*** Content Warning: Discussions of rape culture and potential spoilers ***

I just finished watching the Season 7 Finale of True Blood and it looks like my initial conclusion was correct: it’s a very, very, very rapey show.

From Violet claiming Jason in prison as her own (for his blood), saying they will have consensual sex eventually instead of asking could they, to imprisoning and threatening to violate Jessica with a red-hot dildo-poker for sleeping with Jason – so rape-ish.

And the Sarah Newlin/Noomi comeuppance?  Other baddies in the show were staked, beheaded, eviscerated, and so forth.  Her blood contains the antidote for the deadly-to-vampires Hep-V virus that her company created.  The show creators could have decided to synthesize a 100% cure from it and dispatch her.  Instead, Eric and Pam keep her locked in Fangtasia’s dungeon and “pimp” her out, sexualizing her in lingerie, to the highest Hep-V vampire bidders (i.e., blood [sex] slavery) to drink from as the 100% cure while promoting for profit the partial Hep-V cure beverage drink upstairs and on television.  So whorephobia, whore stigma, and stereotyping prostitution as coercive for the win?  I think not.

And, bless its conservative little heart, True Blood ends with a marriage-and-babies jamboree, with even the most initially randy of characters settling down in coupled and wedded monogamous “bliss.”  Again, I’m not knocking marriage.  I’m knocking the idea that this has to be the desired outcome for most of the characters.

And what’s with the anti-porn agenda?  Seriously, True Blood, could you be any more hypocritical?  Your 7-season series is so very, very “porny” and you know it.  You don’t have to redeem the sex on your show with a “marriage, monogamy, and romance are best” message.  Just make the sex you depict actually sexy, not threatening or scary (read: rape-like), and let us adults reach our own conclusions.