Meta: Angels and Demons: Thorns and Stings

[chasingtides]

Comments

[04_lover]

I'm pretty tired right now, so please excuse my slowness :) could you clarify this to me? ...except for Dean who was so clearly, visibly brutalised in a highly sexual manner. When/how was Dean brutalized in a sexual manner? Are you talking about his interaction with Zachariah (in which case can you expand on how that situation was sexual) or about how the show depicts Dean as a man who sleeps with a lot of women?

These are very interesting thoughts. I do see Dean as a victim though and I agree with you that "his choice - his consent, his ability to say no - taken away by a (should-be-trustworthy, older, authority figure) male."

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. I'm not sure if it's any different for an angel to do this than a demon, only because Kripke has stated that the angels are dicks (with the exception of a few of them, Castiel, Anna). They're not nice guys, they're downright bastards, as we've found out along with the boys. They're not the

[chasingtides]

I mean that the interaction between Zachariah and Dean was highly sexualised and brutalised Dean (it did give him stage IV gastric cancer and removed his brother's lungs, after all

[04_lover]

I'm not sure I saw the interaction between Dean and Zachariah 'highly sexualized.' I think Dean was brutalized and victimized, but I do not think that it was sexual. So I was wondering, what gave you that impression?

I agree, there is a huge difference to those things. I'm just saying I don't see the difference between whether an angel who forcefully asks for consent is all that different from a demon who takes without permission (aside from the consent issue). At the end of the day, it's still possession, and it is still wrong.

[chasingtides]

If someone says, "So-and-so wants to be inside you?" And the other person says, "No, you need my consent to do that and I don't," and the first person says, "He is going to take you, his [object]," in my book, it's sexual. Dean is protesting that he doesn't consent to having Michael inside of him, riding him, taking him, and using him. Additionally, Dean is forced to his knees while Zachariah holds his head up.

If you aren't familiar with the idea, I suggest you check out Does This Remind You of Anything?.

1/2

[ginzai]

I don't separate out demonic and angelic possession in the same manner that you do, but I think it's an interesting (if ultimately depressing) concept to consider. However, I only can contemplate possession as a metaphor for rape as one form of sexual violence among the several varieties used within the show

2/2

[ginzai]

So it's not like the humans (that we know about, anyway) have gone in completely blind. This might have something to do with the angel in question, of course; I could see Uriel or Zachariah outright lying in order to gain permission, but that doesn't seem to be Castiel (or Lucifer's) style. In a weird way, if demonic possession is out and out non-con, angelic seems to be dub-con. It's just as twisted and perhaps in a way even worse since the illusion of consent just adds insult to injury. However, that doesn't make demonic possession any less horrific, especially since it seems to often end with a dead human. And maybe demonic possession is worse after all; Meg was dropped out of a seven story window and hadn't healed at all months afterward. How incredibly painful and terrible must it have been to feel your shattered bones literally grinding against one another for that long before you're allowed to finally die? Angelic possession adds a mindfuck to a physical rape, but demonic possession must be like living in an eternal

Re: 2/2

[chasingtides]

I'm focusing on the sexualised violence enacted on men because it's not present in other forms of media.

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?

Re: 2/2

[ginzai]

Aaah, I misunderstood the point of your meta. I thought you were coming more from the Supernatural side of things, rather than discussing male on male violence via Supernatural

Re: 2/2

[smallcaps]

That's a good point re Dean's forced-consent to get off the rack and pick up the knife. I'm wondering if that ties in at all with what I mentioned below about Alastair not using the same sexualised language - that he gets his power trip down below.

[smallcaps]

Thinking about the sexualised language, is it significant that Alastair, one of the nastier demons, consistently refers to wearing bodies (like clothes) rather than taking or riding them? And how does that relate to what we know about his and Dean's relationship in Hell? Maybe he gets all of his metaphorical raping needs taken care of downstairs.

I'm also thinking about the fact that Uriel (whose vessel was a black man) used racialised language to refer to humans (mud monkeys). The disdainful attitude of angels to humans is fairly obvious. So here we have angels twisting and forcing consent from men to violate their bodily integrity - what we're essentially seeing, on screen, is humans (because of course white males represent all of humanity, ugh) being portrayed as a minority group, powerwise. The angels look down on them, disregard them, feel free to use and abuse them with little regard for their welfare and it is their place. In terms of this sexualisation - 'humans' are women and angels are men

[chasingtides]

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

[smallcaps]

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]

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.

[datenshiblue]

Here per your suggestion. ^^

Just some thoughts, definitely not "answers", I don't think your questions have simple ones, if they did, they wouldn't be so uncomfortable to contemplate.

What does it mean that even angels will ride roughshod over consent with pleasure?My take

[chasingtides]

Speaking as a feminist and as a survivor of sexual violence and all of that jazz: Why on earth should we expect men to respect our right of consent if we refuse to respect theirs?

That really, really bothers me about what I'm seeing as I watch reactions unfold. Maybe I'm too close to the issue and am overreacting, but it does bother me.

If it doesn't matter if Sam says no or Dean says no, then why should it matter if Ruby or Jo or Anna says no or not?

[datenshiblue]

For my part, I don't think you are over reacting, just reacting, to something you recognize.

I agree completely - if no means no when a woman says it to a man, it should mean the same when a man says it to a woman. When a man says it to a man.

I'd be lying if I said that the imbalance in fan reactions surprised me, though.

[chasingtides]

This imbalance - that a woman's no or a woman's inability to give consent means more than a man's - breaks my heart, whether it's surprising or not.