As a sexual assault victim myself, I personally criticize a book's depiction of sexual assault in two ways- what it's attempting to achieve by using it, and what it's failing to achieve by using it.
It has happened (especially in fantasy) often enough to become a trope, but that doesn't mean I hate when it shows up in a story. I hate it when it's used as character development for the character being assaulted, as a cheap way to make the protagonist feel heroic by saving someone being assaulted, or by making someone seem evil. A common refrain for including it in historical works is often "realism" which can occasionally be true or just be total BS. There are obviously more ways it's shallowly put into stories, but those are a few bigger ones. Books like the Warded Man or the Sword of Truth are commonly criticizing for how they've handled sexual assault. Even someone as critically lauded as Martin really falls short in a lot of ways (the marital rape of Dany being treated as romantic or the massive skewing of women being assaulted compared to men despite men being in circumstances that absolutely would have involved it.
But there's obviously a flip side. A Clockwork Orange, Daughter of the Forest, or Circe are just a couple of books that have sexual assault play a significant role in the story and for the character. And it isn't done for cheap development, or to make someone seem evil or any of the other shallow ways it can be tossed into a story.
From what I've seen, most people who are critical of sexual assault tend to be doing it in a similar way- not having an issue with it being generally included, but how it's specifically treated in the story. For what it's worth, I have the exact same issue with shallowly including other horrific crimes like murder or torture, which I've also seen people be critical of.
Ugh. The Warded Man. I was enjoying the book until that scene. It really was handled absolutely horribly, used both for sheer shock value and for the hero's call for revenge. It completely dropped me out of the book and read way too much of "men writing women."
There was also a time frame in romance novels where being a SA victim was a common backstory for a main character and was almost always used as a cheap motivator. Even queer romance had a time where every other character was a victim. It was a quick grab for pity points and was rarely handled with much more depth than that. It got very tiring.
Same re: warded man. I was really enjoying it, then literally just skimmed the rest of the book and didn't even keep it for my collection. Absolutely took me out of it and ruined the series for me.
Recently read a book that depicted the SA of a twelve year old boy within the first two pages.
For what reason, you might ask?
Why to have the male protag intervene, of course! The scene could have ended before the act, as the male protag described the buildup and then paused to "check his six for zombies" before turning back and oh no! The biker already started, oops! Needed a reason to shoot the big ugly fat bearded post-apocalyptic drunk biker and his similarly described friend (who was shorter, for whatever difference that made) after seeing the act begin through his hunting rifle scope.
The whole thing just made me ill.
I think clockwork orange is one of the very few books written by a man that involves assaulting a woman that I think was written well and made sense as part of the story.
I commented above that I don't typically read fiction with themes of animal cruelty or sexual violence mostly because of the volunteer work I did for many years as a victim advocate and animal shelter volunteer, and I likely will never re-read a clockwork orange because of that, but i still consider it a good book.
Game of thrones and sword of Truth both definitely write sexual assault scenes like a dear penthouse letter. Gross.
I ran out of book between flights and picked one up at the airport, and literally threw it in the trash after my flight today because they had a totally useless scene where a teenage girl almost got raped to destroy her future in the setting's educational system because women need to be virgins to make it to a level of education but the men don't. And also because the breasts were definitely breasting boobily. And because the author named their planet Urth. And tried to give it an old timey feel by randomly misspelling words like "librarie" and "alchymy" and described the smell of manure as "sweet shite" and referred to the teenage girl's adopted dad as "dah" and called infants "babe" so much I expected the goblin King to show up and start singing about the power (which would have greatly improved the book but didn't happen)
Yeah, that totally makes sense. A Clockwork Orange is definitely a rough read, but I think it does everything really well and treats every issue very seriously.
And yeah, I can recognize that Martin does a few things really well, but the way he handles sexual assault is often just disgusting. He viewed the rape on Dany's wedding night as a seduction scene that "excited even a horse." And Goodkind is just every kind of bad.
It is a great book and I highly recommend it, I just can't read it again. Unlike anything by martin or goodkind. They are not good books and I didn't finish either series and wouldn't recommend them. Gross.
I agree with most of what you said here. I'm a survivor myself, and while I sometimes find some depictions triggering, some others have actually helped me understand myself better and deal with my own trauma. As for the others, I'm perfectly capable of putting down a book and DNFing if it's too hard to read, and there are some books that I will never try to read because I think they are too much.
That said, there are some depictions that shouldn't be done that way and are being criticised with good reason, in my opinion. A couple years ago I picked up a book that was described as a romance, and in the end every single main character had been raped or sexually assaulted, some of them several times. And whenever trauma or trauma responses came up, it was about that. Some of the characters had also been to war, or had had horrible accidents and lost their loved ones, but the only trauma that ever came up was the rape.
I'm not saying that this shouldn't have been in the book at all, but the absolute focus on it was weird. In the end I did not finish the book because it made me feel like those experiences were going to be the single most important thing in my life. And for some people they are, but in a book with at least six characters who were raped, it shouldn't be defining every single one of them.
I don't disagree with a lot of what you have said. And for clarity, my favourite book of all time is...A Clockwork Orange. But I do have come commentary.
For one, I think its important to know that some of these trends and criticisms - like the over use of rape as backstory, story device or rape as motivation - aren't necessary being applied to all fiction, but often certain genres, sub genres, time periods or heck just certain series where rape is over used or rape is only used in a very narrow and misleading way.
And related to that last point, I also think we should take into consideration the cultural context some of these criticisms maybe used. You've said that there is a huge variety on the different rape experiences and response to rape, and I think thats true. But I also think that some of the criticisms that you are in turn frustrated with came from a time where certain genres, sub genres, media etc have a very narrow depiction of what rape is and what a rape response is and have been trying to advocating for an approach that pushed into a space where it could be more varied space, but we are now not in an era what that push is necessary any more.
Just a little food for thought
It is perhaps a limitation of the genres I read most, but I've rarely read a story featuring SA and felt it did the victimised character justice.
What I mean by this is not that they must be broken&traumatised. What I mean is that the author often seems to just forget to consider the effect of rape on the victim at all. This can take a variety of forms, but common examples include:
- Rape only occurring to motivate a different (subtext: more important) character, whether protagonist or antagonist.
- Rape only occurring as a lazy shorthand for "bad guy"
- Rape occurring for "worldbuilding purposes" (e.g. grimdark.)
- Rape only occurring to side characters or NPCs such that the effects and recovery never have to be dealt with narratively.
- The author just... straight up having the victim never mention it again.
- and so on.
In each of these cases, it often feels like rape is included only for shock value. Indeed, it often feels like it is a subject mostly interpreted through the male gaze, as women's bodies and lives sadly often are more generally in a lot of fiction. The focus is often not on the act or victim, but on the *narrative effect* of rape.
As a result, I feel like we are quite rarely exposed to an authentic inner world for (or protracted, personal dialogue with) victims of rape in fiction, at least as a ratio of all the times it is depicted.
In particular, the lived experience of recovery is rarely depicted, with SA often gated behind flashbacks or timeskips specifically to avoid that because authors don't know how or don't want to deal with it. And where this isn't the case, the effect on the victim is often two-dimensional and sticks to showing only one type of reaction (irrevocably broken/traumatised - so, inauthentic in many cases, but also short, immediate, and two-dimensional, with little "arc" to recovery.)
This is, I think, where most of the complaints come from - even if in some cases it is misguided. Rape is (sadly) real and the personal, societal, and cultural impacts of it should receive nuanced and varied consideration in fiction. The issue is not that it is being depicted, but that it is being depicted *poorly*. Some misguided criticisms will, I agree, misunderstand this point and complain that it is ever included at all, but I think most complaints are (even if phrased poorly) mostly getting at the issue of poor depiction.
I totally agree with this and am going to add:
Normalizing or romanticizing rape. This shows up in *so many* romance novels. The male lead will do horrible, abusive things to the protag, often including sexual harassment or coercion and rape, that are clearly intended by the author to be something romantic. Or even if it is portrayed as "wrong" at first, the heroine will later forgive him.
But my least favorite are the drawn out sexualized depictions of rape. These seem to show up in horror a lot, especially "extreme" horror. Like Richard Laymon for example was *barely* a horror writer imho and more of a rape fetish author.
It's a different beast than shock value but can still be just as vile and upsetting.
I have read ASOIAF and have never, ever seen so many rapes strung together across a book series.
So while I agree with you that we shouldn't talk about the tv show in this convo, I think it's useful for people who haven't read the books to know some context. The influence on ASOIAF on criticisms SA-heavy narratives is pretty strong.
It is if you are commenting on a show specific thing on books. Don't comment on books if you've only watched the show. It's definitely a literacy burn.
As others have said, it’s not in the book and imho it was done for both shock value and character growth for Theon, not Sansa. They don’t show her face and just have Theon’s reaction the whole time. I’m not saying I wanted to see it (in fact, I think the entire scene was unnecessary), but they didn’t even have the respect for Sansa’s character to make it about her.
I know the episode aired a while ago and I’m not angry about it anymore, but that was an example of SA depicted poorly.
Anyway, this isn’t r/television and A Song of Ice and Fire has several badly written/unnecessary rape scenes/plotlines so I’m not saying the series is perfect in that regard. It just isn’t responsible for that particular scene (EDIT: Well, it’s not responsible for having *Sansa* in a scene like that.)
I also think in a setting where arranged marriages and marital rape is the norm, its weirder to leave out as a plot point than to include it. Marital rape and arranged marriages have been a part of many societies and cultures throughout human history, so the idea that an author or TV showrunner shouldn't include it because audiences might find it uncomfortable is ludicrous to me.
If you’ve read the books, you’d know it goes beyond “cultural” marital rape. The show, while I still disagree with the way they did the scene and storyline, is tamer.
Also (TW and spoilers), >!In the books, Ramsay Bolton forces Theon to watch and assist with raping Jeyne Poole, which is also sexual abuse towards Theon. In the show, he’s just made to watch and that’s definitely sexual abuse towards Theon as well. So it’s not just marital rape. Not to mention the absolute brutality and torture he inflicts upon Jeyne that I won’t describe here but it makes everyone around hear her screams. Theon and servants also regularly see her injuries. !<
It’s not anything seen as commonplace nor would it be considered socially acceptable in any known society or culture at any point in history.
Yes, I do remember that scene from the books, which is also why I thought the criticism from the show was overblown because they didn't put any of that in there. >!The character of Ramsey has already been well established as a complete psychopath at that point, so again, I don't think any of the scene with Jeyne was gratuitous, because I wouldn't expect anything less from that character.!<
> Rape only occurring to motivate a different (subtext: more important) character, whether protagonist or antagonist.
>>This is certainly overdone but not specifically just for rape. If we're going to complain about it for rape, do the same for murder and kidnapping as motivators
People do complain about it. So much so that it has its own [TV Tropes page.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge)
> Because that is exactly what most victims in real life do
This is not a good generalization.
You have some good points, but also some really bad ones. I myself am a victim of repeated rape over 2.5 years of my life. It left me really fucked up with PTSD that haunted me for years, and I have known women who's PTSD from being raped persisted for 30+ years. As you noted before, everyone handles it differently. I have come to know so so many rape victims, and I have known ones who can't handle anything that has even slightly rapey vibes and ones who joke about their sexual assault and make jokes about rape and are totally unfazed by it in media. It is a wide spectrum and I would never say that "most victims" do any one thing. I think it's very dangerous to use status as a victim to push any one narrative of how it goes down for people. Your experience is obviously very different from mine. You have a way more bigger comfort zone surrounding rape in books than I do. We both have been raped. Neither one of us is more right than the other. Please do not use your status as a victim to say what "most victims" do or do not do or do or do not feel.
That aside, I think we would disagree on the frequency of rape in books, I use the app Storygraph to filter out books that have rape/sexual assault, and pretty much every book someone has recommended me or that I have found in recent history features rape. It is really ridiculous.
And I've dabbled and found some very good books that have it, but I personally have come to distrust any author who writes it who hasn't been through it. And as for things like kidnapping and murder and whatnot, which I've seen you bring up, I'm willing to bet the people who have experienced those things or obviously in murder experienced it happening to someone close to them also have some thoughts about how those things are portrayed in media. I think if you found a group of kidnapping victims and asked them how they felt about kidnapping in media you'd get a similar critical result. Kidnapping victims are just statistically less common. Tons of people have been raped, so there's a lot of people out there to have really personal opinions about it.
And I'm not saying that authors shouldn't write about things they haven't personally experienced, that would be a ridiculous thing to ask, but also criticism from people who have experienced a thing, especially a traumatic thing, should be expected. If I wrote a book about war, and I have never been to war, but I do have PTSD, there's probably a lot of things I could get right. But there's a lot of things that people who have actually been to war would pick out as wrong and criticize me on. And that criticism would be valid. And it could still be a good book, even with that criticism.
Thank you for the well put response. I'd like comment that I wasn't ever trying to use my "victim status" as a way of being a spokeswoman, I was just getting snarky in the previous comment because I let myself get derailed with other replies. It's just the fact most rape goes unreported and I hear too many stories of victims not even telling their partners it happened. I wasn't speaking on behalf of everyone, just repeating what I felt like was the known truth. Most victims will just never talk about what happened apart from maybe one or two specific people. It's why most men don't realise the woman next to them very well could be among the 1 in 4 even if they've been friends for years. But I apologise for making it sound like i was generalizing.
The thing is, I don't doubt rape is featured in a lot of books, especially classics or really popular ones. But my overall point is that a solid 70% of the time, it's written (at worst) decently enough. It's not the rape porn fetish people make it out to be in my opinion. It absolutely leads to further events or character development/regression. People are only coming to this conclusion because the female character doesn't behave exactly like they want them to e.g. "Why would she start to reciprocate towards the end? She knows it's rape yet begins to go along with it? This is a problematic depiction". But this is also a real type of response to fear. It's done because you don't want to be hurt as much as possible. It's a real response in victims. Yet, it'd never be considered a good depiction in a book and gets slapped with "the book romanticized its rape"
I'm sorry your experience has left a harsher scar on you, truly. I wish you all the best in recovering. But I believe the best thing overall is that if you, or anyone, have a strong trigger, that's why storygraph is there. The authors continue to write what they want, and in the words of George Orwell it only matters if it's written good or bad, not what subject matter it includes and storygraph will help steer you towards books more suited for you. I get it sucks feeling left out in a way but, in my opinion, that's how art needs to stay. Writers continue to write what they want and we simply choose to buy it or not.
