One in four, one in six

There's a trend out there, a way of phrasing things, that's bothered me for awhile now. I got inspired to actually put down some words about it, so here you go... 

(Gosh, I'm being ultra serious lately.)


I'm leaving the names out, because I don't want to cause a lynch mob. That's not the point of this. However, these are actual quotes.

• "After work, I'm going to go through a list and do some TL raping of my favorites, so if you wake up to a star-banging, it's cuz I love you."
  
  
• "im gonna rape everyone with favorites"
  
  
• "Not new to RP or Twitter. So rape that follow button. RT"
  
  
• "Oh. If you come to RP, rape my mentions if you want. I don't mind."
  
  
• "RAPE DAT FOLLOW AND RETWEET BUTTON"

It is a cross-section of people who say this, not only men, not only women, not only teenagers. And this doesn't happen only on twitter. Facebook gets their share of, "My likes got raped." Tumblr has it said of their reblogs.



I'm sure some people would like to say the following to me:

1. Twitter is a public place. If you can't handle it, then you shouldn't be there.
   
2. It is my twitter. I have the right to phrase things how I want.
   
3. It's not like I'm actually saying I want to rape someone. You're taking being PC too far.
   
4. I'm on Twitter to hang with my friends. If one of my friends told me that bothered them, I'd stop. We all get that it's a joke. 

I'm not going to say that none of those statements have merit. And I'm not out to harass people who use the phrase. What I will say is this...



We live in a culture where colleges expel rape victims for reporting their rape and let their accusers go on to graduate.


We live in a culture where whole towns protect rapists when they happen to be on the sports team. Not just kids at school, but actions or lack of action drive the victims to to suicide attempts, or incite vandalizing the family house, etc. The victim is immediately called a liar or slut-shamed.


We live in a culture where a county prosecutor tells a mother whose five year old was raped by an adolescent that "boys will be boys."



We live in a culture where District Attorneys, when having physical evidence and a confession from the rapist, still decide not to prosecute.



So for those of you who think that people who want to take the concept of rape seriously are out of line, I would suggest you look at our society. Because we clearly don't take it seriously enough, when we still have the perspective that the victim got him or herself into it, and the assailant just couldn't help themselves.



And for those of you who say, "those situations had nothing to do with me"....


You are a human being. You are part of society. Therefore, you have an impact on your culture. You might not want that responsibility, but -- too bad -- you're alive and part of communities, whether online, at work, or at school. When you are dismissive of rape, you are putting it out into the world that it isn't something to be taken seriously. Make no mistake, putting sexual assault on the same level as excessive twitter usage is being dismissive.



To potential rapists, the message is that those actions aren't that big of a deal. To potential victims, the message is that they shouldn't take it seriously if it happens to them. They bear shame for being upset, they are more likely to blame themselves for having it happen, and they are less likely to report it. To actual victims, they're left feeling unsupported -- that their family or friends aren't going to take it seriously, that the police or their college will not take them seriously. To victims, comments like this might trigger them back to that traumatic moment.




Now.... Is it your job to censor your words so that nothing you say ever upsets anyone? 

Of course not! And please don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm saying that you don't have the RIGHT to say it, because you do. But guys, why would you want to?



I'm honestly asking, because I think it should probably be a question that is asked. The phrase isn't some bundle of wit from Oscar Wilde. Is it that important to you to say it? Do you think rape honestly adds something amusing to the sentence? Do you feel like you're providing some kind of shock value when you're saying it, like a middle-school kid swearing? Do you feel cooler when you phrase it that way? Do you feel like that's the best way to let people know you really want a follow or a retweet?


And the question starts becoming, are you really going to fight for your rights to say something which you have to know is upsetting to someone? Are all the reasons above worth that?

That is something that only you can decide. Like I said, you have the right to say it.

Then again, you also have the right to lick the banister that goes does into the subway. 

Bet somebody peed on that.

The final thing that I'll say, that I hope you'll think about:


You might think that of the people on your twitter follower list, there are very few people who have been sexually assaulted. That at most, you're maybe only upsetting one person, and you probably aren't close with them. They probably just need to get a sense of humor and some therapy, right?


Here are the stats:


1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted. 1 in 6 men will be.


So if you have 400 followers, statistically, 60-100 of your followers have been/will be sexually assaulted at some point during their lives. 80% of sexual assaults happen before a person hits age 30.

Of those 60-100 followers, only 3-20 of them ever reported it (statistic: only 5-20% of sexual assaults are reported). So if you're depending on your twitter followers to be open with you about something traumatic in their life, you may end up holding your breath.


I'm hoping that maybe you just think for a few minutes about those 60-100 people who follow you on twitter, and opt for a slightly more compassionate approach. 

Because for an awful lot of people, rape isn't just a word.

