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