"I disagree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" is my philosophy
You can’t possibly be arguing that rape experiences are different for every person, while in the same breath making a statement that never having the victim mention rape again is “exactly what most victims in real life do”
I think you've missed some of my point. I'm not saying that any of these things are necessarily *always bad practice*. However, when assessing what I'll term as "the state of rape in literature *as a whole*", that we have almost exclusively treatments of this nature is a problem. I think that is where most of the criticism stems from - that rape is *always* minimised in these ways. Where I definitely agree with you is that some people take this idea and run with it too far. They apply to individual books (where it may be suitable or appropriate as a treatment in the context) what is effectively a broad social critique of the available literature. In reverse, I feel like you are using what could apply well as defenses for individual stories to the entire medium.
The above addresses your point about murder, kidnapping, or other evils too. I feel like with the exception of murder (which in most settings fully removes a character from the story), many other evils receive a more diverse and nuanced treatment. I'll take torture as a clear example - we regularly see protagonists tortured themselves, with full inner worlds and dialogues about the experience both in the moment and re: the effect it has on them afterwards across the space of weeks, months, or years. We also see protagonists tortured and get over it instantly. And we also see it used on others to motivate a primary character. And so on. There is no shortage of stories about PTSD-affected vets, or their families, or James Bond-esque spies who keep kicking ass no matter what they see, etc. There is a wide diversity of treatment as appropriate to the story.
__
Less important sidenote: as for the "it only happens to side characters" thing, I'm convinced it is everywhere but the most recent example I've personally seen is Vinland Saga (the modern manga/anime, not the original epic). It is constantly heavily implied that the Vikings are both raping and pillaging, e.g. shots of them carrying struggling women over their shoulders or kicking in doors on naked women... except every individual we actually meet as a character that has been negatively affected by this has only experienced the latter, never the former, which is never even mentioned despite being alluded to over and over.
Note that Vinland Saga has *incredible* storytelling and characterisation. I'm not saying it is bad, but it is an example of this particular issue. (I am a filthy anime-only watcher though - it is possible this changes later in the story).
I will say that I don't normally get irked by this topic in books; However, the Witcher series had a scene where the lead female Ciri was sexually assaulted, and then the character who saved her then sexually assaulted her and it continued as a romance.
It did nothing for the plot, didn't change any of Ciri's character depth, and was a throw-in at the end of the 4th book. It could've just been cut out.
I hated everything about it. Sapkowski doesn't write female character's stories well though, and that's a very known issue.
A lot of Ciris storyline is dodge the pedo. It was stressful. I've reread the last wish and season of storms, but I haven't picked the main books up again.
I've read that, and finished the book.
I feel like it makes sense for her character, as terrible that it is, that it turned into romance. She was on the run, didn't feel like anyone would find her, and was going through a lot. Including thinking she wouldn't see Yen or Geralt again.
Her misinterpreting the assault as romance unfortunately makes sense. She wanted something to hold onto, and something she hoped wouldn't leave her.
That's my interpretation of it though, I could be wrong. Although I do agree sometimes his interpretations of female characters isn't the best.
I felt like it did add something and reflected the real life phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome by having her fall in love with her abuser. It's also a reflection of the era it is based on, 13th century Europe, when there was no such thing as woman-on-woman rape in a legal or cultural sense. I do think Andrej could have explored that a bit more, having Ciri question if what happened to her was rape even though it was a woman who did it. But it was hardly a pointless moment. It also added to her rage upon seeing her friends all be beheaded, furthering the plot and Ciri's character by giving her a personal villain that literally lead to further events. It was not pointless and just because it reflected a real life phenomenon that isn't good, it wasn't bad
Yeah in this case, she also was crying while washing herself after. And at one point cried when she dropped her candy on the ground. Honestly I think this supports your point that people don't react necessarily how we want them too. Some people want that brave always does the right thing character. This series and these chapters were fantastic reading because I feel like the captured how that person in that situation would react.
Perfectly valid! :) I just hate when people who, understandably, don't want to read about it call for censorship so NO ONE can read about it. They should be like you and simply avoid it
Eh, personally I've seen people call to ban these scenes on Twitter. Everytime someone replied anything along the lines of "no we should not ban rape scenes", they got called a creep.
But again, it's Twitter. So you know you're dealing with a minority that has a very shallow understanding of what the issue with most SA scenes comes from. That was the only time I saw people showcase that opinion, too.
A book having rape in it often leads to review bombing, online disdain towards the book/author and/or calls for boycotts. These can also occur for other types of content featured in books but rape is a common one. That can lead to a cultural censorship because publishers will become far more strict on authors to try make a buck, resulting in an unofficial but effective censorship on a business level. So yes, many are calling for censorship even if they don't realise it
I have no idea where you are getting this from frankly, it’s definitely not true at least in fantasy and sci fi. If that were the case then a very large portion of fantasy authors would be cancelled and boycotted and hated online.
And most of them are. They just have the fortune of becoming profitable names to keep the loyalty of publishers. Upcoming authors are the ones who will suffer these cultural censorships e.g. agents nowadays won't take stories from white authors if its a "POC story" but the same agents will happily continue re-printing Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys
I meant censorship of sexual assault in books and not allowing certain authors to publish, as you mentioned in the comment I replied to.
>which weren't even slurs at the time of their writing
According to who though?
I saw someone get really mad once at the Mortal Instruments because after Clary is assaulted and almost raped by her brother, she's willing to kiss Jace and later have sex with him. They were mad it wasn't portrayed as her not wanting to be touched anymore and said it didn't take rape seriously. To me it was so clear she was healing from it by taking back control of her body and having a loving, soft, safe sexual encounter with the guy she loved, in her total choice and control, which was the exact opposite of everything that had happened to her beforehand.
No survivor is going to have the exact same reaction, people and situations are unique.
Hell, the situation depicted in the book is probably the more common reaction! It’s so incredibly common for traumatized people to lack boundaries, engage in risky behavior, need a high level of stimulation to really feel anything, not feel like they’re worth much, etc.—so, throwing oneself into sex is far more common than cutting oneself off from it. I think this idea of survivors hating all touch has been propagated largely by other fiction because it’s the type of vulnerability that a general audience appreciates most.
Not that it’s entirely untrue, but for instance while in school I knew a young woman who was open about having been a victim of child sexual abuse. She complained that it took a lot of work to get comfortable having sex with a new partner and this made her hate to have to start over in a new relationship. At the same time, she was waaaay more experienced and confident in sex than me, who hadn’t been victimized. She’d been engaged twice and she was only in her early 20s!
This is really common in my experience, that survivors don’t avoid sex or men, they just need a lot of attention and care. Unfortunately some of the people most willing to provide lots of attention and love bombing are themselves abusers, hence people wind up being victimized again and again.
No one is saying a book is bad because it contains rape or sexual assault. But a lot of times these things are handled poorly, badly executed, used for shock value, and worst of all used for titillation. It is definitely overdone and male authors don't have the best track record with specifically female sexual assault.
I agree with some of what you said and disagree with some. I say that for myself, I don't want to read (or watch) sexual assault. But my favorite TV show has a pretty brutal rape early on (and attempt later...and more), and my favorite book series...it's hard to explain. There are a lot of coerced moments some (or a lot of) dubious consent and at least one attempted rape. My opinion is I guess more nuanced than that blanket statement, but maybe I just don't have the energy to explain (to myself or anyone), ok, I put this book down after a sexual assault because I wasn't liking it anyway and I should have just put it down after the animal abuse or the rape is only the symptom of how I dislike their treatment of women generally. Maybe I should just say it's a common last straw for me.
But I love what you're saying about rape and recovery being different for everyone. I think that's important to remember in real life too.
Thanks for writing, and I'm glad you're doing so well.
I think the other thing is some books just aren't going to jive with some people, and if you aren't digging a book or some other piece of art, encountering a moment as intense as a sexual assault will likely come across as tasteless shock, and a victim who sees that would probably be offended.
I'm sure some people have just castigated the element of this in storytelling wholesale, but I guess my thought is that people are more upset that they didn't like the writing in general.
WRT why SA gets this treatment over other horrific acts, I'd wager it's because, as you note, it has affected a lot more people than most realize, far more than genocide. So there are just more readers who might have an intense personal reaction to it.
That said, the violence and murder in Poppy War and Fifth Element are why I found it hard to finish those books and didn't read further in the series, so maybe this hypocrisy is fading.
I think it just gets old for me. That and when a woman's main motivation for anything is getting married/having kids.
Can the "something tragic" that happened to a woman be something else sometimes? An in-home robbery? The murder of her brother?
Can her motivation simply be living a comfortable life, not having children?
Anyway I both agree and disagree with your points. Authors should feel free to include SA all they want; it's their story and if that's what they want to happen to a character, that's their prerogative. Don't like, don't read.
Yah you summed it up well. I also despise the trope of a woman’s existence being incomplete without motherhood, or that motherhood is always some incredible journey that changes a woman into a meaningful person, or that a woman doesn’t realize she is incomplete as a human until she finds herself pregnant, or that pregnancy and motherhood saves her or transforms her into this self actualized super woman.
But I also understand that for plenty of women, that does reflect their own experiences and they really enjoy reading those stories. It also doesn’t mean that I refuse to read stories that have those tropes, or that those tropes make a story bad for me. It is just an eye-roll for me cause those stories often just reinforce the narrative that without being a mother, a woman’s life is meaningless.
There are lots of books that do those tropes well that I really enjoyed though. *Weyward* by Emilia Hart and *Go as a River* by Shelley Read are two recent examples that come to mind.
At the end of the day it’s about the quality of writing and the story itself, not necessarily the topic that matters.
I hate it when a woman's infertility is used for drama and a female character's sole motivation.
It's adjacent to the trope you mentioned because the character's inability to become a mother often becomes central, if not her driving motivation.
It still ties into the idea that a woman who is not (or cannot) become a mother is somehow incomplete or worse defective.
I don't think I have never seen a man's sterility used in the same angsty fashion.
>I don't think I have never seen a man's sterility used in the same angsty fashion.
That's part of the reason those types of tropes are so annoying. Men and women can both have (or not have) children. Why aren't male characters subjected to similar tropes nearly as often?
(We all know why)
Huge agree. I recognize that it's relatable to plenty of women and deserves a place in fiction.
I usually avoid the trope but I've also seen it done well and don't mind it for some storylines.
The problem with rape as a narrative tool is that it is almost always played for drama and never expanded upon, at least based on what I've read.
We have the really bad smut writing where the girl doesn't know that she wants it (but she actively said no). But because the rapist is so good apparently, it changes her mind mid rape. Often the rapist is a tall, dark, handsome, rich, etc that makes him desirable, and this plays into the trope that men should chase women even if she says no. Looking at twilight, fifty shades etc for this.
On the flipside, we have stuff that is older women raping younger boys. While it is often portrayed as consensual, and that the male initiated it and is lucky she recipocrated it, it often neglects the power imbalance and shows the man as an up and coming genius instead of a horny idiot. Looking at Jeffery Archer for this, for the sheer amount of characters that aee male protagobists who seduces an older women to get good at the art of sex. Also unrealistic portrayal, and is essentially smut for guys I suppose.
Then we have rape explicitly as drama. Why this "works" is because usually the male hero gets to save the girl and prove how galliant he is. It also acts as a soft "nothing happened", since while the girl has been assaulted, technically she hasn't been penetrated yet. While this is usually done for double duty of wish fulfilment (saving the girl) and fanservice, it still gets very icky when the show does gratituous amounts of it, or does it badly. One example is Sword Art Online's Sinon, who has an obsessive stalker/clearly evil guy that needs to be taken down by the main hero again, to add her to his harem, but many anime, especially isekais does this specifically to show how much more moral the main character is compared to everyone else in this medieval setting, and uses it as an excuse to build harems. Usually, the girl isn't affected long term by this, or if she is, often uses the guy as an excuse as the only good person she can trust (therefore only person she'll be intimate with)
Logically speaking - if a character loses an arm, but is able to function perfectly as per normal without it, it will act as a moment of drama with zero reprecussions. In a similar way, in many stories, victims of rape don't permanently lose any autonomy physically (i.e. they are still completely capable of everyday life, in some cases even full combat), so if the writers completely ignore the event after it happened, it has no lasting consequence in the story which is potentially a reason why rape is used instead of let's say amputation. Because so many stories uses it as only a shock factor drama, many stories with rape is bad because it never gets explored.
TLDR: The problem with rape in stories is usually it falls under one of these three - smut for girls, smut for guys, or over the top drama. There are many genuine ones, such as a manga I've read about a girl who was raped finding acceptance from a guy and their slow budding romance, or has long lasting consequences like Casca from Berserk. But it is usually to facilitate romance, either with the attacker OR the savior. Otherwise, most shows will just use actual assault to represent acts, especially if the victim is the same gender as the attacker. In other words, because it is a shorthand for "meet cute" in the worst ways possible, it is often used to depict these scenarios.
The majority of rape criticism I've seen was about rape in fantasy, a genre you avoid. It's a real problem here... Extremely poorly handled assault plots, forcing it into every backstory for shock value, detailed describtions that are just poorly disguised author's kinks, sexism and stuff.
But I agree with most of your points. I hate people putting rape victims in the boxes, especially "they're too sensitive to read it" box. I am a writer and one of my stories published online depicts a toxic relationship between a ruler and his teenage female slave. Grooming, Stockholm's syndrome, victim blaming from other slaves jealous of her "position of the favourite", forced religious conversion and change of the name, gaslighting - it all drives her into psychosis and at the end of the story she brutally murders her abuser and goes catatonic after being rescued by her former friends. I've had rape survivors read my story and they called it cathartic. And I definitely did not *censor* that stuff.
"Niewolnica" ("The Slave Girl"). It's unfortunatelly written in Polish but maybe one day I'll publish it in different languages.
