[Severance] Consent as Personhood
Irving B. had a crisis of faith because, for the first time in his five years of existence, he was allowed to set boundaries (Is this okay?). It’s an affirmation that his body is his and that there will be no punishment if he says no and that in being given that choice there is recognition and care the likes of which faith to his employers has never given. Not even Irving Bailiff, who barely sleeps, for whose exaustion Irving B. gets punished.
Helena Eagan, with the power to make Helly’s body hers without her knowledge or consent, had sex with Mark S., who thinks she’s Helly. Mark S., who is so desperate to have a love of his own, reacts to Irving’s equating Gemma tyo his wife with a need to reaffirm that Outie Mark is not him, that it’s his body too.
Irving waterboarded Helena and said he would kill her if they didn’t bring Helly back to this body and immediately apologized to Helly because he violated her right to do to this body what she wants with it. Because when she almost killed herself, it was one of the few choices she ever got to make about her life.
He wanted, needed Mark to know that it was not Helly, that he was not consenting to what he was doing, that Helena was using him because she felt a right to Helly’s body and her relationship with Mark. knowing that he would be killed for the transgression but could not bear to see that profound violation of his friends’ bodies.
When Irving confronts Helena, he knows that the consequence is death at the cost of giving Helly her body back. And if Helly taught him anything, it’s that they’re not the only ones who have a right to decide what this body does, and sometimes all the options you are given are self-destruction. Mark is a person; he’s not some commodity Helena Eagan has a right to because she’s the heir to the company that both Mark and Helly work at and claims sole ownership of their shared body.
Also, of course, Mark Scout is reintegrating because he wants to see Gemma with zero input from Mark S., and because it’s his wife and Mark S. only exists because she died, so if she’s not dead, then what’s Mark S. for? They’re the same, right? There is no other me! I am a person; he is not.
Consent is an acknowledgement that the person in front of you has as much right to their body as you do to yours. And when you are told you’re a guest on someone else’s body, when your life is so disposable it can be erased from existence with the flick of a switch, that act of recognition has more weight than words can possibly express.