Documenting Data

BREAKING: Straight Parents Never Fight!

Posted by Dan Savage at 10:50 AM

I started watching “Rescue Me” a few months ago. It’s currently in it’s fourth season and I’m almost done with the third season, thanks to Netflix.

Since I’m behind, I just saw a majorly controversial episode in which Tommy (the main character) “rapes” his soon to be ex-wife. I use quotations because there is some ambiguity in defining the act as rape. They’re in the middle of discussing their divorce break-down when he throws her down on the couch, she hits him, and he has sex with her. Though she appeared to resist in the beginning, she appeared to enjoy it later on. Immediately after they’re done, she asks again about the chaise lounge.

My sister and her husband are a fan of the show and she had told me about the scene and the controversy. Since it was a year ago, I googled “Rescue Me” Rape and there was TONS of stuff.

Fans threatened to stop watching because they did not want to support a show that appears to condone violence against women. The first season of 24 bothered me because of the story’s treatment and portrayal of women. I stopped watching. I watch “Rescue Me,” but I know and accept that the characters are really, really fucked up. The scene didn’t shock me because it was within context of the show where shocking things occur constantly.

So why am I writing this?

Because what does bother me about the whole rape controversy surrounding that scene is that only a few episodes later, Tommy is raped and I couldn’t find a single blog that even mentioned it.

A former lover of his makes the two of them dinner since they are still friends, she crushes pills into his drink when he’s in the bathroom. He passes out and she has sex with him. That does not qualify as consensual sex. The two of them no longer had a sexual relationship – in fact, he had resisted recent advances of hers.

And no one made a shtick about that scene at all. Gender bias, anyone?

I cut&pasted some of the blog snippets below if anyone is curious:

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/2006/06/an_amazing_resc.html

“Denis Leary and Andrea Roth were frighteningly into their characters throughout what was an excruciatingly long and explicit scen. Every single one of their facial expressions was perfectly ambiguous and perfectly understandable. It can’t have been easy to film.”

http://incestabuse.about.com/od/inthenews/a/RescueMe.htm

Andrea Roth (the actress who plays Tommy’s wife) said, "It is very clear that this was a microcosm of two people's very dysfunctional relationship and in no way do I think it condones rape or violent behavior against women. As an actress, it's my job to look at the dark parts of the psyche."

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/2006/06/he_raped_her.html

This blogger asks his wife for her opinion of the scene:

“He raped her,” she said. No elaboration. No equivocation. No considering what the producers or the writers or the directors or the cast might have had in mind. She knew what she had seen.”

A comment on the above blog:

“My wife and I had the same reaction to the end of the show last week...like "What the .... was THAT about?" And the ex putting on a new shirt and just sitting pretty as you please in the final scene?”

http://tubetalk.blogspot.com/2006/06/rescue-me-rape-scene-explained.html

Peter Tolan (one of the show’s the writers)

“We tried to be extremely careful about that scene. I did not direct the episode, but I did my most careful writing in preparing the scene. Our feeling has always been that Tommy and Janet are in a highly dysfunctional relationship (obviously), a negative vortex fueled by only one positive - a faint glimmer of love that is constantly overshadowed by truly fantastic physical attraction. In terms of the scene last night, I never wrote the words 'don't' or 'no' at any point in the scene, and when I talked to Andrea about the playing of the thing, I pretty much told her that she had to stand up to Tommy - that he had taken so much away from her over the years, that she had to stare him down from a position of strength while he was forcing himself on her. I told her to shame him with the words she was given - to let him know she couldn't hurt her anymore, no matter what he did. Did this come across? For many viewers, obviously not. I was not on set the day the scene was shot (I live in California and am only in NYC when I direct episodes), so maybe those ideas weren't followed through as well as they could have been. I'll admit this is extremely dicey stuff. The idea of any woman 'enjoying' being raped is repellant, and caused all of us (and the network) a great deal of concern. But again, these are seriously damaged people who are unable to express their emotions - and so expression through brutality has become expected.”

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/rescue_me/index.html

“Leary couldn't see why viewers don't have this kind of reaction to violent acts on "The Sopranos." Sepinwall again: ‘The difference, from my viewpoint, is that 'The Sopranos' shows despicable acts without condoning them, a trick 'Rescue Me' doesn't always pull off.’

And how. Showing a woman appearing to enjoy a rape, and the rapist exiting with a smile? That's not depicting a behavior, that's condoning it.”