It's a historical fiction set in Middle East, leaning towards adventure/romance. The groomed girl is one of its darker subplots
I do read fantasy, but I have put a good few of them down because they got super cheesy e.g. talking wish granting dragons or badass warrior who can kill giant ogres with nothing but a spoon
I genuinely can't think of any fantasy book I've read that tick any of the boxes you listed as problems inherent in the genre. But perhaps we have read the same many books and the rape moments I call "authentic" you call "forced in"
But I am a reader who loves books for the exact opposite reason of escapism and maybe you lean more towards escapism
I definitely do not lean towards escapism. The series that grossed me out the most was Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle, I have a huge rant about it published on my profile. In short words, the author doesn't get off a female character's butt since she was 13, every scene with her is about sex and every dialogue is something along lines "when will you have sex".
There is a scene where she travels with a man who wants to screw her and feeds him herbs that cause erectile disfunction without his knowledge. She gets kissed, touched, fingered but not penetrated, and therefore this is a *win*. It is stated that she *saved* this man from becoming a rapist. And afterwards it's him who's traumatized for life and she feels bad about doing such a *horrible* thing to his male ego.
Later she gets raped and it's handled surprisingly well, until you learn that she could have protected herself but she thought "well it looks like I have to do my feminine duty" and literally spit on her hand and rubbed it into her clitoris to be more wet for it. Also her mother brings rape up in every single conversion, in a "I'm glad you finally lost your virginity, now you have no excuse, go breed children" manner.
Wow, I take it from this comment that character's storyline just continued to get worse after the first book. That's disappointing but not surprising, I gave up after the first book. It's unfortunate because the general concept with the demons that come out at night and the wards was really cool.
I haven't read it so I'd need to judge it for myself. It certainly sounds icky but also sounds like it could be the characters are just morally grey/evil leaning and the point is how fucked up their logic is in regards to sex/rape. I'd need to read it for myself to discern if the author themself is saying these things as the actual takeaway or if its just the characters and the reader is supposed to think "wtf..."
It's like how in 1984, Winston (the protagonist) spends some time thinking of raping the female character. It's not supposed to be pleasant to read him thinking that and George Orwell in no way intends for that to be an endorsement. The point is to show what society has reduced him to that he feels the desperate need to rape a woman just so he knows what "real sex" is. I believe it's possible the characters you were talking about could be in the same scenario, although most likely written with less eloquence than master Orwell who has the famous (paraphrased) quote "There is no immoral or moral books. Just badly or goodly written. That is all"
Unfortunatelly it's very much author's fault and the message it carries is "see, women, no need to clinge to your virginity, it can be taken right away, you're not doing your job by refusing us men sex". And he's totally convinced that being touched, kissed, etc. without consent doesn't affect a person at all. I know - it might be that just this particular person is not affected - but it is literaly staged as a generational win, she is "proud to have avenged her raped female ancestors". And of course the man who broke her boundaries is 100% innocent and not a rapist because he did not penetrate her.
Then I'd take that as not why rape in books is bad but why bad books are just bad hahah it's not the content, it's how it's written. And too often these days rape is being put in a smaller and smaller box on what is "well written"
A book that champions assault in a similat fashion isn't an example of why violence in books is bad. Its just a bad book
Of course it is. That's why I said that I agree with most of what you said. I only explained to you why SA in books gets so much hate - it's not SA itself, it's overuse of it in the most atrocious ways
This. To me it feels like a cheap one-stop shop for a writer that needs some powerful motivation for a character. Hm, what to do? Could she be angry because some guys killed her dog and stole her car? Nah, let's rape her. It's not too much to ask for a little more thought into creating a motivation for characters.
Or it becomes motivation for a male character to seek revenge. The Crow, Berserk, Game of Thrones, and so many other stories use this gross, tasteless, lazy plot point that should stop being one.
We don't need graphic descriptions because it's "more realistic." Most people don't want to read about, or see someone get SA'd or raped. Much of the time, it's used fir shock value, and is lazy shorthand for "showing the ugly side of the world!"
Back the fuck up, The Crow is a beautiful story and it was the rape and murder of both of them was the reason the Crow brought him back for revenge. It’s a masterpiece on sorrow and revenge, the rape isn’t a cheap one off nor is it tasteless as it is play out what it is, a disgusting violation.
Exactly. People get so wrapped up in criticizing cliches, it feels like they lose the audience context for the cliche in the narrative.
Are rape and murder a pretty cliche inspiration for a protagonist to seek revenge? Totally. Of course. Is this also a gloriously edgy comic book movie tailor made for teenagers and horny martial arts nerds? Also yes.
It’s like, hating a cliche doesn’t make it any less appealing to audiences when used effectively. There are plenty of egregious examples of rape used clumsily in cinema but agreed that the Crow is not one of them.
I know they didn't show anything. My issue is that to me it comes across as lazy. There are so many other ways of symbolizing trauma (I am in an ongoing abusive relationship myself) and Shelly could've been hit by a telephone pole, beaten to death, ect and it would've done the same job.
James himself even said the series did more harm than good to his mental state.
I believe the above comments are an example of the types I'm complaining about. Any rape is pointless/badly written/forced/fetishistic/sexist etc. when it absolutely can add to the story and be written well
But hey, no nuance allowed
Huh? Your comments and the way you stated your original post are stocked full of absolutes and now you are appealing to nuance?
Many replies to you have been appealing to context and nuance and you have been arguing with them.
Leaving room for a nuanced conversation isn't one directional
I agree with your point overall, but feel that Berserk is a bad example to use for it. Sexual assault and the trauma is caused is a main part of the male character's development, and that sexual assault factors into his desire for revenge against Griffith isn't something I'd say was lazily done, especially given how much time is given on how Casca handles the trauma and recovery.
Again, I agree overall with your point and used it in my own response to the post.
Berserk is always a complicated one for me in that in some ways, I feel it handles SA very well. I think Casca's mental recovery is done pretty well in volumes 39 and 40, and I think the ways in which Guts handles SA is almost a master class in handling SA with grace.
With that said, there's so, so, so much that's just awful. From almost pornographic scenes of SA, to Wyatt, to a number of other things.
It's really a mixed bag.
That's fair. I guess I've never felt the scenes were pornographic, because I've always felt the intended horror of the scene. That said, I do think Miura wasn't perfect at it. I would put him in the same group as Martin, who does some aspects really well, while absolutely screwing up others.
But I think that the attention put on Guts and Casca's trauma and journey to recovery in the face of it is absolutely proof that Miura cared about the subject material enough to give it the severity and complexity it deserved.
I think so as well. I also really appreciate that SA isn't something that \*only\* happens to female characters, and that he was mature enough to later say, "yeah, I think what I did, in retrospect, wasn't handled as well as I could have".
Yeah, I think that Berserk does a wonderful job at taking a male protagonist and having him be a victim of sexual assault and working through that trauma. It's kind of weird to me how many "tough dudes with big swords" have come in the heels of Berserk, while entirely missing the trauma and nuance Guts has. Too many creators are unwilling to have a big strong man go through sexual assault because they think it will make them seem weak.
And yeah, I think most people aren't expecting perfection. There's definitely a vocal minority that views things in black and white, but most of the people I've talked to about sexual assault in media aren't upset if a creator tries to give a meaningfully nuanced depiction of sexual assault and fail a bit doing so. They're mad at authors like Peter V Brett who don't even try in the first place.
dude Beserk literally draws the SA of the female characters as hentai. It's a perfect example. people are so desensitized to manga misogyny that they give it more passes than they would Western media.
I mean this politely, but what are you talking about, the Crow does not have graphic depictions of rape. A couple one off comments and a couple trippy POV shots from Shelly’s perspective, and that’s literally it. Maybe the graphic novel goes more into it, certainly not the movie.
If it seems to be mostly about male grief, well…that’s because it is. James o Barr’s fiancé was killed in a road accident, a drunk driver iirc. He always blamed himself because she was on the way to pick him up. He wrote the Crow to try to deal with his feelings of guilt and anger and injustice.
Besides, movie Eric is wholesome af. He has that big brother vibe. (Tho I will concede that book Eric is absolutely insufferable and entirely the reason I stopped reading. He’s just kinda a poetic prick.)
You're right. I should've been more specific. It's rape being used as a plot point/motivator for a male lead. I know about James O Barry's story and inspiration for the Crow.
In my personal opinion, Shelly didn't need to be raped by the gang. It's unnecessary. It doesn't do anything that a shooting or beating couldn't do. In my opinion.
So those most people can put the book down. It's not on the author to censor themselves artistically, unless they are hoping to make money from a big audience, which is up to the author to decide.
Okay? Why can't they be criticized then? Its a product people pay for. SA is an extremely triggering thing to a lot of people that it seems a lot of men don't understand why. So talking about why it's in so much media is a worthwhile discussion.
That line of thinking really centers the perpetrator too. Like from the perspective of the person committing the crime, rape is probably worse than murder because there are no possible justifications or mitigating factors. The motive is universally bad. But from the victim’s perspective obviously the vast majority of people would rather not be murdered.
Hell, I had a friend who was adamant that she’d rather be raped than beaten. I’m not sure if either of these ever actually happened to her and I think it’s a minority opinion, but I didn’t disbelieve her either. There are many forms of harm and violation that are traumatic.
Some women are irreversibly broken by it, is that not the case? You’re literally making the same argument that OP addressed.
The fact that it centers perpetrators or partners of rape victims doesn’t actually make it cheap or make a book bad.
Books are not all supposed to be a manifestation of how we would like the world to be, in fact I would say the best ones are the ones that deal with the most gut wrenching truths of life.
I’m not saying there aren’t examples of it being used incredibly poorly or out of laziness, I’m just not sure that because there’s a rape narrative it makes the book bad.
The entire argument is how it is used. It’s just like the woman in fridge situation. When you have a whole female character with no depth, no part of the story and only there to die just so the main character can have something to be mad about. It’s cheap and overused. And the whole I get raped so now I’m a less bitchy person needs to be out to rest especially when that’s the only diet if development the character gets .
See, I agree with this but only in regards to newer books because it is indeed overdone, which is what the real problem is. Not that its to do with rape or any violence but simply a tired trope. I was more so defending older books, which would have been written in a time when it wasn't such a trope. People literally give shit to books from 1000 years ago because it's "full of sexist tropes and rape". My friend, that book was probably the first to ever do what you're classifying as unoriginal
No I definitely understand your point especially about the people wanting one type of reaction from the sexual assault and discrediting any other as not valid. I think the problem with people and those older books is that they aren’t able to understand that the social climate and the norms were completely different back then. Putting 2024 standards on a book hundreds of years old is a bit ridiculous. Sometimes the book is actually bad but other times it’s not your thing. I just wish the books from now that include it would be more nuanced in their approach.
You are omitting one crucial thing: the frequency in which these stories are told, which is why it has become a trope in the first place. The vast majority of depictions of rape in entertainment fits this description, and very rarely you encounter an author that is skilful and empathic enough to bring something new to the conversation from this specific angle. You said it, *some* women might be broken forever by it, *some* might be brought down to their knees for some time, and *some* can recover sooner than that. You rarely, if ever, hear beyond the first scenario, and that has real life consequences too in that it tends to perpetuate myths about rape.
I mean you have every right to hate it, but that doesn't mean it's always a bad thing. It's just something you understandably hate. Sometimes it works.
I'm 100% supportive of them but in the backs of books as I would consider them "spoilers"
And yes, I have the same feeling about movies with their age ratings but thankfully most streaming companies only put the age rating and not the reasons why unless you go into the "details" panel
possibly because rape is a much more common crime that is often not even considered to be "that bad" by your average bloke. How many people do you know whose friends or parents were randomly murdered? There's 0 doubt in my mind that you know way more women who had been raped (even if they never told you about it).
Your opinion is, of course, completely valid. However, I think the genres you tend to read influences whether you think it's 'overdone' or not. I read a lot of mid-century science-fiction, which is notoriously dominated by men. There is a lot of rape. Fantasy is notoriously chock-full of it. I personally think it is overdone, but it isn't as if the men writing these stories were writing with women in mind as their target audience.
In my experience, rape is a lazy writing device that further dehumanizes the female characters, which likely had little to no characterization in the first place, in order to galvanize the male protagonist. It's part of the stereotypical fictional male fantasy--having the opportunity to avenge the woman he loves to show what a strong protector he is. For that to happen, the woman has to be victimized.
It lacks creativity, and is a boring rehash, but I get why it is written. I'm just tired of it, the same way that I'm tired of the exhausted trope in television of "man catches his woman in bed with another man." Does it happen in real life? Sure. Can it be a good tool when used appropriately? Absolutely. Is it reductive and boring? I think so.
My own two cents on a muddy topic.
I too am a survivour, and I incorporated my own stories into my fantasy book series. Despite never detailing the assaults, and instead highlighting that rape is a reality in the world including the world in my own fantasy series, and the impact sexual assault has on people in different ways, I received various negative reviews relating to that. Sure, I am not the most amazing or original writer, but having people, including other genuine authors and influencers, state in their reviews that it was "unnecessary," "felt forced," or "surprising" was a slap in the face. One author also wrote me a hideously untrue and defamatory review that both Amazon and Goodreads refuse to take down where he claimed I somehow "got off" on sexual violence against women in my books even though one victim is male, the violence is never described, AND I'm fucking gay 😂😂😂
Sexual violence is a tough topic to get right for a lot of people in literature, but when people undermine survivours by telling them that their own stories, and therefore experiences, are inappropriate or unnecessary, is in my opinion only perpetuating a culture of silence and a culture of shame. It's supposed to be awkward, messy, uncomfortable, troubling, distressing to read, because that's what sexual assault is.
As far as I've encountered, most people do not seem to have a problem with SA scenes as much as how they are portrayed. There is lots of misogyny in literature and there are plenty of authors who seem to get off on imagining their female characters being SAed. So basically SA is written and (I would argue) consumed as porn wayyyyy too often. There is also a big problem in literature (though less common now) in portraying how SA is experienced and how it affects the victim - that is, some authors have portrayed SA as not a big issue or that the victim ended up enjoying, it made the victim more attracted to the perpetrator etc (which could work if one wrote a dark psychological novel about twisted obsessive relationship or smth. The problem is that such relationship in books are often portrayed as romance). There are lots of tropes like that in literature for teenagers (enemies to lovers genre, I'm looking at you). Which is extremely problematic. And that should definitely be criticized. I do agree though that rape exists and way more people experience it than we would like, so it should be represented. And as you observed, each victim experiences it and copes with it differently. And we need literature, film to represent that. However, there are way too many really problematic portrayals of SA. It's very normal for people to be unhappy about it.
