Meta: Angels and Demons: Thorns and Stings

[chasingtides]

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:

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.

Comments

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I think it is problematic to say that rape is a women's issue.

I did a lot of research (okay, a day's worth, but my brain is not happy with that) before I posted this follow up. Men's stats as victims of sexual violence are so under reported as to be unknown - but RAINN did estimate that one in eight rape victims was male in 2002.

By media standards, men don't get raped (unless they haven't hit puberty or are in prison - otherwise they want it). It's not even that rape of men is hot - it literally doesn't exist. (I am sort of ready to cry that my search for fiction books dealing with male rape turned up law books. I admit it.) Obviously, media standards are deeply wrong. Men are, obviously, brutalising other men in this way. Women are using men in this way, as well, but it's estimated that you've got a better chance of finding a unicorn than getting that reported because it's not real, don't you know?

Perhaps Alastair doesn't need the metaphorical rape of riding his bodies because he actually rapes souls like Dean in Hell? Maybe that's more of a power trip, since he's head torturer?

[smallcaps.livejournal.com]

Aw, come on, but women raping men is funny! /sarcasm

Yeah. I'm trying to figure this out in my head, because the idea of framing humans as the low power group is interesting, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the black-vesseled angel is the one who used racialised terms (or the angel who uses racialised terms chose a black vessel, hmm) , but it frames the men as women-getting-raped and that defeats the entire purpose of exploring male rape in the first place by saying "no wait it's only because they're metaphorically women lol".

There is, on the other hand, a cultural context - we're still seeing white men victimised on our screens. So. Hmm.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I also don't think it's insignificant that both characters who are sexually violent toward Dean - Alastair and Zachariah - take white male bodies. We are seeing white men being sexually violent to white men. Unless the victim is a child, this is also never seen on TV. It's not, in fact, Uriel who is brutalising Dean. It's Zachariah.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Also, if you consider that the first successful prosecution of male rape in the UK was in 1995 (if Wikipedia doesn't lie), then that means, in the UK, less than 15 years where you could really dream of bringing up male rape in court with the hope of a chance. As a side note, when I studied medieval English law, female rape was on the books. Hell, female rape is on the books in the Bible, effectively making the idea in our culture pretty damn ancient, compared to 14 years.

So there's a cultural blindness to male rape, but it's just that - a cultural blindness.

[amory-vain.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you're looking for Biblical reference to male rape, Sodom is depicted in Genesis 19 as having been condemned because the men of the town attempted to sexually assault two angels in male form (and probably Lot, besides, when he attempts to send them away).

And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,

And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.

Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I have trouble accepting the tale of Sodom as proof for the Western world that male rape exists, though that is how I interpret the passage. Many people, past and present, view the sin of Sodom as any male-male sexual contact - particularly anal intercourse - even consensual contact. It's how we got the English word "sodomy," after all. (Check out this page on Sodomy Laws.)

Sodomy: a term used today predominantly in law (derived from traditional Christian usage) to describe the act of anal intercourse, oral intercourse, or bestiality (Wikipedia);

Sodomy: Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French sodomie, from Late Latin Sodoma Sodom; from the homosexual proclivities of the men of the city in Genesis 19:1–11
Date: 13th century
: anal or oral copulation with a member of the same or opposite sex; also : copulation with an animal (Merriam-Webster)


I agree that the sins of Sodom are inhospitality and rape - but that's not, shall we say, the pop culture interpretation.

[una--sola.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm chiming in here with Biblical Interpretation and Historical Context stuffs. Today, the big deal with Sodom is that men wanted to rape other men. Historically, the big deal was the lengths to which Lot went to uphold the laws of hospitality and how willing the men of Sodom were to disregard them.

In this context, the important part of that quote really comes here: unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

Wikipedia will have to be my stand-in source for now, but it should provide some idea of how important it was, culturally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitality#Biblical_and_Middle_Eastern I will be back with something more substantial later, but right now, class.