Rough Sex With Vampires: What Does "True Blood" Tell Us About Women and Sexuality?

From Alternet

The show seems to be growing towards a more natural and nuanced depiction of sexuality for the women in the vampire-filled town of Bon Temps.

To talk about True Blood is to talk about sex: barely a scene goes by without something between innuendo and a full-on orgy. This isn’t new to vampire fiction, as Latoya Peterson pointed out in a piece for Double X. That the sexuality of the female leads is under heavy scrutiny is no surprise, given how much horror fiction has centered on feminine helplessness. To Peterson, the current crop of pointy-toothed dramas continues the genre’s fascination with sexual violence and the idealization of the chaste woman. I can’t fault her for taking issue with eroticized depictions of abuse, often against women. But she’s wrong to equate the sexual politics of True Blood with those of the abstinent, repressed Twilight.

These two are not the same animal. Twilight’s Bella Swan is a virgin until marriage, and the influence of author Stephanie Meyer’s Mormon ideals is well-covered territory. The entire series is heavy with the sex the characters can’t have; it gets its charge from the tantalizing and unattainable. Sookie Stackhouse, the female lead of True Blood, may have started as a virgin, but soon she, like almost every other character on the show, is getting down, having grimy, (sometimes wildly unhygienic sex) with her vampire boyfriend Bill. But despite her “transgression,” Sookie remains the heroine of the series.

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