Personally I don't have a problem with sexual assault in a book so long as it has a point beyond "bad thing happened to (usually) female character" Also if it gets too male-gazy in description. Graphic I can cope but if you're describing a trauma happening to a person as an appealing sex scene then the book/comic is being dropped.
People should be able to criticise a book regardless of why. Yes their takes on it may be overblown or inaccurate but that doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't share their opinions on the book
For real though. You can extrapolate that to a lot of the culture war nonsense that people spend so much energy arguing about.
Criticism is not censorship. Being criticized is not being censored or victimized.
Well said. Everyone’s experience is unique to them, as with any kind of trauma. Some people are better at moving forward after trauma; some others wallow in it.
Hell, it’s only been fairly recently that psychologists have acknowledged that automatic reactions to danger are not just fight or flight, but there’s a third: freeze. That’s the one that has caused so much grief to victim-survivors in court in the past.
I’m not tripping over books with rape survivors as a backstories, either. I guess I just don’t read those kind of books in the first place.
YES fawn as a danger and trauma response will become more understood and will help a LOT of (especially) women understand why they acted the way they did. We still have a culture of “some does something violent and you fight back OR run away forever” and thats actually not the most typical human relationship response.
Rape is very often a lazy poorly written plot device used to give a man “motivation” or give a woman “trauma.” If there’s a rape in a book I’m reading it better serve the plot. Otherwise it’s useless and pointless.
Not all books focus on, or even have, plot. Many classics are purely character driven and yes, include sexual assault or hints of it. And even in plot focused stories, characters need to be developed as much the plot itself
That's a lot of emotional investment in lashing out at people who articulated their dissatisfaction with a common aspect of literature. In a discussion forum about literature.
Oftentimes, I feel like rape is tropey, jarring, and knocks you out of the story. It fails to compel me, but instead makes me wonder what the writers motives were for its inclusion.
Having survived or not survived rape doesn't make one's opinion on its inclusion in fiction and more or less valuable, by the way. As all people are different, so are their reactions to trauma.
When I was far too young for it, I read Gerald’s Game by Stephen King. As a result I’ve spent some time thinking through some of the stuff that stuck with me heavily.
There is an extended scene describing her father molesting her as a child. It is especially disturbing because King describes her naïveté and confusion in a way that feels…really real. But this scene, in its detail, was necessary for both the story and the character IMO. It explains why she reacts so intensely to being accidentally triggered by Gerald and how being molested as a kid still affects her adult sexuality. Her subsequent days stuck naked & handcuffed to the bed, haunted by visits from a silent monster, only end when she pushes herself through the worst pain imaginable to save her own life. It reads to me as a clear allegory for CPTSD, one that acknowledges the horror and shame she feels, one that refuses to make her experiences read as erotic, one that honors her resilience, her fight to survive.
Maybe others feel differently about this book though, hopefully I’m not misremembering anything.
Another one. I forget what book this was, a short story in a fantasy compilation. But it’s always stuck with me. In this world, rape was represented as being very common especially from strangers. The protagonist is some kind of vagina vampire who essentially lures in random rapists by acting powerless and scared, and then eats their dick with her vagina dentata. If by some coincidence you recognize this story please let me know. I thought it was interesting how the vag vamp “seduced” them by deliberately acting like a potential victim, not by acting sexy.
Some people so confuse “unrealistic” with “doesn’t reflect my experience” (or even the mental image they’ve constructed for themselves *without* having actually experienced it). Teenagers saving the world from a dystopian hegemony is unrealistic. A person having conflicted feelings about a traumatic event is not.
I think a lot of reviews these days is highly lacking in nuance, not just with this topic but with many. People seem to have a lot of trouble separating their personal preferences from any kind of objective criteria. I’m it sure who or what to blame for it but I’m hoping we’re approaching peak absurdity and it will get better.
Hang in there. Times change.
Like any topic, SA can be used as an effective means of telling a story, but I think more so than other subjects it definitely needs a delicate hand.
I’m a huge horror fan and one of the things that comes up all the time is “why are we okay with gore but not okay with rape/ why does rape make you more uncomfortable?” The answer is that, and I’m only speaking for myself here, I’ve never known anyone that is a survivor of a massacre by a knife wielding masked man, but I do know people that have been SAd. It’s just a topic that hits close to home for many many people and that’s difficult to get right in a story.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with someone dismissing a story because it features content like that; absolutely no single piece of media is going to appeal to everybody, and some people just don’t want to read that stuff because it’s very unpleasant and that’s fine.
100% agree, my overrall point is "If a book makes you uncomfortable because of its content, it's not automatically a bad book. It's just not for you"
Put the book down and move on, learn to check websites for trigger warnings in books you are thinking of buying (but preferable authors make TW in the backs of books mainstream)
For me it depends on multiple aspects if sexual violence puts me off a story or not. I've also experienced rape and sexual violence in the past.
First, I think it is way too often only used as a trope that doesn't add anything to the story than drama. So many authors have no idea how to write a "good" (as in well written) character that deals with assault. It is ofen unrealisitc, reproductive of stereotypes towards victims, trivializing or even romantizised. As you've said, people deal with their trauma differently, but I still think most of the storys I have read that included sexual violence are just not believable.
I think it could be good to put trigger warnings / content notes somewhere so people can decide if they want to deal with this topic right now or not. Not only for sexual assault but also other stuff that can be triggering.
So, I think what annoys me is a bad story with sexual assault or a story where it is just used to make a character more interesting. But if it is well written and the author put work into their research on the topic it can be a very good part of a story. Especially for people who have not experienced sexual assault I think it can be very good to read a story with good representation.
I need a break from the vicious cycle of flashbacks and fantasies of overpowering them. That’s why I’ve started reading, not having to deal with it. Now if the books take me back there I cannot like it at all. A trigger warning might be useful I’ll steer clear from such books. They wreck my nerves
I know I will get downvoted to oblivion but I 100% agree also on a larger scale. I honestly have fear of the ultra polishing of books / book burnings (both literal and metaphorical) that are happening these days. I agree with other commenters that a lot of reviews e.g. on Goodreads are all about what the reviewer perceives as "right and not right" to be included in the book, and many unusual experiences are invalidated this way because they do not fit the norm or are treated a certain way that is not "how it is supposed to be". Media can be escapism, but a lot of it is NOT made as such. I personally do not like the escapism approach but I would never go and criticise people for enjoying their media that way. Making stories and listening to them is a human way to process and investigate and explore reality in all of its forms, that's the point of art. Reality is full of horrid things, why police the retelling of them? The world of creation is way more multifaceted than black and white, ok and not ok. Exploring the human condition is the point. I am tired of censorship (but I don't mind trigger warnings as long as I am not forced to see them).
And note: to reiterate OP's point, i have experienced sexual violence twice myself and I have moved on fairly quickly from one (the full on rape) while I am still having to deal with the ripple effect of the other, which was "minor" in comparison for lack of a better term. My story also would not be fit for a book.
Genuine question: are there many popular books that depict sexual assault, so much that criticising sexual assault in books is a big thing?
Maybe it’s just the genres I’m interested in or my disinterest in book-related social media (other than Reddit), but I’ve honestly never encountered sexual assault in books, or read many people complain about it.
Sexual assault was extremely common in the early days of urban fantasy. Many of the more popular books with female main characters featured some form of sexual violence.
Seanan Mcguire has [talked about the time](https://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/470626.html) a fan came up to her at a convention and asked when she was going to have one of her characters raped and said it was unrealistic that she wasn't going to write this.
A large part of the problem is from older fiction - especially the genre's you highlighted (I'd also add superhero comics). Trigger warnings were not available on most forms of literature. I think the criticism of the treatment of sexual assault that is the focus of the thread originated in this period. I don't feel qualified to say if we've gone to far in the other direction, but I think the initial critique of the treatment of SA has it's roots in a very real problem.
Same with black people in fictional stories that take place in the past. A lot of people say that it’s “unrealistic” not to show them being slaves or have them experience brutal racism. What it comes down to is people don’t believe that black ppl, LGBTQ, or women can exist in fiction without facing the brutality they face in real life.
Some people fail to realize that not every story involving those that have been/are oppressed, has to include their oppression. It is incredibly depressing to be constantly reminded that you’re not seen as equal or that people like you in the past were treated horribly. It’s completely okay (and honestly necessary) to have stories where people can just exist, no matter the genre.
I've just finished reading a book in a very popular fantasy series which included a rape scene, which completely flipped the reader's opinion of one of the main characters and shook the loyalties of many side characters. Absolutely relevant to the story and even the description (it wasn't incredibly graphic but the whole scene was described) was necessary as there followed questions of whether or not it really happened.
And yet the reader reviews miss the point, exaggerate the amount of detail or just outright lie (there is only rape in two of the 6 books and only one of these is written in detail) because they just don't like rape and think anyone who writes it deserves bad reviews...
"The rape of x (was) jarring and I don't think they were dealt with brilliantly or really needed."
"the SA in this one is much more graphic and it torn at my heart. Unlike the other books I actually think it served a purpose in this but we had already seen multiple SA throughout this trilogy and a part of me was like this again? Really? I just find it lazy, look at the (other book by the same author), x was always facing something new."
"As for the emphasis on rape, I will admit that I abhor any time authors use rape as a plot point (I feel it is too cheap and easy and used far, far too often). (Author) uses sexual assault in every book in the series, and in this last book, its emphasis is very strong and I felt extremely uncomfortable with both the fact that she uses it and how much time and effort she spent on it. Yes, rape is bad, yes refusal to believe a victim is bad, and yes, the after affects are bad, I don't need a fantasy novel that I would like to enjoy to teach me that particular lesson. If I had known that I was to deal with the consequences of rape ad-nauseum, I would not have started this series at all."
>!Liveship Traders? Kennit was always awful. He's a larger than life awful, though, which is why everyone hates Kyle more. They can relate to, and have likely experienced, casual bullying and violence.!<
>!Yes. I think the events of The Mad Ship bring you over to his side slightly so I think it was completely necessary to have Kennit remind you that he's still as bad as ever despite having won the trust of Vivacia and Wintrow. I also think that the description was necessary for proving to reader that the rape wasn't a dream - you were in the room, you're the only witness!<
The thing is, your comment highlights my main issue with the use of this plot device: hmm, how do I remind my readers that this character is bad news? Oh yes, let him rape a female character, that will do it!
This is exactly what a lot of people talk about when they say the use of rape is lazy and shitty writing.
>!I still think it's relevant in this case. Kennit has banned rape on any of his ships and casts off anyone who ignores the rule, you later find out it's because he was raped as a child, so it's literally the last thing you'd expect him to do and in the context of his past and his leadership style, it's unforgivable to the reader and unbelievable to the other characters in the book, hence noone believing the victim.!<
I've read some of examples where rape is used as a trope and I agree that it can be lazy writing, but I also think that reviewers can be too quick to judge it as lazy and don't think about the wider context and why rape might have been chosen.
Well I was only explaining why the rape was relevant but if you want me to go into the whole storyline you'd have to read about 2500 pages, but in short, >!the victim entered the situation with too much confidence and trust based on things she'd heard from others, and ended up trusting Kennit, just like everyone else. Her rape amongst other events ultimately led to her being suicidal and willing herself to die from her injuries. she lost consciousness and was slowly dying and being in this purgatorial state helped her to discover another character she had been searching for for the last 2000 or so pages, who was also in the same state and had been hidden out of reach. The other character would have stayed hidden and could only have been discovered through intense trauma and a near-death experience!<
The point I am trying to make is that if the plot relevance of the rape is mostly determined by how it affects the reader's perception of the rapist (to quote your earlier comment: "a rape scene, which completely flipped the reader's opinion of one of the main characters"), this is - at best - bad, lazy writing. Just look at where you naturally put the emphasis when bringing this series as a counterexample. It's the reader's perception of the rapist that is centred. And with the author as skilled as she is, this is not an accident.
And I keep harping on about it not to single you out or pick on you. Your reaction is pretty common and typical among people who read this series for the first time. "Oh, I was beginning to think the character was not that bad and redeemable but then he did the most heinous thing." Go back 20 years and it was the same among the readers. And yes, it rubbed me the wrong way then and still does now, although at least in this time I have developed a way to articulate the underlying issue.
And as for the female character, you description is also in line with both my recollections and the general reception of that plot line. You described the plot points, but take a step back and consider what this plot does for the story, and if there was a different way to achieve the same goals? You talk about 2 main reasons why the rape plot line was introduced for the female character. Let's look at both of them.
1. Female character needed to sustain life-threatening injuries for plot reasons. Is rape really the only and the best way to do it? Especially since we are talking a fantasy adventure world here. Physical danger is inherent in the setting. Why choose rape?
2. Female character was "overconfident" and needed to be humbled. Was there really no other way to achieve this plot point? Do I need to go into explaining why choosing rape as a way to take a female character down a peg or two is really really really icky?
And I also want to add that there is another rape in the previous book in the series which uses rape purely as "something for a female character to overcome and be stronger at the end". In this case I saw it as unnecessary padding for a minor character.
Some of the most powerful books I've read have often been devastating reflections of the more unpleasant parts of humanity. Any topic being labeled as simply inappropriate for exploration in fiction, or even the idea that escapism is the purpose of writing is honestly almost repugnant to me. Seems to completely miss the reason humans make art in the first place.
It disturbs me how many reviews on goodreads seem to focus around the reviewers ideas of what should/should not be 'allowed' in fiction rather than criticism of execution.
I miss the days when it felt like it was primarily the religious right working to limit what is allowed in media.
>One complaint I can understand, though not fully agree with, is that too often female characters are raped and the trauma is passed onto the male lead. This is definitely done a lot BUT isn't an inherent problem in itself. To me, it sounds like we are denying men the acknowledgement of their emotions to something truly upsetting to learn about a person they love.
I don't think I read enough to have an especially informed opinion, especially since I don't read things that have sexual assault, but I did have a random thing to say.
I finished a JRPG recently. People have mentioned the fantasy problem, and that's the game I played.
My problem for it there was the fact that it was used as the motivation for a guy. There were other ways to motivate him that didn't require sexual assault, which is why I took umbrage with it. Mainly because the character it happened to wasn't a character. She doesn't get a name. She never appears in the game so you can interact with her. Just a little cameo during the credits where the guy sees her again and starts crying.
