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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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From:
no subject
I'm sorry you feel I'm trying to derail your post. I responded to the first one because it was linked on the newsletter and I took issue with some of the things you said, in particular your assertion that this kind of sexualizing happens exclusively to men on the show, and to the second because you directly linked me to it--you seemed to misunderstand why people took issue with what you said, so I tried to explain my specific objection.
We seem to be talking at cross purposes, however; you keep defending your right to talk about violence against men as if that's what I'm objecting to, and I keep trying to explain that even as you say you aren't accusing the fandom (or rather, the tiny fraction of fandom that discusses these things at all) of prejudice or suggesting that the focus on violence against women is impeding a focus on violence against men, every claim that the fandom is "ignoring or avoiding this issue" does exactly that.
You don't have to convince me that talking about male rape (outside of the standard derailment technique) is a good thing--I was convinced long before your posts--and I doubt I'll be able to convince you that presenting this as a purely male problem or talking about how it disturbs you that discussions about gender problems in SPN tend to focus on women and not men is a very problematic way of framing the issue. Which kind of leaves us at an impasse.
From:
no subject
I don't see how saying that fandom seems to be ignoring an issue means I'm saying the focus on violence against women is impeding their ability to focus on this issue. I mentioned the "normally highly rape-conscious, misogyny conscious fanbase" (which is, yes, the small sector that discusses meta - I've made statements on that in the past) because I imagine that discussions about violence against women would facilitate discussions about violence against men. In my mind, the two topics could be well married - having the language and knowledge and capability to discuss violence against women would make this group of people well suited to discuss violence against men, rather than otherwise.
I am sad because - as far as I can tell from your comments and others' - I am wrong. Being able to talk about one, it appears, has no bearing on one's capability to discuss the other. I am bothered that you find it to be a Huge Problem that I don't want to focus on male-on-female violence in this specific, discrete space, but you essentially dismissed Sam's lack of consent in his sex scene with Ruby. I find it bothersome that you seem to find it valid to say that I am derailing a discussion I'm not even having - unless, perhaps, my meta is so far reaching and my words so powerful that this piece is derailing discussions elsewhere?
From:
no subject
It's true that saying the show uses different imagery or language for men doesn't mean it isn't also sexualizing women, but again, when you say "This is different from how the women are treated," claiming derailing when people say, "Well, no, that's exactly how the women are treated," just doesn't hold water. If you wanted to discuss male sexualization on the show without bringing female sexualization into it, bringing female sexualization into it in your original post wasn't the best way to achieve that. Disagreeing with a point you made isn't derailing; it's valid participation in a discussion you started.
I'm not entirely sure why you think discussions about sexual violence against women should facilitate discussions about sexual violence against men, especially in the context of SPN, where, as you noted so eloquently in your first post, canon tends to treat what you see as sexual violence against men as important and horrific in a way it doesn't with women. If canon also treated sexual violence against women as important and horrific, the fandom would hear a lot less about misogyny.
Regardless, the fact that are people are taking issue with the way you framed your comments doesn't mean that they're incapable of discussing violence against men, nor does it mean they don't consider it an important topic. It just means that your posts and quite a few of your comments made it sound like you were a) claiming a level of sexualization for men on the show that doesn't exist for women, and b) bemoaning the fact that people are talking about sexualizing women when they should be devoting at least some of that time to talking about sexualizing men. I get that you're saying that wasn't your intent, but I think some of your language was problematic if that's the case.
I'm honestly not trying to accuse you of not caring about sexual violence against women in canon, and as I've said ad nauseam at this point, I think it's great that you want to talk about sexual violence against men. You made a lot of interesting points in both your posts, and re-imagining the very act of possession as analogous to sexual assault has a lot of ramifications for both male and female characters on the show that could lead to a lot of fascinating discussion. Which, once again, I think is wonderful. I also think some of the language you used was unfortunate, at the very least, if focusing on men without downplaying the sexual violence against women on the show or suggesting that the few people talking about that need to change their goal.