“It apparently wasn’t enough that the show depicted Gavin raping a woman, but it had to show that Janet Gavin appeared to enjoy it, or at least go along with it, by the end of the act.”

http://www.givememyremote.com/remote/rescue-me-rape-scene-uproar/

"I personally found the scene incredibly disturbing to watch. Tommy Gavin is a flawed man - this I know, but raping his ex-wife really brought Tommy to a whole new despicable level, at least in my eyes. And Janet’s reaction was perhaps even more stomach turning. It was almost as if she accepted what happened, like it was just Tommy being Tommy. I was bothered and bewildered by his AND her behavior."

I think this is effective anti-HIV/AIDS/unsafe sex "advertising."

Though it is a bit caricature-ish...

The Invitation

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

...this picture is so f***ing hot...

Yes, it's the actor who made out with Liam Neeson in "Kinsey"...

I have some concerns about my cuckold fetish that you did not address in a recent column. Aspects of my particular fantasy are prevalent among people with this type of fetish, and they cause me guilt and shame.

I am white and my fantasies involve my future wife having sex with well-endowed black men. This turns me on but I feel guilty. My fantasy is horribly objectifying and racist, is it not? It requires treating another human being like a piece of meat. The rational part of me, the part that tells me these fantasies are improper, is no match for my inner urges. I can't stop fantasizing about this. In all other aspects of my life I am quite progressive.

What can I do? My hope is that these urges will go away, but I doubt this will be the case.

Can't Understand Cuckold Kink

You bet your cracker ass your fantasy is racist, CUCK. For centuries, white men—not all white men, mind you, but enough that all white men should be embarrassed for all time—have obsessed about the supposed sexual superiority of black men. Whitey fears big black dick, rampaging Mandingos, white women coming down with jungle fever and getting their chifforobes busted up. These fears inspire feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and paranoia—and white men have typically compensated for these fears through acts of violence. Not for nothing was castration the first order of business at many a lynching.

But guess what? When given a choice between being lynched and being offered a white man's woman, CUCK, 10 out of 10 black men surveyed prefer the latter. That the same racist stereotypes that still inspire some white men to violence also inspire racially tinged cuckold fantasies in others has to be regarded as progress. Well, maybe not progress, per se, but until we stamp out racism once and for all (let's all hold our breath, shall we?), better cuckold fantasies, acted on or not, than brutal, cold-blooded killings.

Can I get an "amen"?

But doesn't enacting your fantasy require the complete objectification of a black man? Yes. And how can you reconcile that kind of racist objectification with your "progressive" values? By sucking on this: It's really super racist of you, CUCK, to assume that black men are incapable of having the same subconscious erotic response to racist stereotypes that you did. There are tons of African-American guys out there who want to play the sexually dominant black stud to your sexually humiliated white cuckold—it took me less than a minute online to find three dozen. How selfish of you, CUCK, not to mention how racist of you, to obsess about the white cuckold's burden with nary a thought for the needs of these black men.

For shame.

And for the record, CUCK, there's nothing wrong with treating someone like a piece of meat during sex—provided you treat him like a human being before and after sex. Some people enjoy being treated like pieces of meat, and as long as the men you play with consent to being treated like meat, there's nothing improper about it. Consent is, as I've written before, always and everywhere the magic ingredient. It makes BDSM not actual violence, it makes a facial not actual degradation, it makes a realized rape fantasy not actual rape. In your case, CUCK, the joyful consent of all involved—including your future wife (good luck with that)—makes the expression of your racist fantasy not an actual expression of racial animus.

To sum up, CUCK: As long as you understand the cultural forces that shaped your fantasy, as long as you don't assume that all black men wanna bust up your wife's chifforobe, and as long as you treat any black man who does bust up her chifforobe like a human being—and, what the hell, as long as you vote Democratic and donate $100 to the United Negro College Fund for every inch of black cock that gets slipped into your future wife's chifforobe—there's nothing unethical about realizing your fantasy.

(You want an example of a highly unethical and distressingly common cuckold fantasy? "Dom male seeking a true cuckold couple," reads this personal ad. "He will watch me use her and please her. He will do clean-up duties. I am also interested if she is fertile and wants to be bred in front of hubby. The cuck assumes all responsibility toward the child." Where do I start? A child simply cannot possibly consent—in advance of conception!—to taking part in a lifelong role-play scenario. Cucks, bucks, bulls, and hot wives? I've got your sweaty backs. Cuckold fantasies are fine, realizing them is finer. But leave conception and kids out of it!)

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=133984