Supernaturally De-Motivated

Character Motivation Is Not An Excuse: 

Say a man was raised to feed his family at all costs. From the day he was born, that was put on him, to take care of siblings, sick parents, etc... Later, as an adult with no money and no food in the house, he takes a weapon and holds up a convenience store. Somebody dies. He didn't mean for it to happen. We sympathize. We look at his life and think -- "I can understand where he's coming from, it's a tragedy from every angle."

We think -- society failed him, his parents failed him, his friends failed him -- or else he wouldn't be put in that desperate a situation.

But he is still an adult who made a bad choice, so we would still expect him to be sentenced for armed robbery.

We would still expect him to attempt to make amends.

If you were held at gunpoint in that convenience store, would you believe that man saying, "I had to. That's just how I'm wired," to be enough of an explanation? That person being wired that way may be true, but their wiring resulted in actions that have consequences.

No doubt, some of you will say. 'This doesn't apply to Dean, because Dean only tried to SAVE his brother.'

So let's take a look at a different angle.

===============================================

Say you had cancer. Say the only option you had was experimental chemotherapy that was extremely risky. Say you didn't want to do it, and were ready to die. Say you'd fought the good fight for a long, long time and were exhausted.

Say your family knew that you didn't want this chemo. Say they knew you were ready to die. Say they couldn't let you go and tricked you into having that chemotherapy.

Say they lied to your face about it for months afterwards. Say a friend of the family unknowingly touched the very toxic bag and died as a result.

How easy do you think it would be to get over that? Anger seems an appropriate response to someone violating your basic human rights, even when you love that person and know that person loves you. Being angry and having a hard time forgiving doesn't mean you love them any less.

Anger seems even more appropriate when the person's acknowledgment of wrongdoing is "I had to" and then they immediately leave instead of trying to work things out.

"I only came to drop this off. What's in it....?
Just soul-crushing disappointment
in the current state of our relationship"

How do you get to forgiving and trusting again when you cannot trust that this person won't do the exact same thing to you again? When they obviously feel they had the right and duty to call the shots about your body?

We sympathize with that family member, absolutely. My mother had Lou Gherig's disease. I know what it is for someone you love to make the choice to let go of life. I know what it is to have to make peace with letting them go, to be in the room as they go and know that giving CPR goes against their wishes.


For those of you about to say so --- No, I am not Dean Winchester. I did not have it planted in my head in my formative years that my main reason for being was to keep my mother alive. I do not have several co-morbid psychiatric diagnoses that would impact how I would be able to handle a family member's death.


That prime directive of Dean's makes it harder to let someone go. That prime directive means the choice he made was a bad decision which a rationale we can understand. That rationale does not, however, take a bad decision and make it a good decision. It does not absolve an adult of making a choice which violates the basic human rights of a family member.

 ====================================================

Sam has made some terrible decisions in his time, no doubt. Things Dean has had every right at which to get mad. Sam has also sought forgiveness for them and tried to make amends. He has admitted being wrong. This season, for the first time in the show's history, Dean has a legit reason to feel guilt. Usually he feels guilt for a whole lot of things that no one would really blame him for. He's the one who has to seek forgiveness this time. It's new territory for him.


I love Dean Winchester. He's a wonderful, nuanced character. Part of those nuances are his flaws. We can still love him even with his flaws; we might even love him because of them.


We can even get occasionally angry at him and still love him.

Perhaps even more important:

WOOBIFICATION COMPLETE IN
THREE....TWO.....HUGS

We do not have to turn him into a goddamn woobie.

 Dean deserves better than to be held blameless in all contexts.

 He deserves to be treated like a character with his own agency. 

And the woobificiation of Dean Winchester begs one very important question: 

If fandom does not believe that Dean can ever be seen to be at fault for his actions, 

then how do we expect the writers to pen a quality storyline for him? 

All truly great protagonists have the capability of making a mistake. 

Perfection is boring. 

Valid Emotions and Choices:

Take a moment and think about why Sam would be angry. He's been possessed by demons, had demon blood put in him, watched by demons growing up. He trusted Ruby and she betrayed him. He trusted the idea of God at some point, and was betrayed by that. He ended up making the choice to take in Lucifer and fight him. With no choice in the matter -- his  body was removed from the Cage and went around doing TERRIBLE things. A person he considered one of his closest friends shattered the Wall in his head that was in place to save his life and keep him from going crazy. Then he went crazy, therefore betrayed by his own mind.

Since we're investigating how Dean's childhood impacted how he is handling things now, note that while Sam was growing up -- HIS instruction was that his wishes, his choices, were selfish and wrong. Even if Sam had better capability for making those choices despite John (which is largely due to the being sheltered from hunting for so long and Dean working so hard to let him be a kid), he still internalized his father's words. He still grew up with the same type of self-esteem damage that his brother has, that his life and choices were less worthy/important than the lives and choices of other people. We're just exposed to Sam's brand of self-esteem damage less, because SPN as a show is told through Dean's emotional viewpoint.

