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Perhaps I was a little unclear in my last meta. Perhaps I fell victim to my English-major habit of needing to prove everything, even things only tangentially related to my topic. If I did, I apologise. Perhaps I wasn't talking about what you wanted to talk about. I don't apologise for that.
I talk about a lot. I talk about sexism, ablism, and Castiel and Ruby as counterbalances, among many other things. I even have a convenient list if you don't believe me. But I also talk about uncomfortable things and I'm getting the feeling that I'm treading on uncomfortable ground here.
To clarify my point, I'm going to copypasta from my previous meta:
I want to talk about this.
I want to talk about how Dean is being victimized here. I want to talk about how we have a (manly man's man who drinks beer and listens to rock and roll and eats red meat and sleeps with women and drives a classic car and likes big guns) is having his choice - his consent, his ability to say no - taken away by a (should-be-trustworthy, older, authority figure) male. On a (mainstream, regular, not-special-interest) television show, Dean is being told that, regardless of his own desires, Michael is going to take him and Zachariah is going to have fun in forcing him to say yes to Michael.
Some brief information on assaulted men: Men are even less likely to report assault and rape than women. Imagine, briefly, how off that makes our statistics. Male rape, particularly penetrative rape, is associated with a loss of manhood, making it problematic on multiple levels. Like all rape, it is about power, not sexual desire. According to Wikipedia, the first successful prosecution of male-on-male rape in the UK was in 1995. According to RAINN, in 2002, one in eight rape survivors was male. Have some links.
Male sexual violence is also rarely depicted in media, especially mainstream media. The victim is usually a child, gay, or in prison. The media offered by Mankind Counselling fit these boundaries, almost exclusively features characters who are molested as children. I'm still looking for another representation that is like what we saw in Sympathy for the Devil (5.01), which, according to the information I have found, is fairly realistic in what male rape actually does look like.
As I said in my previous meta, I'm not sure what it means. I am, indeed, grappling with what it means that Castiel took (rode, possessed, was inside) Claire and then took Jimmy, when Jimmy was dying and desperate to save his daughter. I'm grappling with what it means that the men of the show - John, Bobby, Sam - who manly men and men's men and all-American men with big guns and fighting skills have been taken and ridden and filled against their will, except for Dean who was so clearly, visibly brutalised in a highly sexual manner.
It's one thing, as a friend pointed out to me, for Lilith to take little girls. It's one thing for Ruby or Meg-demon or Azazel to ride an unwilling victim. But it's a new line, a new violation for an angel to do this, even if we don't find angels to be terribly trustworthy. What does it mean that even angels will ride roughshod over consent with pleasure?
And what does it mean to have this representation of male rape in mainstream television and have it primarily - as I see it, correct me if I'm wrong - ignored by its normally highly rape-conscious, misogyny conscious fanbase?
I don't know which bothers me more, to be honest.
I talk about a lot. I talk about sexism, ablism, and Castiel and Ruby as counterbalances, among many other things. I even have a convenient list if you don't believe me. But I also talk about uncomfortable things and I'm getting the feeling that I'm treading on uncomfortable ground here.
To clarify my point, I'm going to copypasta from my previous meta:
Dean's fight with Zachariah, where he keeps telling him that no, he won't let Michael take him is both heart breaking and terrifying. It is one thing to think of a demon - Meg or Lucifer or Azazel - taking someone against their will, but the brutality of the angels is beyond cruel.
Zachariah says to Dean, "You're Michael's weapon or, rather, his receptacle... Michael's vessel. You're chosen. It's a great honor... I am completely and utterly through screwing around.... Now, Michael is going to take his vessel... You understand me?"
I think part of the terror is how easily Zachariah dehumanizes Dean. Dean isn't a person. His consent doesn't really matter (or, in Zachariah's words, the angels' god-given need for consent is "unfortunate"). Dean is an object - he is a receptacle and a vessel. Dean is empty until Michael fills him and uses him. Dean is nothing; he is empty until Michael rides him.
I really don't blame Dean for saying no to that.
Then Zachariah takes it a step further. He broke Sam's legs because Dean was mouthing off at him, but when Dean actually dares to say no - dares to assert himself as a person - Zachariah is visibly furious. He offers to heal Bobby, if Dean will say yes, but says that if Dean says no again, Bobby will never be able to walk. After Dean says no again, Zachariah gives Dean stage four stomach cancer, saying he will heal him if he allows Michael to take him. (Stage IV gastric cancers are usually metastasized tumors that have spread to other parts of the body - probably Dean's only hope of recovery is a miracle.) At another no, Zachariah removes Sam's lungs.
