Brief Abuse (Stargate)

As I’m rewatching Stargate SG-1, I just watched season one’s “Brief Candle” episode. This one, I remembered fairly well, and I remembered liking its quaintness. O’Neill teaches a bunch of Kool-Aid-drinking human slaves that their god lied to them, shows them to live life more fully, and he comes to appreciate life more himself. It’s that, true, but there’s also an incident of rape that is completely ignored because it’s a female doing it to a male. Not only is this presented as essentially okay, but it forms the basis of a romance portrayed as healthy. Stargate thus continues to perpetuate the sexist meme that men are unable to be raped by women.

GHB and a Keister Egg (Veronica Mars)

I love Veronica Mars. Veronica is my hero. The show is awesome. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it could do no wrong. There’s an element of the story that I’ve found a bit disturbing and objectionable, namely the double standard about rape. As Veronica Mars would have it, rape against female persons is a horrific violation that should never ever happen, but rape against male persons is a satisfactory punishment for all manner of crimes.