Over and over again, Sam has had choice taken away from him. Dean is the person he trusted more than anyone in this world NOT take his choice away, to NOT betray him. Dean is the person who had just begged and pleaded with him in a church, trying to convince Sam just how much he loves, respects, and will put him first.

Putting someone first doesn't always mean saving their life.

============================

So. We've established that Sam feeling angry and betrayed is not completely out of line, just like some feelings of anger and betrayal made sense for Dean during the times Sam has let him down. W

QUESTION

When you are angry with your family members, is everything that comes out of your mouth completely kosher? Do you sometimes say things you regret?

I absolutely agree that some of the stuff Sam has said has been out of line. Dean's also been showing more passive-aggressiveness in the past two years than he has the whole show. Some of this, I believe, is down to the writing. Some of it seems to be poor continuity, some of it seems to be on purpose.

This year, Sam seems to be the one acting out in anger. While some of what he says is truthful, some of what he says is hurtful and sometimes makes no sense in the context of the show. Dean's done this too, more than once. For instance, last year Dean was blaming Sam for losing his soul and becoming soulless. This goes contrary to the show, as Dean was the one trying to convince Sam not to blame himself for soulless actions in the latter half of S6. And also - Dean knows it was Cas who accidentally left Sam's soul in the Cage. Nonetheless, the writers used it as something for Dean to toss in Sam's face. It was designed like this on purpose, trudging up old wounds to make Sam feel terrible, building up to what culminated in the finale.

I feel like they're switching this around, because maybe they're gearing up for a reverse epiphany this year.


My personal opinion is that they could be doing a better job at this, because this is the first and only time Sam is addressing a lot of these things. Instead of relating to the emotional consequences of Dean's actions, we get five minutes of remarks at the end of episodes that often come off more snide than anything else.





I would ask that you extend to Sam the same benefit of the doubt you grant Dean whenever he mouths off.

I would ask that you think about the last time you were in a fight with family or friends, and to really consider how easy it is sometimes for hurtful words to slip out.

I would also ask you to listen to what Sam is actually trying to say.

1. Sam never said that he hated his brother, or didn't love his brother, or didn't WANT to be brothers. He said things were fucked up. That their relationship is broken. That being "family" isn't some magical cure-all that makes their problems disappear.

When we look at his actions, he was also willing to get in the car with Dean again.

I don't think Sam is going to beg for an apology, but just by being willing to be present, he's giving Dean the opportunity to fix things.

Is this "he can come to me" approach completely fair of Sam? Not really. Expecting someone to mind-read what you need from them nearly always turns out badly. But we do need to recognize that if he didn't WANT to fix things, he wouldn't be there.

2. Dean said "if it was the same situation, you'd do the same thing." Sam said he wouldn't. Fandom exploded about how terrible Sam is for saying that he wouldn't save his brother. That's not what was being said.

The same situation means that Dean would be talking to Death, ready to die. The same situation means that the only way Sam would have at his disposal to save Dean would be something which he would know would violate Dean's trust.

Sam is saying that he would respect his brother's choice to die, if his brother was ready to die. If you're having a hard time swallowing Sam's words, continue to look at his actions. Because every time Dean's life/health have been threatened since Sam said that, he still comes running.

Using The Trans To Make a Point:

Kevin was used in a recent episode to give voice to fandom's feelings about the fighting between the brothers. Kevin's not wrong when he points out that, hey, Sam and Dean are alive. They have each other. Kevin asked them to get over their drama, in front of his mother no less. His mother who just found out her only child is dead.

Sam made a promise he knew he couldn't keep. And Dean, of course, would love to just jump past the fighting to get into the forgiven category. That bypasses him having to change, that bypasses him having to truly consider that he hurt Sam, which is definitely not something he ever wants to do. Dean never wants to hurt his brother. Admitting he bears some fault in this means admitting his actions damaged his brother.

When he turns and Sam is gone -- it makes Sam seem like an asshole. It makes Sam seem like the unbending person in the relationship.

But we've established that Sam has a valid reason to be angry.

Take a moment and think about being betrayed in a core way like Sam was. Lied to or cheated on by, not just someone you trust, but the person you trust the most. Or just think about the last fight you may have had with friends or parents.

Think about the hurt feelings, the ache in your stomach.

Then think about how you'd react if a third party said, "Get over it. Stop fighting."

Be really, really honest with yourself. Do you think those words would flip off the magic switch to get you to stop feeling betrayed?