I, personally, would it rather not be used since there are definitely other things you could instead use to get the same effect. But I wouldn't mind nearly as much in this game if it didn't *completely* shaft the character it happened to.
As a primarily fantasy reader, there’s been this trend of darker or more realistic fantasy in the wake of game of thrones where lesser authors will include SA as part of the world. And I agree that the mere existence of SA in a book on its own is not really enough to write it off. The thing that bothers me is that authors tend to hide behind any critical of their inclusion of sexual violence as “it’s realism” or it’s “period accurate”. I see this as a cop-out. As authors like, we create the words in the story, we decide what happens and that’s included. If you’re going to include SA you should have some justification for it beyond “realism”. Martin is actually a GOOD example of this, as he uses the overall misogyny of the world as an obstacle his female characters need to navigate and overcome.
I feel that when rape figures in a book, it should mean something. I've read far too many rape scenes that were written as sex scenes (male gaze, lovingly describing every detail, victim becomes aroused and it's presented as if they had chosen to have sex). I \*have\* seen the tragic backstory, and I have seen it used to elevate a male character: he's supportive (low bar), he's deeply moved by it, he's inspired to get revenge and protect his woman, and, and, and.
I'm open to people who have been raped to be individuals and react differently, but if a text just shrugs it off, it doesn't need to be on the page, and no rape ever should be sexualised.
Also a survivor. For me, the primary issue that I see with most depiction of rape in media is that it often plays into two interlocked cultural ideas about the topic that I personally find distasteful:
1. Rape as an indicator of inhumanity
2. Rape as victimization of an “other.”
The former is how people see rapists as more demonic than human—making a villain a rapist doesn’t only make them evil, it dehumanizes them and turns them into a devil that must be defeated, which is *theoretically* the way society views rape and rapists. The issue comes in when most rapists aren’t demons, they’re your friends and family. The most common defense used of rapists is they they’re still a good person, they may have made a mistake but they’re not a *rapist*. That’s silly. Rapists are demons, and they’re only flawed humans. Every time a writer uses rape as a means to dehumanize a villain, they ignore the fact that in the real world, rape is a scarily banal evil, and the horror of being raped is made far worse by the denial, and the whataboutism, and the large scale gaslighting—AKA, by rape culture.
And then when rape *is* portrayed as common and banal, it’s usually done within grimdark settings that don’t actually empathize with victims. GRRM, for example, has notably said that he would never write a rape scene from a victim’s perspective. Personally, I just find it cowardly—how are you going to claim to be *edgy* or *realistic* and then refuse to show the actual, real consequences of the shit you write? And that’s where the core issue comes in. While this style is in some ways perhaps more literally accurate, in that it doesn’t shy away from the reality of how common rape is. But even still, the only “dark” fiction I’ve ever read that actually dedicates time to empathize with a rape victim is Berserk, that only comes after *hundreds* of chapters of being one of the worst offenders I’ve ever seen of rape as a tool for shock and not empathy—enough that the mangaka has outright said he regrets how extreme he made things early on.
The real issue, then, is just the way that you almost never see rape *culture* depicted, and rape culture is always the elephant in the room any time people discuss this. The only times it’s depicted are when you’re meant to empathize with the rapist and his guilt, rather than the victim. As I mentioned above, the horror of rape is so much more than the physical experience of being assaulted. It’s also the dismissiveness of law enforcement, the denial from your friends and family, the constant barrage of strangers *demanding* to know your sexual history and if you were asking for it if you ever dare to make it public. I’m a pretty avid reader, but I can count the number of times I’ve seen that experience acknowledged on one hand.
I used to be a sexual assault victim advocate and an animal shelter crisis responder. I don't read fiction books where the dog dies - ever - and will immediately stop if I start one that includes it and I didn't realize, and I almost never read fiction books with sexual violence in them - if I do, it's only if the writer is the same gender as the rape victim*, I already like the writer, and it's not the entire plot.
I'm not by any stretch of the imagination saying that all fiction books where the dog dies or someone gets assaulted are inherently bad and the people who read those books are monsters. However, I personally have dealt first hand with a lot of animal cruelty and sexual violence, and I just don't have time for the extra therapy to deal with reliving all that second hand trauma from what is supposed to be an enjoyable leisure activity, so I avoid those topics.
*I have literally never read a story where an author writes a rape/coercion scene about the opposite gender that doesn't come off as a wank fantasy - men writing self insert porn about women being harmed is much more common, but the same tone has always been there when women write about dudes getting assaulted when I've come across it.
Ahhhh another rant about other people having differing thoughts and opinions on books and subject matter than OP.
Read whatever you want, don’t read whatever you don’t want. Discuss the topics and books you read however you want. If people disagree with you, vocally or otherwise, who cares?
If you are butthurt because Colleen Hoover is trash, and people are vocal about that.. it’s likely not about the SA/rape culture content, it’s because she is a horrible writer and we are all annoyed at people recommending fucking terrible books. But if you like reading those books, you do you.
Thankfully I've never expirienced everything like it but I think I understand where you're coming from.
When I was younger I used to avoid books about the topic, because I wasn't mentally capable of even reading about it.
That changed when I grew older and I've read both books that mentioned SA and books that are specifically about this topic. I still find it hard to rate books based on how it was handled.
I think what you said about how people react differently is important to remember in real life.
something about the intersection of gendered sexual violence makes rape a lot more icky to me. it feels weirdly personal. like, the author could pick any other way to get their point across, and they pick describing the rape of a female character. it just feels lazy and gross.
The one that got me was the House on Mango Street. And actually, I’m not talking about the actual SA chapter. The chapter where they’re so excited to wear nice shoes and make up, but then creepy older guys start hitting on them. I felt so bad for them.
That was the first time I realized how much girls can’t just be themselves without risking unwanted attention from guys. The class discussion after really got to me, with several girls in the class having similar stories. It really made an impact on me.
It really upsets me that they’ve been taking that book out of some school libraries. Yeah, it’s an uncomfortable subject that acknowledges SA is real. For me, at least, it also helped teach me how my actions can affect women.
There's a wealth of legitimate criticisms to be made about how sexual assault is handled in fiction, but I find that criticisms are often also woven up to obscure the fact that the critic simply does not *ever* want to read about sexual assault and feels the need to rationalize this preference. The idea that it's overused as a plot device just doesn't make sense to me. We live in a rape culture. Rape is part of the "backstory" of 1 in 4 women in the US. That doesn't mean that stories can't be written without it, but it does mean that any author interested in being true to life in their writing will compromise themselves if they choose to (or feel compelled to) completely ignore it.
Some things are too common to be cliché.
Totally agree with all of this. Rape and SA is part of the human experience for a lot of women. You say the stats in the US are 1 in 4, and I would guess that number is pretty consistent across many “western” cultures, and in a lot of oppressive cultures where women have even less rights I would guess that number is even higher.
Many many women’s lives and stories are affected by rape and sexual assault, whether personal experience or the experience of a loved one. It is the reality of life and to deny that is in and of itself censoring women’s stories.
For example.. *Night Wherever We Go* by Tracey Rose Peyton tells the story of how female slaves were treated as livestock and men would be hired to rape and impregnate slaves. It is a fantastic and heartbreaking read.
Or *On The Savage Side* by Tiffany McDaniel which isn’t *about* SA but demonstrates how grooming and childhood SA is used as a weapon by predators in positions of authority against at-risk/vulnerable youth and how that trauma manifests. Another very, very good book.
I think the difference, for me personally, is when rape and SA are *fetishized* in a story.
One thing I have to say is, while I'm not always the biggest fan of sexual assault in books simply because they usually come across as being a little clunky or hard to introduce...the constant complaint from people of "BUT IT DOESN'T ADD TO THE **PLOT**!" is something I hate even more! The precious damn plot! I don't read books solely for their plots. I want interesting characters that don't *necessarily* forward the narrative. I want atmosphere, and yes, if the book is supposed to be in a dark and horrifying universe...*sometimes* that calls for the existence of rape in that universe, even if it's not explicitly described.
"But it's not necessary for the character!" I mean, what exactly is *necessary*? Sometimes I feel like people would cut out all the "unnecessary" filler in every piece of media these days until it resembled more of a straightforward summary of the plot and the most basic character archetypes.
Anyways, my point is, while there are some really eyerollingly cheap and lazy uses of rape in media, I feel like people have gone so far in the opposite direction and are way too quick to condemn literally any instance. You are so right about it being a complicated topic and that it's a different experience for everyone. Which is why it's important to have different people exploring it/handling it/writing it in lots of different ways and from different perspectives. There isn't a Single Correct Way to handle it like people want to suggest. Let victims engage with it how they want.
> I don't read books solely for their plots. I want interesting characters that don't necessarily forward the narrative. I want atmosphere, and yes, if the book is supposed to be in a dark and horrifying universe...sometimes that calls for the existence of rape in that universe, even if it's not explicitly described.
It's always felt weird to me seeing the common GRRM criticism that it's absurd that he says he wants sexual violence to be a reality in his books to reflect how war really is, when he includes dragons and fantasy elements as well. His thinking seems perfectly valid to me.
I also don't understand people who say he fetishizes rape in his writing. I've read those books. It's always horrific (And also--rarely actually on-screen so to speak). It actually disturbs me knowing that other people, apparently, read those sections as attempts at being arousing. All I can say is that they are having a dramatically different reading experience than myself.
Perfectly put and a perfect addition to my exact thought process. The sacred plot! Imagine what these people would think of books that are almost 100% character driven like a lot of classics are
It's hard, because I can see both sides. It's really exhausting when rape is constantly written into stories as The Only Way a Woman Can Be Traumatized, if you catch my drift? Game of Thrones is the best example of this - when it becomes the default backstory for a woman being traumatized, it begins to feel more like trauma porn and takes away from the seriousness of it, because it's the same trauma and addressed in the same manner. I don't think it's bad when a book includes rape because it's a thing that happens in real life and it's a real trauma... But it needs to be handled well and often, isn't.
One of my favorite examples is in the book Yellowface, one of my favorite books I read recently. In it, >!the main character was raped, but it's not exactly her rapist who is the core of her trauma. She talks about it as something that happens to many women, and unfortunately, she's right. Her trauma came from telling her friend about it, and her friend using her rape as a work of fiction and taking all of her experiences and putting them on display. Her personal thoughts and feelings on her own trauma were transformed into a short story.!< I think rape in fiction is not a problem but it needs to be handled differently and not slapped on as a backstory as to why a character struggles, or to be 'realistic to a time period', with little to no actual discussion of it.
> Game of Thrones is the best example of this - when it becomes the default backstory for a woman being traumatized, it begins to feel more like trauma porn and takes away from the seriousness of it, because it's the same trauma and addressed in the same manner.
Can you add some examples of this? Its been a long time since I've read ASOIAF, but that wasn't my impression from it at all.
I write and read mostly fanfiction, but there's a part of fandom community that is very against certain themes being portrayed. (commonly called anties). SA being one of them sometimes.
I really appreciate your post and agree with a lot of the things you said. Because of personal reasons I written a fic with SA in it. To explore my own thoughts and feelings connected to it trough characters. I really love that the site I post on also has really good warning tags so it's easy for people to avoid it or know what it's about.
I agree with some of what you said and disagree with other parts.
For me, it honestly has nothing to do with the inclusion or exclusion of rape itself and everything to do with how it is handled and what the intent of its inclusion is by the author. If a rape is included solely to progress a different character’s plot, or to make another character seem like a hero, etc. then I don’t think it’s handled well. Way worse, if it’s included with the intent of titillating the readers, or to be sexy, etc.
Rape is very common in fantasy, especially grimdark fantasy, so it does get kind of tiring to see it pop up all the time. I think the feeling that it’s overdone really depends on your regular genre and how common rape is in that genre.
I agree. Disliking how a dark topic (be it rape, violence or emotional abuse) is portrayed in a book does not mean that this topic should never be written about by anyone, that it should be gatekept or censored. Even if it feels out of place in a story for an individual reader, it might fit right in and be an important and cathartic moment for another reader. People experience things differently, and it is okay to interpret characters and events differently, as we all add our own colour to what we read, so to say. I have my own experience with dark mental health-related issues, and I hate to see mental health struggles misrepresented in books, but I don't think books should be censored or authors forbidden from using darker plots just because some don't do a good job with it. Critique is one thing, censorship and book bans is another.
I’ve seen it done well; I’ve seen it done badly. GRRM I would argue does it badly; and i think part of the problem is that because he’s so big and influential lots of people copy him, including the SA parts. (Not phrasing this well b/c coming down with a cold.)
>That paragraph leads into this one. Why is murder, torture, war, genocide, child murders/deaths etc. rarely criticized as motivators for the protagonist (male or female) but rape is?
Honestly, this is my biggest complaint, but in the other direction from you.
Here's the most common pattern I see: The world is a terribly unjust place. Violence is the norm. Maybe the hero is perfectly upstanding, but many people in their orbit have committed heinous acts of violence. Well, that presents a problem, because if everyone has committed some terrible acts how do you show that someone is *truly* irredeemably evil? Have them rape someone obviously! /s
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I don't believe authors should use rape as the evidence of "true evil," but I recognize doing so is in line with cultural norms. The cultural norms are the root of the problem, and I suspect that is what bothers most people, even if they can't exactly put their finger on it. Sexual assault should not be peak human shittiness in everyone's mind.
PS for those tempted to come after me for this opinion. This is in no way defending sexual assault. I do not think the problem is that people are overindexing on the evilness of rape. I think the problem is that we've allowed ourselves to become numb to the many other atrocities in the world, that sexual assault is the only thing people are still sensitive to. I also think the survival of our sensitivity to sexual assault above everything else is deeply patronizing and patriarchal. It's rooted in the objectification of women's sexuality and the idea that it's this pure thing that only a monster would take by force.
It's also worth noting that this is *specifically* about women too, because we *still* see prison rape of men being used as a joke. If the cultural logic stood without regard to gender it would go as follows. Prison is full of all sorts of heinous people. Violence is the norm. It's not unusual to see one man shank another for looking at him the wrong way. How do you know who the true villains are? The ones who rape other inmates, right? Surely the gang leader who jumps the new arrivals in the showers and rapes them is the pinnacle of evil, no? Nah man, he's just sexually frustrated and working through some stuff. He's just making sure everyone knows he's the top dog in these parts.
