Trigger Warning for rape, statutory, pedophilia, ephebophilia.
Last week, Lady Saika wrote a post about what was then an upcoming Teen Wolf episode that would feature a sex scene between Danny and Ethan. Despite all the cheesiness of Teen Wolf, it has been a rather progressive show, and establishing a homosexual relationship and also showing it on screen is a big step up in terms of queer representation.
However, in a fit of immaturity, some Stiles/Derek shippers decided to boycott the episode because Derek was also going to have a sexual scene with Jennifer Blake, a new character this season. Rumors of the boycott seem to have been greatly exaggerated, and they don’t seem to have hurt the episode’s views. However, I would like to talk about the variety of negative reactions some Sterek shippers had to this episode.
Immediately, misogynistic insults began flooding the internet. Jennifer Blake must be taking advantage of Derek. She’s an evil witch. She’s the darach—which is possible, but it seems like some shippers may be jumping to conclusions, because she’s “taking advantage of him”. How can Derek, who has trust issues, come to trust someone unless he’s being manipulated? It’ll be so awesome when Derek discovers how evil she is. He should rip her uterus out and strangle her with it. Oh, and this isn’t actually misogyny, by the way. These Sterek shippers just don’t like poorly defined relationships (never mind that Derek and Stiles have barely shared any scenes together). But seriously, Jennifer Blake is an evil whore. She should die, and we should rejoice.
Oh, and apparently at some point during Derek’s and Jennifer’s completely consensual coupling, she raped him.
What’s sad is that these are all actual arguments Lady Geek Girl, Lady Saika, and I have found in the Dennifer and Sterek tags on Tumblr. I’m not going to delve into why these accusations against Jennifer are misogynistic. I hope that would be obvious. The rape one, though, bothers me quite a bit, especially because the people arguing it and simultaneously championing Sterek fail to realize how hypocritical they are being. At this point, they don’t want Sterek because of representation—the boycott proved that. However, the Sterek ship as a whole has never stuck well with me, and there’s one word that’s the cause of that: statutory.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 