I have the first season on dvd and got to see the first episode of season 2 during Showtime’s preview week and I just loved loved loved the scene where she decks the guy who not only won’t take ignoring as an answer to “don’t I know you?” – but feels that it’s ok to touch the person ignoring him to get her attention, even as his friend is reminding him where he knows her from. Especially as the same episode has the almost equally awesome scene where Deb is heckled by onlookers who recognize her as the “Ice Truck Killer’s girlfriend” and not only try to get her to turn around so they can take pictures, but ask her to “look scared for the camera.”

Love love love.

Must have more TV like this. Less of the “women look sexy when they are being cut up by serial killers.”

(sigh – and my brother says he can’t watch Dexter bc it’s too violent. really, Braveheart fan? really?)

(also – in denial about Lila)

I haven’t actually watched past this episode that I liked, but I’m disappointed by what you talk about as ‘the anti-feminist twist’, especially in light of the comparison between Rita and Lila. Maybe there will be more for you to comment on in that light in my post about Rita.

And Betacandy–

Yeeeah, you remember in childhood when you were afraid there were monsters in the dark, you’d make up rules which, if you followed them properly, would protect you from the monsters? I guess most of us never outgrow that phase.

Exactly. And we still tell everybody else that they need to have these rules, too, which is an extremely effective silencing tactic.

But if a woman has a rational response of caution to learning (either first- or secondhand) that the gender to which society expects her to defer contains a helluva lot of criminals and crazies alongside the decent men, it’s deemed mean-spirited of her. She’s looking for the negative. She’s painting all men with the same brush. - BetaCandy

And typically portrayed as having no evidence for her caution at all (even if the same story has provided an ample supply).

But they really undercut things with LaGuerta’s backstabbing tactics (…having given her an actual feminist line about prejudices against women in the episode before the one where they revealed the anti-feminist twist, for crying out loud), and with Lila’s seriously unhealthy fixation on Dexter and showing her getting turned on when he got violent with her. (And setting her up as an over the top bunny boiler, playing up Rita’s comparative innocence against Lila’s overt sexuality, which even disgusts Deb.) They’re making Lila look more unhinged than the ITK, and petty, childish, and reckless of her own safety.

ETA: …it’s the corollary to what you brought up about good girls, BetaCandy: that bad girls must deserve what they get!

If a man has trouble trusting women – the gender statistically responsible for the vast minority of crimes committed – that’s understandable. Poor dear, he’s hurt and needs time to heal. But if a woman has a rational response of caution to learning (either first- or secondhand) that the gender to which society expects her to defer contains a helluva lot of criminals and crazies alongside the decent men, it’s deemed mean-spirited of her. She’s looking for the negative. She’s painting all men with the same brush.

Because the solution, of course, is that if she would simply behave precisely as society tells her “good girls” do, she would be bulletproof because “good girls don’t get raped/abused/stalked/etc.” Yeeeah, you remember in childhood when you were afraid there were monsters in the dark, you’d make up rules which, if you followed them properly, would protect you from the monsters? I guess most of us never outgrow that phase.