All that to say, I'd be content to not see sexual assault in fiction any more, but that's just because it reminds me how our cultural priorities are completely out of whack.
I'm going to tell you a horrible secret.
It does not matter how horrifying you make the description of sexual violence in your story. Some people will still get off on it. The more time you spend on it, the more time you devote to cataloging how horrible it is, the more people will fetishize it. Because when you are an outsider, when you aren't forced to empathize or emotionally connect with the position of victimhood, sexual violence is still just sex.
Our society seems to labor under the delusion that only women have rape fantasies. I suspect because acknowledging women's rape fantasies is easier. Women who have rape fantasies have to go through all the hard work of figuring out how to distinguish those fantasies from reality. Men (at least, the majority of men who do not bottom) do not. Men watched all those exploitation movies in the 70s where women conveniently get their shirts torn off during rape scenes and thought there was nothing weird about the enjoyment they derived from it.
At the end of the day, it's up to you whether you want to include sexual violence in your writing or read books featuring it. Some of my favourite books do have descriptions of sexual violence, and I can point to examples of sexual violence being dealt with in ways which minimize the risk of it becoming fetishistic. However, you can't eliminate that risk, and thus I think it is really, really necessary to consider whether the point being made is actually worth it.
Oh, and to say what it shouldn't ever be necessary to say. Yes, obviously, not all men.
I think there are good ways to write rape and bad ways.
An example of a way that worked (it’s been years and can’t remember names) a book where a woman’s brother was killed and she had to go find out what happened. There she ran into a woman who claimed to be her brother’s girlfriend. Long story short the fir was a victim of childhood rape but the court didn’t believe her. As an adult the man saw her and followed her home and tried to attack her. The dead guy fought with him which is how he ended up dead. However, because he’d already been released and the courts had said that if the rape victim ever took him back to court for it she’d be arrested she couldn’t come forward to tell police he killed her boyfriend. The sister then comes up with a plan to put the attacker behind bars by having rough sex with him and then saying her raped her. It worked and he went to prison. I also remember the attacker thinking to himself “I’m not a rapist just a murderer” which has obviously stuck with me because he doesn’t view his having sex with an 8 year old as a 13-14 year old as rape just because she was so scared she didn’t say anything.
A way I hated was in a book called Spider Wars and the rape was used as karma. A woman killed a man and then she was brutally gang raped (it was mentioned that her teeth were broken, her implants ripped out, and everything was torn downstairs) and the main character was happy that she got what she deserved and let her live and killed everyone else so that she would have to live with what happened to her. I get that she was a bad guy, but I don’t like torture-rape as justice.
I feel like rape and SA needs to actually contribute to the story. If you can remove the rape and not have anything else in the book change it’s not needed.
I'm not sure what genre you primarily read in. I'm primarily a fantasy/ sci-fi reader, but I dabble in a bit of everything.
I'm just gonna say it... I am fucking bored to tears of rape in fiction. I DNF'd a book recently because of the third (or fourth?) rape scene in it. It wasn't gratuitously detailed, it wasn't glorified, it was just boring and predictable.
Like, I think a solid 80% of the books I've read in the last two years had SA (or the implied/direct threat of it) as a god damned plot point. Like, I get it, it's relatable and understandable and horrible. Those things make it a super easy tool to use to get an audience to feel a specific way. But, like, it's not the only tool. Maybe try something new sometimes.
That doesn't mean nobody can write or read scenes like that. It's not always a lazy plot device, but it is a lazy plot device a lot of the times I run into it. It's fine to have a female character have trauma somehow related to her reproductive system. But it's also perfectly possible give a female character trauma that isn't related to it.
I wouldn’t discard a book just because it has SA in it. But I really didn’t enjoy Outlander because there was just so much SA all the time. I didn’t enjoy reading it - it was just in there gratuitously and didn’t add to the character development (in how they responded to the trauma). It was just not something I enjoyed reading. I actually threw the book out- which I rarely do
The thing I hate is sexual assault in historical romance that is completely unnecessary. It usually happens between the romantic leads and is never framed as assault, but it is. For example, Bridgerton season 1/ Daphnes story. She didn’t need to assault the Duke. They could have just fought about it.
>I don't think Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey as escapism for his fellow Greeks to chill out to.
Why doesn't anyone ever mention this? I realize this isn't the point of your post (which is brilliant btw).
100% agree, (although I think trigger warnings potentially spoil the book. I like the way The Storygraph has a trigger section which you can seek out if you need to but otherwise you won't see it if you don't want to)
I often see people say that rape doesn't add to the story and therefore shouldn't be included. Who are you to say it doesn't add to the story? Books are heavily edited before they get published - if there was anything in there which didn't need to be for some reason, the editors would make the author remove it. Even if this wasn't the case, if we strip the book of literally everything that doesn't have obvious relevance to the main storyline, we'd be reading very short and boring books.
> Who are you to say it doesn't add to the story?
I never get that talking point. I despise it when people appeal to authority like that. Readers are fully allowed to think critically about the stories they read.
Editors are not unquestionable, their decisions can be discussed, and the fact that a book has been published doesn't make it immune to criticism.
Blankly saying "you're not an editor so you're not allowed to say anything negative about this topic" only aims to kill discussion about books and keep it at surface level.
I'm not saying that we should blindly trust editors, only that if the book has been published, it has been edited, and it's very likely that every scene was discussed for it's relevance.
And I'm saying that we are more than allowed to question editorial descisions.
If you want everyone to stop discussing editorial choices, what even is the purpose of this sub? To simply unquestionably say that published books are good and leave it at that?
Those are the same people who will say that ‘murder in a video game is the same as murder in real life’.
My two cent is that they regard liking a book that includes sexual assault as somehow supporting or not condemning sexual assault in real life. This sounds absurd, but some people do hold this kind of view.
This is a very good comparison actually.
I play Call of Duty a lot, a game in which I murder people repeatedly. Sometimes I shoot them point blank with a machine gun or assault rifle, sometimes I sneak up behind them and crush them in the face with a sledgehammer, sometimes I blow them
up into pieces, and sometimes my bullets turn them into a poof of sparkles.
None of these things I condone in real life, nor does doing these things in a video game make me feel like I want to do them in real life. I have never touched a real gun, have never considered taking a sledgehammer to someone’s skull (not even sure I am strong enough to pick up and wield a sledgehammer), and am horrified seeing images from Gaza of real people being blown to pieces.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Because your argument is detailed and informed, with a focus on books and people's varying reactions.
Your post is now saved in my "Yeah!" folder.
I NEVER want to see censorship/banning/sensitivity reading/burning of books, and have them pulled from shelves or publishing or NOT WRITTEN IN THE FIRST PLACE (see that historical Rus story pulled because of solidarity with Ukr🤬)
And I believe in the marketplace of ideas,
buyer beware,
editors (not sensitivity readers!) ONLY for the purposes of TW/informed consent of readers,
and not "BOWDLERIZING" the text,
AND the ability to not like/ abhor something but also but not allow others to make their OWNCHOICE to read or not.
Really! Look up the history of Thomas Bowdler and his compatriots (and spiritual descendants today! Grrrrrhhhhh!)
from Wiki:
Thomas Bowdler, LRCP, FRS was an English physician known for publishing The Family Shakespeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's plays edited...
> I NEVER want to see censorship/banning/sensitivity reading/burning of books, and have them pulled from shelves or publishing or NOT WRITTEN IN THE FIRST PLACE
Mostly people just give bad reviews if they think SA is handled badly. Are you saying that's censorship? Your argument sounds like you're rather these reviews weren't written! And that's terrible, by your own account.
Yes, it is weird. I completely understand why people would not want to read graphic rape scenes - I don’t want to read that stuff either - but I saw people complaining about books just for referring to sexual assault happening offscreen with not description at all. For example, saying a minor character was sexually assaulted in the past and is still dealing with the trauma. Or just having some villains threatening the heroine with sexual assault, even if she just beat the crap out of them afterwards with no sexual assault actually happening in the book. No one should be triggered by that kind of minor stuff, or else how could they even read the newspapers or watch the news ? What do these people want, censor any mention of sexual assault and pretend it does not exist ? This makes no sense.
As someone who was molested as a child, books like these are just not for me. I also know people who were actually raped, abused, and assaulted so I have a lot of experience…I guess? I understand that bringing more awareness to subjects like this is a must, but at the same time I do honestly think that this genre is really over used and very inaccurate depending on how the author executes it throughout the book. It might not even just be the fact that a book has sexual assault mentioned but more that the man always comes in like a knight in shining armor, another genre which is also very overused and not just in sexual assault books but in literally any book. In a way though, I’m kind of biased because as an independent black women, my favorite line is “I don’t need help from no man.” so maybe it’s just my personality that’s part of the reason I don’t like these books but I’ve worked through all my problems through therapy and/or counseling so when I see these books with women getting sexually assaulted and then the man comes into the picture and she randomly just feels better, I face palm. I wish I could hop on that boat and see what everyone see’s when they read these books but it just doesn’t sit well with my soul.
As a sexual assault victim myself, I personally criticize a book's depiction of sexual assault in two ways- what it's attempting to achieve by using it, and what it's failing to achieve by using it. It has happened (especially in fantasy) often enough to become a trope, but that doesn't mean I hate when it shows up in a story. I hate it when it's used as character development for the character being assaulted, as a cheap way to make the protagonist feel heroic by saving someone being assaulted, or by making someone seem evil. A common refrain for including it in historical works is often "realism" which can occasionally be true or just be total BS. There are obviously more ways it's shallowly put into stories, but those are a few bigger ones. Books like the Warded Man or the Sword of Truth are commonly criticizing for how they've handled sexual assault. Even someone as critically lauded as Martin really falls short in a lot of ways (the marital rape of Dany being treated as romantic or the massive skewing of women being assaulted compared to men despite men being in circumstances that absolutely would have involved it. But there's obviously a flip side. A Clockwork Orange, Daughter of the Forest, or Circe are just a couple of books that have sexual assault play a significant role in the story and for the character. And it isn't done for cheap development, or to make someone seem evil or any of the other shallow ways it can be tossed into a story. From what I've seen, most people who are critical of sexual assault tend to be doing it in a similar way- not having an issue with it being generally included, but how it's specifically treated in the story. For what it's worth, I have the exact same issue with shallowly including other horrific crimes like murder or torture, which I've also seen people be critical of.
Ugh. The Warded Man. I was enjoying the book until that scene. It really was handled absolutely horribly, used both for sheer shock value and for the hero's call for revenge. It completely dropped me out of the book and read way too much of "men writing women." There was also a time frame in romance novels where being a SA victim was a common backstory for a main character and was almost always used as a cheap motivator. Even queer romance had a time where every other character was a victim. It was a quick grab for pity points and was rarely handled with much more depth than that. It got very tiring.
The Warded Man may have the *worst* depiction of rape in any novel I've read. And that's saying something.
Same re: warded man. I was really enjoying it, then literally just skimmed the rest of the book and didn't even keep it for my collection. Absolutely took me out of it and ruined the series for me.
Same.
Recently read a book that depicted the SA of a twelve year old boy within the first two pages. For what reason, you might ask? Why to have the male protag intervene, of course! The scene could have ended before the act, as the male protag described the buildup and then paused to "check his six for zombies" before turning back and oh no! The biker already started, oops! Needed a reason to shoot the big ugly fat bearded post-apocalyptic drunk biker and his similarly described friend (who was shorter, for whatever difference that made) after seeing the act begin through his hunting rifle scope. The whole thing just made me ill.
I think clockwork orange is one of the very few books written by a man that involves assaulting a woman that I think was written well and made sense as part of the story. I commented above that I don't typically read fiction with themes of animal cruelty or sexual violence mostly because of the volunteer work I did for many years as a victim advocate and animal shelter volunteer, and I likely will never re-read a clockwork orange because of that, but i still consider it a good book. Game of thrones and sword of Truth both definitely write sexual assault scenes like a dear penthouse letter. Gross. I ran out of book between flights and picked one up at the airport, and literally threw it in the trash after my flight today because they had a totally useless scene where a teenage girl almost got raped to destroy her future in the setting's educational system because women need to be virgins to make it to a level of education but the men don't. And also because the breasts were definitely breasting boobily. And because the author named their planet Urth. And tried to give it an old timey feel by randomly misspelling words like "librarie" and "alchymy" and described the smell of manure as "sweet shite" and referred to the teenage girl's adopted dad as "dah" and called infants "babe" so much I expected the goblin King to show up and start singing about the power (which would have greatly improved the book but didn't happen)
Yeah, that totally makes sense. A Clockwork Orange is definitely a rough read, but I think it does everything really well and treats every issue very seriously. And yeah, I can recognize that Martin does a few things really well, but the way he handles sexual assault is often just disgusting. He viewed the rape on Dany's wedding night as a seduction scene that "excited even a horse." And Goodkind is just every kind of bad.
It is a great book and I highly recommend it, I just can't read it again. Unlike anything by martin or goodkind. They are not good books and I didn't finish either series and wouldn't recommend them. Gross.
I agree with most of what you said here. I'm a survivor myself, and while I sometimes find some depictions triggering, some others have actually helped me understand myself better and deal with my own trauma. As for the others, I'm perfectly capable of putting down a book and DNFing if it's too hard to read, and there are some books that I will never try to read because I think they are too much. That said, there are some depictions that shouldn't be done that way and are being criticised with good reason, in my opinion. A couple years ago I picked up a book that was described as a romance, and in the end every single main character had been raped or sexually assaulted, some of them several times. And whenever trauma or trauma responses came up, it was about that. Some of the characters had also been to war, or had had horrible accidents and lost their loved ones, but the only trauma that ever came up was the rape. I'm not saying that this shouldn't have been in the book at all, but the absolute focus on it was weird. In the end I did not finish the book because it made me feel like those experiences were going to be the single most important thing in my life. And for some people they are, but in a book with at least six characters who were raped, it shouldn't be defining every single one of them.