Unsurprisingly, Dean begs for death at this point. Zachariah has, after all, pretty much run out of people to hurt and Dean is in visible agony from his gastric cancer, while Sam struggles behind him. Zachariah, however, tells him, "Are we having fun, yes? ... Kill you? Oh no, I'm just getting started." Zachariah is ready to torture Dean into allowing Michael to ride him.
I want to talk about this.
I want to talk about how Dean is being victimized here. I want to talk about how we have a (manly man's man who drinks beer and listens to rock and roll and eats red meat and sleeps with women and drives a classic car and likes big guns) is having his choice - his consent, his ability to say no - taken away by a (should-be-trustworthy, older, authority figure) male. On a (mainstream, regular, not-special-interest) television show, Dean is being told that, regardless of his own desires, Michael is going to take him and Zachariah is going to have fun in forcing him to say yes to Michael.
Some brief information on assaulted men: Men are even less likely to report assault and rape than women. Imagine, briefly, how off that makes our statistics. Male rape, particularly penetrative rape, is associated with a loss of manhood, making it problematic on multiple levels. Like all rape, it is about power, not sexual desire. According to Wikipedia, the first successful prosecution of male-on-male rape in the UK was in 1995. According to RAINN, in 2002, one in eight rape survivors was male. Have some links.
Male sexual violence is also rarely depicted in media, especially mainstream media. The victim is usually a child, gay, or in prison. The media offered by Mankind Counselling fit these boundaries, almost exclusively features characters who are molested as children. I'm still looking for another representation that is like what we saw in Sympathy for the Devil (5.01), which, according to the information I have found, is fairly realistic in what male rape actually does look like.
As I said in my previous meta, I'm not sure what it means. I am, indeed, grappling with what it means that Castiel took (rode, possessed, was inside) Claire and then took Jimmy, when Jimmy was dying and desperate to save his daughter. I'm grappling with what it means that the men of the show - John, Bobby, Sam - who manly men and men's men and all-American men with big guns and fighting skills have been taken and ridden and filled against their will, except for Dean who was so clearly, visibly brutalised in a highly sexual manner.
It's one thing, as a friend pointed out to me, for Lilith to take little girls. It's one thing for Ruby or Meg-demon or Azazel to ride an unwilling victim. But it's a new line, a new violation for an angel to do this, even if we don't find angels to be terribly trustworthy. What does it mean that even angels will ride roughshod over consent with pleasure?
And what does it mean to have this representation of male rape in mainstream television and have it primarily - as I see it, correct me if I'm wrong - ignored by its normally highly rape-conscious, misogyny conscious fanbase?
I don't know which bothers me more, to be honest.
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Re: 2/2
I literally went looking. I wasn't happy to go looking and I had to steal myself up for it. I'm a survivor of sexual violence myself. But I don't know if it was more horrifying that I couldn't find it.
I seen and read works about sexualised violence against women. Sometimes it supports rape culture, sometimes it doesn't. The only non-child abuse media portrayal I can remember of sexual violence enacted on a male is in Life on Mars - and that was not dealt with at all, that I can remember.
If RAINN's stats are right and one in eight rape victims is male - what does it mean that these men have no representation? They have no fictions. They have no models. They have the idea that they're gay and wanted it, that they were in prison, or that they were children. That's not right and it points to a huge vacuum - what does it mean that Supernatural is filling it?
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Re: 2/2
However, even in that instance, I'd still ask what the difference is between Zachariah in 5x01 and Alistair's implications in 4x16 or demon!John in 1x22 or demon!Samuel in 4x03. There's a lot in my response in regards to specific male on male violence outside of my comments about female on male or male on female violence; the conversation wasn't completely derailed by their mention. Likewise, how is an angel forcing consent that much different than a demon running ramshod without it when the only alternative to consent is a torturous death, one that is likely to be repeated time and time again given that angels have the powers of healing and resurrection?
