for your serious consideration

Half Man's approach to sexuality is incredibly brave and it's especially rare to see it executed at this high a level. Every sex scene is uncomfortable, and there's a lot of sex. It's not just the sexual violence or the compulsory heterosexuality, even Niall's forays into the homosexual underground are a clear act of self harm and in trying to compromise his desires by playing the role of a domtop daddy, he only works to distance himself further from his identity. The show perfectly manages to capture what it means to be disembodied. Nothing is satisfying not sex or drugs or relationships. There's 2 key moments in this show that I think really compliment eachother. When Niall tells Ava that he had sex with a male prostitute he says he came, but he wasn't relaxed. According to himself, being raped by his father was one of the most intimate experiences of Ruben's life, so what does that say about his sex life after the fact? Is intimacy even possible after it's caused you so much harm? Childhood sexual violence steals something fundamental from within us and we spend the rest of our lives trying to reclaim it. As the title suggests, for Ruben it made him a 'half man'. Emasculating Niall through sexual assault gives Ruben a power that was taken from him at a young age. Putting Niall in his place by suffocating him with his body weight and enacting unrestrained violence against him, asserts Ruben's place in the pecking order; but it's also proof that he can conquer his own weakness. A punishment for a disempowered version of himself, projected onto Niall.

characters like alby are collateral damage to gay panic stories way too often so seeing him at the altar at the end of episode 2 was so promising and refreshing i was like omg are we finally going to have a story like this that actually explores what living with this sort of male violence does to gay men of color? how someone like alby would be drawn to niall as the person that almost perpetuated the same sort of systemic oppression onto him but chose not to? the complex love-hate bond that would form between the two of them as a result of very nearly damning each other (because alby is quick to want to out people the way he himself was outed, that's like the one nuanced trait gadd gave him)?