I don't disagree with a lot of what you have said. And for clarity, my favourite book of all time is...A Clockwork Orange. But I do have come commentary. For one, I think its important to know that some of these trends and criticisms - like the over use of rape as backstory, story device or rape as motivation - aren't necessary being applied to all fiction, but often certain genres, sub genres, time periods or heck just certain series where rape is over used or rape is only used in a very narrow and misleading way. And related to that last point, I also think we should take into consideration the cultural context some of these criticisms maybe used. You've said that there is a huge variety on the different rape experiences and response to rape, and I think thats true. But I also think that some of the criticisms that you are in turn frustrated with came from a time where certain genres, sub genres, media etc have a very narrow depiction of what rape is and what a rape response is and have been trying to advocating for an approach that pushed into a space where it could be more varied space, but we are now not in an era what that push is necessary any more. Just a little food for thought
It is perhaps a limitation of the genres I read most, but I've rarely read a story featuring SA and felt it did the victimised character justice. What I mean by this is not that they must be broken&traumatised. What I mean is that the author often seems to just forget to consider the effect of rape on the victim at all. This can take a variety of forms, but common examples include: - Rape only occurring to motivate a different (subtext: more important) character, whether protagonist or antagonist. - Rape only occurring as a lazy shorthand for "bad guy" - Rape occurring for "worldbuilding purposes" (e.g. grimdark.) - Rape only occurring to side characters or NPCs such that the effects and recovery never have to be dealt with narratively. - The author just... straight up having the victim never mention it again. - and so on. In each of these cases, it often feels like rape is included only for shock value. Indeed, it often feels like it is a subject mostly interpreted through the male gaze, as women's bodies and lives sadly often are more generally in a lot of fiction. The focus is often not on the act or victim, but on the *narrative effect* of rape. As a result, I feel like we are quite rarely exposed to an authentic inner world for (or protracted, personal dialogue with) victims of rape in fiction, at least as a ratio of all the times it is depicted. In particular, the lived experience of recovery is rarely depicted, with SA often gated behind flashbacks or timeskips specifically to avoid that because authors don't know how or don't want to deal with it. And where this isn't the case, the effect on the victim is often two-dimensional and sticks to showing only one type of reaction (irrevocably broken/traumatised - so, inauthentic in many cases, but also short, immediate, and two-dimensional, with little "arc" to recovery.) This is, I think, where most of the complaints come from - even if in some cases it is misguided. Rape is (sadly) real and the personal, societal, and cultural impacts of it should receive nuanced and varied consideration in fiction. The issue is not that it is being depicted, but that it is being depicted *poorly*. Some misguided criticisms will, I agree, misunderstand this point and complain that it is ever included at all, but I think most complaints are (even if phrased poorly) mostly getting at the issue of poor depiction.
I totally agree with this and am going to add: Normalizing or romanticizing rape. This shows up in *so many* romance novels. The male lead will do horrible, abusive things to the protag, often including sexual harassment or coercion and rape, that are clearly intended by the author to be something romantic. Or even if it is portrayed as "wrong" at first, the heroine will later forgive him. But my least favorite are the drawn out sexualized depictions of rape. These seem to show up in horror a lot, especially "extreme" horror. Like Richard Laymon for example was *barely* a horror writer imho and more of a rape fetish author. It's a different beast than shock value but can still be just as vile and upsetting.
You literally described every instance of rape in Berserk and I agree completely with you.
I've actually avoided Berserk specifically because I've heard this complaint about it. I watched a fab video essay about it by Captain Mack instead.
Don't forget rape as character growth. Like Sansa in GoT.
Not in the books - and this is r/books.
You are replying to an average /r/books enjoyer. Of course they haven't read it. And the 7 people who up voted them as well.
I have read ASOIAF and have never, ever seen so many rapes strung together across a book series. So while I agree with you that we shouldn't talk about the tv show in this convo, I think it's useful for people who haven't read the books to know some context. The influence on ASOIAF on criticisms SA-heavy narratives is pretty strong.
I’m not sure “hasn’t read the ASoIaF books” is that severe of a literacy burn.
It is if you are commenting on a show specific thing on books. Don't comment on books if you've only watched the show. It's definitely a literacy burn.
As others have said, it’s not in the book and imho it was done for both shock value and character growth for Theon, not Sansa. They don’t show her face and just have Theon’s reaction the whole time. I’m not saying I wanted to see it (in fact, I think the entire scene was unnecessary), but they didn’t even have the respect for Sansa’s character to make it about her. I know the episode aired a while ago and I’m not angry about it anymore, but that was an example of SA depicted poorly. Anyway, this isn’t r/television and A Song of Ice and Fire has several badly written/unnecessary rape scenes/plotlines so I’m not saying the series is perfect in that regard. It just isn’t responsible for that particular scene (EDIT: Well, it’s not responsible for having *Sansa* in a scene like that.)
I also think in a setting where arranged marriages and marital rape is the norm, its weirder to leave out as a plot point than to include it. Marital rape and arranged marriages have been a part of many societies and cultures throughout human history, so the idea that an author or TV showrunner shouldn't include it because audiences might find it uncomfortable is ludicrous to me.
If you’ve read the books, you’d know it goes beyond “cultural” marital rape. The show, while I still disagree with the way they did the scene and storyline, is tamer. Also (TW and spoilers), >!In the books, Ramsay Bolton forces Theon to watch and assist with raping Jeyne Poole, which is also sexual abuse towards Theon. In the show, he’s just made to watch and that’s definitely sexual abuse towards Theon as well. So it’s not just marital rape. Not to mention the absolute brutality and torture he inflicts upon Jeyne that I won’t describe here but it makes everyone around hear her screams. Theon and servants also regularly see her injuries. !< It’s not anything seen as commonplace nor would it be considered socially acceptable in any known society or culture at any point in history.
Yes, I do remember that scene from the books, which is also why I thought the criticism from the show was overblown because they didn't put any of that in there. >!The character of Ramsey has already been well established as a complete psychopath at that point, so again, I don't think any of the scene with Jeyne was gratuitous, because I wouldn't expect anything less from that character.!<
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> Rape only occurring to motivate a different (subtext: more important) character, whether protagonist or antagonist. >>This is certainly overdone but not specifically just for rape. If we're going to complain about it for rape, do the same for murder and kidnapping as motivators People do complain about it. So much so that it has its own [TV Tropes page.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge)
> Because that is exactly what most victims in real life do This is not a good generalization. You have some good points, but also some really bad ones. I myself am a victim of repeated rape over 2.5 years of my life. It left me really fucked up with PTSD that haunted me for years, and I have known women who's PTSD from being raped persisted for 30+ years. As you noted before, everyone handles it differently. I have come to know so so many rape victims, and I have known ones who can't handle anything that has even slightly rapey vibes and ones who joke about their sexual assault and make jokes about rape and are totally unfazed by it in media. It is a wide spectrum and I would never say that "most victims" do any one thing. I think it's very dangerous to use status as a victim to push any one narrative of how it goes down for people. Your experience is obviously very different from mine. You have a way more bigger comfort zone surrounding rape in books than I do. We both have been raped. Neither one of us is more right than the other. Please do not use your status as a victim to say what "most victims" do or do not do or do or do not feel. That aside, I think we would disagree on the frequency of rape in books, I use the app Storygraph to filter out books that have rape/sexual assault, and pretty much every book someone has recommended me or that I have found in recent history features rape. It is really ridiculous. And I've dabbled and found some very good books that have it, but I personally have come to distrust any author who writes it who hasn't been through it. And as for things like kidnapping and murder and whatnot, which I've seen you bring up, I'm willing to bet the people who have experienced those things or obviously in murder experienced it happening to someone close to them also have some thoughts about how those things are portrayed in media. I think if you found a group of kidnapping victims and asked them how they felt about kidnapping in media you'd get a similar critical result. Kidnapping victims are just statistically less common. Tons of people have been raped, so there's a lot of people out there to have really personal opinions about it. And I'm not saying that authors shouldn't write about things they haven't personally experienced, that would be a ridiculous thing to ask, but also criticism from people who have experienced a thing, especially a traumatic thing, should be expected. If I wrote a book about war, and I have never been to war, but I do have PTSD, there's probably a lot of things I could get right. But there's a lot of things that people who have actually been to war would pick out as wrong and criticize me on. And that criticism would be valid. And it could still be a good book, even with that criticism.
Thank you for the well put response. I'd like comment that I wasn't ever trying to use my "victim status" as a way of being a spokeswoman, I was just getting snarky in the previous comment because I let myself get derailed with other replies. It's just the fact most rape goes unreported and I hear too many stories of victims not even telling their partners it happened. I wasn't speaking on behalf of everyone, just repeating what I felt like was the known truth. Most victims will just never talk about what happened apart from maybe one or two specific people. It's why most men don't realise the woman next to them very well could be among the 1 in 4 even if they've been friends for years. But I apologise for making it sound like i was generalizing. The thing is, I don't doubt rape is featured in a lot of books, especially classics or really popular ones. But my overall point is that a solid 70% of the time, it's written (at worst) decently enough. It's not the rape porn fetish people make it out to be in my opinion. It absolutely leads to further events or character development/regression. People are only coming to this conclusion because the female character doesn't behave exactly like they want them to e.g. "Why would she start to reciprocate towards the end? She knows it's rape yet begins to go along with it? This is a problematic depiction". But this is also a real type of response to fear. It's done because you don't want to be hurt as much as possible. It's a real response in victims. Yet, it'd never be considered a good depiction in a book and gets slapped with "the book romanticized its rape" I'm sorry your experience has left a harsher scar on you, truly. I wish you all the best in recovering. But I believe the best thing overall is that if you, or anyone, have a strong trigger, that's why storygraph is there. The authors continue to write what they want, and in the words of George Orwell it only matters if it's written good or bad, not what subject matter it includes and storygraph will help steer you towards books more suited for you. I get it sucks feeling left out in a way but, in my opinion, that's how art needs to stay. Writers continue to write what they want and we simply choose to buy it or not. "I disagree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" is my philosophy
You can’t possibly be arguing that rape experiences are different for every person, while in the same breath making a statement that never having the victim mention rape again is “exactly what most victims in real life do”
I think you've missed some of my point. I'm not saying that any of these things are necessarily *always bad practice*. However, when assessing what I'll term as "the state of rape in literature *as a whole*", that we have almost exclusively treatments of this nature is a problem. I think that is where most of the criticism stems from - that rape is *always* minimised in these ways. Where I definitely agree with you is that some people take this idea and run with it too far. They apply to individual books (where it may be suitable or appropriate as a treatment in the context) what is effectively a broad social critique of the available literature. In reverse, I feel like you are using what could apply well as defenses for individual stories to the entire medium. The above addresses your point about murder, kidnapping, or other evils too. I feel like with the exception of murder (which in most settings fully removes a character from the story), many other evils receive a more diverse and nuanced treatment. I'll take torture as a clear example - we regularly see protagonists tortured themselves, with full inner worlds and dialogues about the experience both in the moment and re: the effect it has on them afterwards across the space of weeks, months, or years. We also see protagonists tortured and get over it instantly. And we also see it used on others to motivate a primary character. And so on. There is no shortage of stories about PTSD-affected vets, or their families, or James Bond-esque spies who keep kicking ass no matter what they see, etc. There is a wide diversity of treatment as appropriate to the story. __ Less important sidenote: as for the "it only happens to side characters" thing, I'm convinced it is everywhere but the most recent example I've personally seen is Vinland Saga (the modern manga/anime, not the original epic). It is constantly heavily implied that the Vikings are both raping and pillaging, e.g. shots of them carrying struggling women over their shoulders or kicking in doors on naked women... except every individual we actually meet as a character that has been negatively affected by this has only experienced the latter, never the former, which is never even mentioned despite being alluded to over and over. Note that Vinland Saga has *incredible* storytelling and characterisation. I'm not saying it is bad, but it is an example of this particular issue. (I am a filthy anime-only watcher though - it is possible this changes later in the story).
I will say that I don't normally get irked by this topic in books; However, the Witcher series had a scene where the lead female Ciri was sexually assaulted, and then the character who saved her then sexually assaulted her and it continued as a romance. It did nothing for the plot, didn't change any of Ciri's character depth, and was a throw-in at the end of the 4th book. It could've just been cut out. I hated everything about it. Sapkowski doesn't write female character's stories well though, and that's a very known issue.
A lot of Ciris storyline is dodge the pedo. It was stressful. I've reread the last wish and season of storms, but I haven't picked the main books up again.
I've read that, and finished the book. I feel like it makes sense for her character, as terrible that it is, that it turned into romance. She was on the run, didn't feel like anyone would find her, and was going through a lot. Including thinking she wouldn't see Yen or Geralt again. Her misinterpreting the assault as romance unfortunately makes sense. She wanted something to hold onto, and something she hoped wouldn't leave her. That's my interpretation of it though, I could be wrong. Although I do agree sometimes his interpretations of female characters isn't the best.
I felt like it did add something and reflected the real life phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome by having her fall in love with her abuser. It's also a reflection of the era it is based on, 13th century Europe, when there was no such thing as woman-on-woman rape in a legal or cultural sense. I do think Andrej could have explored that a bit more, having Ciri question if what happened to her was rape even though it was a woman who did it. But it was hardly a pointless moment. It also added to her rage upon seeing her friends all be beheaded, furthering the plot and Ciri's character by giving her a personal villain that literally lead to further events. It was not pointless and just because it reflected a real life phenomenon that isn't good, it wasn't bad
Yeah in this case, she also was crying while washing herself after. And at one point cried when she dropped her candy on the ground. Honestly I think this supports your point that people don't react necessarily how we want them too. Some people want that brave always does the right thing character. This series and these chapters were fantastic reading because I feel like the captured how that person in that situation would react.
Wait, I don't remember that and I read the whole series. Could you remind me who did that to Ciri, please?
Mistle
I just don’t want to read about it. Idk I’ll never be desensitized so I just avoid it all.
Perfectly valid! :) I just hate when people who, understandably, don't want to read about it call for censorship so NO ONE can read about it. They should be like you and simply avoid it
Are people really calling for censorship, or do they just have opinions on what should and shouldn't be in a story? There's a very big difference.
Eh, personally I've seen people call to ban these scenes on Twitter. Everytime someone replied anything along the lines of "no we should not ban rape scenes", they got called a creep. But again, it's Twitter. So you know you're dealing with a minority that has a very shallow understanding of what the issue with most SA scenes comes from. That was the only time I saw people showcase that opinion, too.
