, and the awesome federal sequester? A movie about an overbearing boss forcing an employee to marry hir! (But it's totes okay, because the boss is a chick and the employee is a dude! What a fresh twist from a male writer! It's funny how writing under a female pen name is supposedly edgy and clever when many women are pressured to write under a male pen name in order to sell their work!)


Rewrite time! 

Hero: I'm not gonna marry you.

Heroine: If you don't, you'll be on the street, all alone, looking for a job.

Hero: No. Okay? First I'm going to report you for sexual harassment. Given the circumstances of this case where you are an aggressive woman boss in a toxic society where men would be disinclined to give you the benefit of the doubt anyway, and given that our supposed relationship was never known to anyone else or even alluded to in any way, and given that the timing of your announcement was very obviously calculated as a solution to your immigration issues, I very much doubt that things won't go in my favor.

It will be uncomfortable for me, and no doubt I will experience really disgusting pushback from sexist men who believe I should have just 'took what was offered' and other really horrible framings, and I am validly angry at you for putting me in a position where I have to face unemployment or a sexual harassment report, but I will nevertheless do so if you force me to. And, frankly, I may choose to do so anyway, given my genuine concerns that you may try this with someone else -- I'm going to have to do a personal spoon assessment and think about it before acting, because my self-care is just as valid as personal activism.

I do sympathize with your immigration difficulties and I'm sorry that the United States has such ridiculous policies in place, but if you want to stay here on a marriage clause, you need to find someone who will consent to marry you, and not attempt to force this on someone else. That isn't humane, it isn't respectful of my feelings and boundaries as a person, and it's not funny.

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