The Walking Dead Has a Complicated History With Sexual Violence

In a lawless land with virtually no rules except "don't get bit," it's easy to imagine that women, children, and others more physically vulnerable would be forced to grapple with sexual violence in addition to entrail-eating zombies.

Sexual assault is far too often used for shock value or background noise on television, and Walking Dead has avoided some of the controversy circling its genre brethren by either handling the issue thoughtfully -- like when Maggie (Lauren Cohan) was sexually humiliated by the Governor (David Morrissey), and she and Glenn (Steven Yeun) were shown grappling with their pain and confusion for the rest of the season -- or avoiding it altogether.

Or a rape-hating rapist.

Because if it's the former they're in trouble, and they clearly don't understand the bat-yielding monster they've created.

The Maggie-Governor assault was handled with care, but that was back in Season 3 -- back when the Grimes Gang were humans instead of warriors, and when Glen Mazzara still served as showrunner.

[...] its two notable brushes with rape have been handled with kid gloves, then forgotten altogether with no real look into their aftermaths.

[...] since we're not locked in the Sanctuary with a poison pill and therefore still have hope, we're choosing to remain optimistic that the writers won't let Negan's hypocrisy slide.

Because a rapist who murders other rapists isn't charming, he's psychotic -- and Negan's relationship with sex is a hell of a lot more worthy of exploration than his relationship with a spiky bat.