About That Rape Scene in the Outlander Finalé

by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com Porn For Women

[Some spoilers in this article]

The Outlander finalé “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” caused quite a ruckus among fans with the depiction of a graphic rape scene. If you’re thinking, “Man they finally raped Claire!” You’re wrong. They raped Jamie. Yes, we’re talking about male rape, a topic rarely discussed and still as important. 

The scene was brutally realistic, no punches were spared, no space was provided to hide from the tragedy unfolding on your screen. The question many asked, was the rape scene necessary? How do you even recover from something like that?

Author Diana Gabaldon discussed this very thing in a Facebook post hopefully clearing up the issue for us: “The reason why Bad Things happen to people in my books is not to excite the reader in a watching-a-train-wreck ghoulish sort of way. It’s to reveal the true nature and deep character of the person to whom the bad thing happens—in a way that you simply don’t get when a person is responding to the normal vicissitudes of life.”

I’ve talked about Outlander’s handling of sex scenes many times and now Outlander is one of the few shows on TV right now that seems to have its pulse on ‘getting rape right,’ if there is such a thing. No woman is raped just to move the plot along or to spur the male hero into action. Each act of almost raped (up until now no person had been raped on the show) was essential to the story and in line with the situation at hand. 

In the finalé they didn’t cut away from Jamie as soon as the rape began - like they did in Game of Thrones when Theon rapes Sansa Stark. No, you stay and watch the suffering. You get right in there with Jamie, and feel the horror of his ordeal. So often we watch rape on television as merely a concept - something that happens that then cuts away to another scene. The victim of the rape often ‘recovers’ without any real consequences, and quickly.

In Outlander though, when Jamie is finally rescued he now has to live with what he went through. Claire tries to nurse him back to health and sanity but to no avail. The show doesn’t try to rush his healing. Jamie is broken. And I sat there, feeling every bit of it. The pain that a rape victim feels. Perhaps if rape was treated like this more often, then more people would be able to relate to the pain and suffering it causes its victims and not brush it off so easily. They certainly have set the bar high on how to portray the emotional, physical, and psychological repercussions of sexual violence.

The thing I did find rather annoying was how they tried to jam a whole bunch of things into the episode before it ended. When Claire gets worried that Jamie isn’t recovering quickly enough, so ‘rescues’ him and pulls him back into the world of the living by going on an opium induced trip with him. It was rather simple, but I get it, this is still television and the story must move on. Either way, I am encouraged to see that we’re finally not only getting more realistic and balanced sex scenes but also brutally honest sexual violence scenes from Outlander - even if it is the only show on television doing that now. Perhaps more will catch on?

About Coleen Singer:

Coleen Singer is a writer, photographer, film editor and all-around geeky gal at Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen), where she often waxes eloquent about Female Friendly Porn, sex, pleasure products, censorship, the literary and pandering evils of Fifty Shades of Grey and other topics not likely to be found on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist. She is also the editor and curator of EroticScribes.com. When she is not doing all of the above, Singer is an amateur stock-car racer and enjoys modifying vintage 1970s cars for the racetrack. Oh, she also likes porn.

Visit Coleen at Sssh.com for more kinky sex news and original movies for Women and Couples.