Meta: Better a Friendly Refusal Than Unwilling Consent: Possession and Sex in Supernatural

[chasingtides]

Comments

[virginia_fell]

This is incredibly profound, and kind of makes me want to watch this show just to see what it looks like in context.

[chasingtides]

As soon as I saw how Zachariah was talking about Dean-as-object, I knew I needed to write this. I am so on the fence about interpretation that I really want to see what other people think - but I am leaning toward seeing it as anyone-can-be-victim and another way to discuss such an important topic.

[familiardevil]

This is a great meta =) There are definitely a lot of sexual undertones & subtext on SPN, especially of the slash variety. It's part of why I love the show SO MUCH.

I think it's deliberate that these situations are happening exclusively to menThis I disagree with ENTIRELY though. What about Ruby? She used both an unwilling host and an empty host- empty so that Sam would consent to working with her, and later, it would be the factor that would consumate their relationship. Sam can have sex with Ruby BECAUSE she's in an empty body. Both Dean and Sam have also sexalized Ruby herself, and her host. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, when Ruby is possessing the secretary, he asks her 'whose body are you riding?' or something along those lines. Though the bodies Ruby possesses are female, and we associate Ruby with the feminine, and we do not normally associate feminine attributes with penetration or possession, she totally gets all up in girls. Repeatedly. She even uses one canonly for sex. Ruby and her host - especially her third one,

[familiardevil]

There's also something to be said about Lilith, who we've seen possess more bodies than almost any other demon on SPN. Mostly little girls. The show never sexualizes the possessions of the little girls, but all the same...the older blonde women she possesses, she only gets all up in to have sex with Sam. So I think there's definitely something to be said about female possessions as well

[chasingtides]

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to my point in this post. I have clarified my point (I hope) here, if you are interested in commenting on that.

[chasingtides]

We don't get the language of the sexual with Ruby, just as we don't get the same language with Meg (or Casey or any number of other female-bodied demons - like the crossroads demons). Yes, they are possessed and, yes, we can and should extrapolate this information, but it is not explicit in the text. We get the language for Nick and Dean and Sam and Jimmy, but not for Coma Girl or Meg Masters or Casey or, even, Claire. My discussion of Claire is an extrapolation of the language given to Jimmy.

I think the show is trying to get us to look at this idea that because Sam/Dean/John/Bobby/Jimmy/Nick is 'big and strong and can handle it.' They can't. Sam is absolutely broken after Born Under a Bad Sign. Jimmy can't find another reason to want Castiel until his daughter is taken. I think it is a huge mistake to say that because these characters have penises, they "can handle" the violation we so strongly object to in characters who possess breasts.

[hearseeno]

You've got some really interesting things to say about this and it's making me think about things in new ways, always something that feels like a gift from the meta-writer. So, thank you

[chasingtides]

I am not sure. In my experience, we do have language for non-sexual physical violations (non-sexual beatings, for example) and we have ways, as a society, to de-sexualise sexual violations. (As for the latter, I learned to be an expert in couching the discussion of my sexual violation in non-sexual terms whenever possible

[esorlehcar]

And what intrigues me is the way the fandom is using this language to discuss Bobby's possession - that it's bad writing because Bobby knows better, Bobby would never do that, Bobby must have done something stupid for a demon to possess him. (And don't the hunters do the same when Sam is possessed? He was possessed because of his blood, a theory that protects the other hunters from the same fate.)I think that's a bit of oversimplification. Bobby was introduced on the show at the end of S1 as someone with a lot of knowledge about demons (in stark contrast to Sam and Dean's ignorance). He's the one who gave the boys the charms to keep them from being possessed after BUaBS; he's the one who gave them the devil's trap. He's the closest thing the show has to a demon expert, and unless there's something about this demon that made it able to possess him despite the general precautions we can assume him to take, I don't think it's blaming the victim to suggest possession seems like a convenient plot device that doesn't fit what we know of

[chasingtides]

And I think that it is an easy sidestep to say that it's just a plothole. With the explicit sexualisation of possession in this episode and the possession of Bobby/attempted possession of Dean by Michael via Zachariah it means that every male hero of the show (Bobby, John, Sam, Dean) has had this sexualised violation made against them. And indeed it is a violation - Bobby stabbed himself to stop it, Sam said that Dean should have kill him.

I think we can learn extratextually from this. If you choose not to, that's your choice, but I do think the writers are saying something explicit with Bobby and Dean in Sympathy for the Devil.

[lydia_petze]

This was incredibly interesting - thankyou. I had picked up on the implications but I hadn't really thought it through as hard as this. And reading over the comments, I'm getting even more to think about. (Yay, thinky fandom ;-))

Jimmy was willing and even happy the first time he welcome Castiel into his body. (And isn't that sexual language right there as well?

Re Jimmy's initial consent - yes, he may have been completely willing, but he certainly did not give informed consent. He couldn't have. To extend the sexual metaphor a little further (possibly overextending it) I'd compare it to a kind of statutory rape - much like a young person may not know all the implications of the act, even with consent*, neither did he.

*I know an underage person can't give consent at all, but I'm already hammering this metaphor into a shape it probably wasn't ever meant to be. Forgive me.

[blackcat333_99]

Very interesting meta. I noticed that this ep had both brothers being violated, essentially. Sam with his "unaware/uncaring of proper boundaries" fangirl feeling him up, and Dean with the explicit "attack" by Meg. Hmm. Must think more on this.

Although I would slightly disgree with this:

Even Meg Masters, who comes to Dean in Are You There God? (4.02) and calls him a monster for not seeing that she was alive, doesn't use the sexual language of being ridden, of being taken, of being empty until a demon used her.Meg did use that language, if I recall correctly. She (well, GhostMeg) asked Dean, "Do you have any idea what it's like to be ridden by evil for months

[chasingtides]

It's been a *long* time since I watched Are You There, God? so I missed that.

And I totally forgot the rape implications between Alastair and Dean. Those were terribly, terribly obvious. And what it also meant to Dean, for Uriel and Castiel, to put him in the same room as his torturer (rapist) and told to do the same to Alastair as Alastair did to him. Absolutely horrifying - and utterly underscoring that these terrible, terrible things can and do happen to men, even when we, as a society, choose to look away.