I would like to think you’re right, and that people would at least recognize the very obvious male predator dynamic, but considering there are people who ship things like Jessica Jones/Kilgrave, which is a man preying on a woman and is also very clearly and literally shown/declared to be rape in canon, I’m afraid not.

See, erasure of male victims and the notion that women can’t be rapists is only part of the equation. The other part of it is that rape culture and abuse apologism are so prevalent in our entertainment that people actually think a lot of abusive, stalkery behavior is romantic. Just look at the popularity of Twilight when it came out, which was basically “Abusive Relationships With Vampires: The Saga.”

Or go further back and get out of sci-fi a bit, you’ll still see it everywhere. Take Ross and Rachel from Friends, where Ross was controlling, condescending, dismissive, and all-around a dick but was supposed to be seen as a “nice guy” because he liked to be monogamous. Or how about that creepy-ass scene in the car near the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, where the guy was like “I love you, you belong to me.”

The elected president of the United States is a known rapist. David Bowie, celebrated rock icon, is a known child rapist. And in both cases supporters will try to make excuses for why those rapes didn’t happen, or don’t count. Ten years ago scores of fans came out of the woodwork to blame Rihanna and adore Chris Brown when the latter beat the former so severely she was unrecognizable. Women tweeted “I would let him beat me up any day” in response. Last year, fans did something similar regarding Johnny Depp’s well-documented abuse of his wife, Amber Heard.

Rape culture and abuse apologism are everywhere. They’re in every romantic comedy where a busy, brilliant, independent woman is secretly lonely and miserable and just needs the “right man” to come show her how to be a woman the “right way.” They’re in bodice-ripper romance novels, where the scenario of a woman saying no to sex is painted as a challenge rather than the end of the conversation. They’re in the notion that men always want sex (or even “need” it) and women never do unless convinced. They’re in the idea that healthy relationships are boring but violent relationships are “passionate.”

That shit is literally all over our entertainment and culture, and so…no, sadly, I don’t think if Nick were a woman and Adalind were a man people would ship it less or not at all. They would just use a slightly different tack to justify it.