If anything, Zachariah's "choice" here seems to be more closely aligned with Alistair's demand of Dean in Hell, to my mind. In both cases, consent was demanded under such extreme duress that is really shouldn't count as consent at all. If a person is raped at knifepoint and is made to say that they want it first, they're no less raped than they would have been had they not verbalized their false consent.
In specific terms of male on male rape, I can think of a few other examples outside of Supernatural. I'm pretty sure male on male rape happened in Nip/Tuck, to one of the main characters. Torchwood sort of hints at it during the Year That Wasn't between the Master and Jack. You had the Master sadistically killing Jack over and over again while calling him "handsome" and speaking to the Doctor in sexually charged language, at any rate. You occasionally see it come up in crime dramas, albeit much more rarely than you do with female or child victims.
It is true that male on male rape is underrepresented. I think a large part of that is due to a primarily male writing crew for television and movies. Men tend to make light of rape, particularly with male victims. I think it's an attempt to use humor to deal with extremely uncomfortable topics - hence Youtube videos like "Prison Bitch" being alarmingly popular and female on male violence being considered a joke, something to laugh over.
The actual implication and serious side of rape tends to be brought up by women more than men, I think, perhaps because we've had to deal with the threat as a threat for much longer. Teenage girls are often taught in school during sex ed that there are "places you can go". They're warned about not taking drinks from strangers at bars or in clubs and to stay out of certain areas of the city at night when they're alone. I'm no expert, but I don't think many teenage boys get the same advice or warnings. My sister worked once at a domestic violence center where battered women were welcomed with open arms but abused men were rejected out of hand. There might be a significant amount of male rape victims in the world, but the world unfortunately doesn't seem inclined yet to listen to them or to prepare boys and men for the truth of how prevalent male on male rape is.
I think progress is being made in that regard. We're a lot further along than we were 20 years ago. We'll be further along still in another couple of decades, as awareness grows.
As for what it means that Supernatural doesn't seem to hesitate in touching on male on male sexual violence, honestly, the clinical side of me wants to say it's because the writers are well aware of their predominantly female fanbase and the viewers' general enjoyment of angst and trauma being heaped, in great quantities, on their favorite characters. And perhaps because it is such a majority female audience, there's a greater ability to relate to characters who are being sexually victimized. An invitation to put ourselves in Dean's place, to empathize with him, as it were.
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Re: 2/2
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Perhaps then his choice of language is representative of his general disinterest in humanity as a whole? He doesn't want power over the human he's wearing, he has no interest in riding them. Like you said, he gets his power trip down below. It would align with the fact that within minutes of being freed, he focuses his attention on killing Dean, presumably to rejoin him again in Hell.
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Re: 2/2
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We're going back a very long time now, but there was a late 80s-early 90s Australian medical drama called G.P. that had an episode that did deal with male on male rape. IIRC the episode caused a bit of media flutter at the time because they filmed the scene itself (guess we'll never know how explicitly, but the show had an 8.30PM timeslot, so probably not very) but it ended up being mostly cut. There was also an Australian police drama called Wildside (late 90s) that had an episode dealing with a rapist who was targeting men. There was at least one scene that showed a victim's emotional trauma after the event.
I also remember one of the earlier episodes of NCIS, while not actually being about male rape, had Ducky answer Gibbs' question re two male bodies he'd autopsied by saying "there was no sign of sexual assault, if that's what you mean", which is at the very least is a rare TV acknowledgement that it happens at all.
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Re: 2/2
Given that vampirism is a Victorian euphemism for sex, often of the rape variety, Jonathan Harker's experience at Dracula's castle was very definitely a representation of a man raped, by females in this instance, but females who penetrated with fangs and sucked the life out of him. (And it was gang rape - there were 3 of them.) He escaped, but had a severe mental breakdown as a result, and doubted himself, until he was able to come to grips with the experience by confronting the one who had initiated it (Dracula).
This is probably one of the few examples of a male character experiencing rape, fantasy and symbolized, but as explicit as the Victorians could allow.
(The book is better than any of the movies made of it, if you can enjoy the Victorian prose. While there are things I have liked in most of the movies, none of them has ever done the book real justice, and even the relatively recent version by Coppola doesn't do Jonathan justice. He is easily my favorite character, with Mina a close second.)
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That's one of my books I've read over many times. Jonathan's breakdown and subsequent overcoming of his trauma were amazingly well written and paint a character who is incredibly brave without being unrealistically immune to the effects of his ordeal.
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OT