Using the Ghostfacers To Make a Point:

Foils are often used in storytelling to provide similarities and contrast for the protagonist or protagonists. For example, Laertes vs Hamlet. Hamlet had plenty of issues on his way to seek to avenge his father's death, including how long he procrastinated.  Hamlet's actions end up killing Laertes' father accidentally. Shakespeare holds up Laertes as the example of a good son, someone who immediately stands up to avenge both his father and his sister. Because of how Hamlet has gone about things, he ends up having to fight Laertes. Both end up dead. The general point being that whether you're slow or quick to seek vengeance, it can ultimately destroy you and your loved ones.


Another one? Harry vs Draco. Two boys born of well-respected wizard families. Both raised by people who care more about appearances and image than anything else. Both even end up playing the same position on the Quidditch field. But look at how their choices differ. The choice in how they treat people, the choice in which House they want for themselves.


As people are pointing out, Dean's actions were not nearly as selfish as Ed's. When you come right down to it, trying to keep someone alive is still going to come off as nobler than sabotaging your friend's relationship.

But examine the similarity of the emotional motivations.

Dean is afraid of being alone, afraid of losing Sam, afraid of not having someone to "split the crappiness" with. These feelings stem from him being raised to value himself more via his connection to Sam, not to mention just the outright fear after having to experience grief over and over and over again. If he does not succeed in keeping his brother alive, he feels like he failed personally, and also failed Sam.

Ed is in a situation where everyone is moving on from the Ghostfacers. Maggie is moving on with her life, presumably with her masters degree. Even Spruce is. Corbett died. Ambyr was injured. He's now a man in his thirties. It seems like Ghostfacers is something he was holding onto tightly, something he measures himself by. A way to still feel connected to his best friend. In fear of losing his best friend to a relationship, in fear of being alone, he makes a bad choice.

Let's look at Harry and Sam.

Sam is feeling betrayed because Dean decided that Sam's rights counted less than Dean's fears, resulting in a bad move made out of panic. Sam is also feeling betrayed because of the lies Dean had to tell to keep the whole thing up. Lies Dean told, because if he had told the truth, it could have resulted in the immediate death of his brother.

Harry, I would think, not only doesn't know how to handle his best friend destroying his future happiness. He also may not know how to deal with Ed's assumption that just because Harry was moving forward with someone else, that he would have dropped Ed. That's rather an insulting assumption for your best friend to have. It comes down to Ed letting his fear dictate his actions, rather than respecting his friend's choices.

Among the other things that make Ed and Harry's case less sympathetic than the Winchesters' --- Zeddmore and Spangler had the capability to talk to each other BEFORE Ed faked a case. Dean's decision had to be made in a matter of moments.

Dean could of, and should of, presented the choice to Sam. But he knew the answer would be no. Ed, likewise, was afraid of a rejection which would lead to a more permanent rejection.

Why use a foil at all, though?


Two reasons:

1. The Supernatural fandom tends to be extremely invested in Sam and Dean. Often fans are invested in one brother more than the other. Providing a foil of loved secondary characters means that people unable to hear Sam or Dean's side of the argument might be able to consider more of it when it's presented to them by a less contentious pair.

IE -- If Sam expresses his anger to Dean, people immediately come down on him for it. If Harry says the same thing to Ed, people might be able to consider both sides in a way they haven't. Also true of those who bash Dean in extreme defense of Sam. They're hopefully able to hear what Ed has to say with a little less judgment.

2. Watch Sam & Dean watching Ed & Harry.

The Trans, Sheriff Mills, Garth and Charlie have all pointed out to Sam and Dean, to varying degrees, that they're lucky to have each other. Right now they don't feel super lucky.

However.... In this episode, Dean has to watch someone, someone not his brother, go through being betrayed. He also watches someone, who made almost the same type of mistake he did, be forced to own up to what he did, to try to make amends, and watch it still not get better.

Sam, on the other hand, has to watch how stuck Ed felt, how fearful of losing his friend he was.

And BOTH Sam and Dean have to watch a friendship that's at least a decade long fall apart. They have to watch the fallout of the decision NOT to try to work past things. They have to watch how much it hurts both Ed and Harry.

Do I think getting a bird's eye view of a crumbling relationship will solve everything? No. Neither for the audience nor the boys.

But it might bring everyone one step closer to a resolution.

What's clear from the past couple episodes to me is that Sam does want to forgive his brother. There are moments when they slide back into the old cadence of conversation, or moments where he hesitates before closing a door. However angry, I don't believe he's trying to punish his brother.

==========

In the Pilot, we were introduced to two brothers.

One was so afraid of being alone and abandoned, he interrupted the other's life, having a pretty good idea he might not be welcome. So he broke in. Most of the episode was spent reasserting himself as the older, wiser brother.

The other brother was so afraid of not getting to assert his own choices, of being seen as the younger, less favored brother and son, that he spent a lot of the episode pulling away. Most of the episode was spent with him asserting that his choices still have meaning.

They both want the same things they've always wanted. Sad that they've moved forward so little as characters.