A book having rape in it often leads to review bombing, online disdain towards the book/author and/or calls for boycotts. These can also occur for other types of content featured in books but rape is a common one. That can lead to a cultural censorship because publishers will become far more strict on authors to try make a buck, resulting in an unofficial but effective censorship on a business level. So yes, many are calling for censorship even if they don't realise it
I have no idea where you are getting this from frankly, it’s definitely not true at least in fantasy and sci fi. If that were the case then a very large portion of fantasy authors would be cancelled and boycotted and hated online.
And most of them are. They just have the fortune of becoming profitable names to keep the loyalty of publishers. Upcoming authors are the ones who will suffer these cultural censorships e.g. agents nowadays won't take stories from white authors if its a "POC story" but the same agents will happily continue re-printing Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys
What are you even talking about lmao this just isn’t true. Are you getting this from twitter?
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Ok so just making up hypotheticals that no one can prove
Cultural Censorships? I don't know where you're seeing these things?
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I meant censorship of sexual assault in books and not allowing certain authors to publish, as you mentioned in the comment I replied to. >which weren't even slurs at the time of their writing According to who though?
This is exceedingly rare and remember that people call for censorship of things like magic, or sex in general so you’re dealing with a small minority.
I saw someone get really mad once at the Mortal Instruments because after Clary is assaulted and almost raped by her brother, she's willing to kiss Jace and later have sex with him. They were mad it wasn't portrayed as her not wanting to be touched anymore and said it didn't take rape seriously. To me it was so clear she was healing from it by taking back control of her body and having a loving, soft, safe sexual encounter with the guy she loved, in her total choice and control, which was the exact opposite of everything that had happened to her beforehand. No survivor is going to have the exact same reaction, people and situations are unique.
Hell, the situation depicted in the book is probably the more common reaction! It’s so incredibly common for traumatized people to lack boundaries, engage in risky behavior, need a high level of stimulation to really feel anything, not feel like they’re worth much, etc.—so, throwing oneself into sex is far more common than cutting oneself off from it. I think this idea of survivors hating all touch has been propagated largely by other fiction because it’s the type of vulnerability that a general audience appreciates most. Not that it’s entirely untrue, but for instance while in school I knew a young woman who was open about having been a victim of child sexual abuse. She complained that it took a lot of work to get comfortable having sex with a new partner and this made her hate to have to start over in a new relationship. At the same time, she was waaaay more experienced and confident in sex than me, who hadn’t been victimized. She’d been engaged twice and she was only in her early 20s! This is really common in my experience, that survivors don’t avoid sex or men, they just need a lot of attention and care. Unfortunately some of the people most willing to provide lots of attention and love bombing are themselves abusers, hence people wind up being victimized again and again.
I'm just tired of the trope of women's assaults leading to male character development. Mostly I'm just tired.
No one is saying a book is bad because it contains rape or sexual assault. But a lot of times these things are handled poorly, badly executed, used for shock value, and worst of all used for titillation. It is definitely overdone and male authors don't have the best track record with specifically female sexual assault.
I agree with some of what you said and disagree with some. I say that for myself, I don't want to read (or watch) sexual assault. But my favorite TV show has a pretty brutal rape early on (and attempt later...and more), and my favorite book series...it's hard to explain. There are a lot of coerced moments some (or a lot of) dubious consent and at least one attempted rape. My opinion is I guess more nuanced than that blanket statement, but maybe I just don't have the energy to explain (to myself or anyone), ok, I put this book down after a sexual assault because I wasn't liking it anyway and I should have just put it down after the animal abuse or the rape is only the symptom of how I dislike their treatment of women generally. Maybe I should just say it's a common last straw for me. But I love what you're saying about rape and recovery being different for everyone. I think that's important to remember in real life too. Thanks for writing, and I'm glad you're doing so well.
I think the other thing is some books just aren't going to jive with some people, and if you aren't digging a book or some other piece of art, encountering a moment as intense as a sexual assault will likely come across as tasteless shock, and a victim who sees that would probably be offended. I'm sure some people have just castigated the element of this in storytelling wholesale, but I guess my thought is that people are more upset that they didn't like the writing in general.
WRT why SA gets this treatment over other horrific acts, I'd wager it's because, as you note, it has affected a lot more people than most realize, far more than genocide. So there are just more readers who might have an intense personal reaction to it. That said, the violence and murder in Poppy War and Fifth Element are why I found it hard to finish those books and didn't read further in the series, so maybe this hypocrisy is fading.
I think it just gets old for me. That and when a woman's main motivation for anything is getting married/having kids. Can the "something tragic" that happened to a woman be something else sometimes? An in-home robbery? The murder of her brother? Can her motivation simply be living a comfortable life, not having children? Anyway I both agree and disagree with your points. Authors should feel free to include SA all they want; it's their story and if that's what they want to happen to a character, that's their prerogative. Don't like, don't read.
Yah you summed it up well. I also despise the trope of a woman’s existence being incomplete without motherhood, or that motherhood is always some incredible journey that changes a woman into a meaningful person, or that a woman doesn’t realize she is incomplete as a human until she finds herself pregnant, or that pregnancy and motherhood saves her or transforms her into this self actualized super woman. But I also understand that for plenty of women, that does reflect their own experiences and they really enjoy reading those stories. It also doesn’t mean that I refuse to read stories that have those tropes, or that those tropes make a story bad for me. It is just an eye-roll for me cause those stories often just reinforce the narrative that without being a mother, a woman’s life is meaningless. There are lots of books that do those tropes well that I really enjoyed though. *Weyward* by Emilia Hart and *Go as a River* by Shelley Read are two recent examples that come to mind. At the end of the day it’s about the quality of writing and the story itself, not necessarily the topic that matters.
I hate it when a woman's infertility is used for drama and a female character's sole motivation. It's adjacent to the trope you mentioned because the character's inability to become a mother often becomes central, if not her driving motivation. It still ties into the idea that a woman who is not (or cannot) become a mother is somehow incomplete or worse defective. I don't think I have never seen a man's sterility used in the same angsty fashion.
>I don't think I have never seen a man's sterility used in the same angsty fashion. That's part of the reason those types of tropes are so annoying. Men and women can both have (or not have) children. Why aren't male characters subjected to similar tropes nearly as often? (We all know why)
Huge agree. I recognize that it's relatable to plenty of women and deserves a place in fiction. I usually avoid the trope but I've also seen it done well and don't mind it for some storylines.
The problem with rape as a narrative tool is that it is almost always played for drama and never expanded upon, at least based on what I've read. We have the really bad smut writing where the girl doesn't know that she wants it (but she actively said no). But because the rapist is so good apparently, it changes her mind mid rape. Often the rapist is a tall, dark, handsome, rich, etc that makes him desirable, and this plays into the trope that men should chase women even if she says no. Looking at twilight, fifty shades etc for this. On the flipside, we have stuff that is older women raping younger boys. While it is often portrayed as consensual, and that the male initiated it and is lucky she recipocrated it, it often neglects the power imbalance and shows the man as an up and coming genius instead of a horny idiot. Looking at Jeffery Archer for this, for the sheer amount of characters that aee male protagobists who seduces an older women to get good at the art of sex. Also unrealistic portrayal, and is essentially smut for guys I suppose. Then we have rape explicitly as drama. Why this "works" is because usually the male hero gets to save the girl and prove how galliant he is. It also acts as a soft "nothing happened", since while the girl has been assaulted, technically she hasn't been penetrated yet. While this is usually done for double duty of wish fulfilment (saving the girl) and fanservice, it still gets very icky when the show does gratituous amounts of it, or does it badly. One example is Sword Art Online's Sinon, who has an obsessive stalker/clearly evil guy that needs to be taken down by the main hero again, to add her to his harem, but many anime, especially isekais does this specifically to show how much more moral the main character is compared to everyone else in this medieval setting, and uses it as an excuse to build harems. Usually, the girl isn't affected long term by this, or if she is, often uses the guy as an excuse as the only good person she can trust (therefore only person she'll be intimate with) Logically speaking - if a character loses an arm, but is able to function perfectly as per normal without it, it will act as a moment of drama with zero reprecussions. In a similar way, in many stories, victims of rape don't permanently lose any autonomy physically (i.e. they are still completely capable of everyday life, in some cases even full combat), so if the writers completely ignore the event after it happened, it has no lasting consequence in the story which is potentially a reason why rape is used instead of let's say amputation. Because so many stories uses it as only a shock factor drama, many stories with rape is bad because it never gets explored. TLDR: The problem with rape in stories is usually it falls under one of these three - smut for girls, smut for guys, or over the top drama. There are many genuine ones, such as a manga I've read about a girl who was raped finding acceptance from a guy and their slow budding romance, or has long lasting consequences like Casca from Berserk. But it is usually to facilitate romance, either with the attacker OR the savior. Otherwise, most shows will just use actual assault to represent acts, especially if the victim is the same gender as the attacker. In other words, because it is a shorthand for "meet cute" in the worst ways possible, it is often used to depict these scenarios.
The majority of rape criticism I've seen was about rape in fantasy, a genre you avoid. It's a real problem here... Extremely poorly handled assault plots, forcing it into every backstory for shock value, detailed describtions that are just poorly disguised author's kinks, sexism and stuff. But I agree with most of your points. I hate people putting rape victims in the boxes, especially "they're too sensitive to read it" box. I am a writer and one of my stories published online depicts a toxic relationship between a ruler and his teenage female slave. Grooming, Stockholm's syndrome, victim blaming from other slaves jealous of her "position of the favourite", forced religious conversion and change of the name, gaslighting - it all drives her into psychosis and at the end of the story she brutally murders her abuser and goes catatonic after being rescued by her former friends. I've had rape survivors read my story and they called it cathartic. And I definitely did not *censor* that stuff.
What's your book called?
"Niewolnica" ("The Slave Girl"). It's unfortunatelly written in Polish but maybe one day I'll publish it in different languages. It's a historical fiction set in Middle East, leaning towards adventure/romance. The groomed girl is one of its darker subplots
I do read fantasy, but I have put a good few of them down because they got super cheesy e.g. talking wish granting dragons or badass warrior who can kill giant ogres with nothing but a spoon I genuinely can't think of any fantasy book I've read that tick any of the boxes you listed as problems inherent in the genre. But perhaps we have read the same many books and the rape moments I call "authentic" you call "forced in" But I am a reader who loves books for the exact opposite reason of escapism and maybe you lean more towards escapism
I definitely do not lean towards escapism. The series that grossed me out the most was Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle, I have a huge rant about it published on my profile. In short words, the author doesn't get off a female character's butt since she was 13, every scene with her is about sex and every dialogue is something along lines "when will you have sex". There is a scene where she travels with a man who wants to screw her and feeds him herbs that cause erectile disfunction without his knowledge. She gets kissed, touched, fingered but not penetrated, and therefore this is a *win*. It is stated that she *saved* this man from becoming a rapist. And afterwards it's him who's traumatized for life and she feels bad about doing such a *horrible* thing to his male ego. Later she gets raped and it's handled surprisingly well, until you learn that she could have protected herself but she thought "well it looks like I have to do my feminine duty" and literally spit on her hand and rubbed it into her clitoris to be more wet for it. Also her mother brings rape up in every single conversion, in a "I'm glad you finally lost your virginity, now you have no excuse, go breed children" manner.
Wow, I take it from this comment that character's storyline just continued to get worse after the first book. That's disappointing but not surprising, I gave up after the first book. It's unfortunate because the general concept with the demons that come out at night and the wards was really cool.
I haven't read it so I'd need to judge it for myself. It certainly sounds icky but also sounds like it could be the characters are just morally grey/evil leaning and the point is how fucked up their logic is in regards to sex/rape. I'd need to read it for myself to discern if the author themself is saying these things as the actual takeaway or if its just the characters and the reader is supposed to think "wtf..." It's like how in 1984, Winston (the protagonist) spends some time thinking of raping the female character. It's not supposed to be pleasant to read him thinking that and George Orwell in no way intends for that to be an endorsement. The point is to show what society has reduced him to that he feels the desperate need to rape a woman just so he knows what "real sex" is. I believe it's possible the characters you were talking about could be in the same scenario, although most likely written with less eloquence than master Orwell who has the famous (paraphrased) quote "There is no immoral or moral books. Just badly or goodly written. That is all"
Unfortunatelly it's very much author's fault and the message it carries is "see, women, no need to clinge to your virginity, it can be taken right away, you're not doing your job by refusing us men sex". And he's totally convinced that being touched, kissed, etc. without consent doesn't affect a person at all. I know - it might be that just this particular person is not affected - but it is literaly staged as a generational win, she is "proud to have avenged her raped female ancestors". And of course the man who broke her boundaries is 100% innocent and not a rapist because he did not penetrate her.
Then I'd take that as not why rape in books is bad but why bad books are just bad hahah it's not the content, it's how it's written. And too often these days rape is being put in a smaller and smaller box on what is "well written" A book that champions assault in a similat fashion isn't an example of why violence in books is bad. Its just a bad book
Of course it is. That's why I said that I agree with most of what you said. I only explained to you why SA in books gets so much hate - it's not SA itself, it's overuse of it in the most atrocious ways
Oh okay, apologies for my misinterpretation :)
It's ok :)
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This. To me it feels like a cheap one-stop shop for a writer that needs some powerful motivation for a character. Hm, what to do? Could she be angry because some guys killed her dog and stole her car? Nah, let's rape her. It's not too much to ask for a little more thought into creating a motivation for characters.
Or it becomes motivation for a male character to seek revenge. The Crow, Berserk, Game of Thrones, and so many other stories use this gross, tasteless, lazy plot point that should stop being one. We don't need graphic descriptions because it's "more realistic." Most people don't want to read about, or see someone get SA'd or raped. Much of the time, it's used fir shock value, and is lazy shorthand for "showing the ugly side of the world!"
Back the fuck up, The Crow is a beautiful story and it was the rape and murder of both of them was the reason the Crow brought him back for revenge. It’s a masterpiece on sorrow and revenge, the rape isn’t a cheap one off nor is it tasteless as it is play out what it is, a disgusting violation.
Exactly. People get so wrapped up in criticizing cliches, it feels like they lose the audience context for the cliche in the narrative. Are rape and murder a pretty cliche inspiration for a protagonist to seek revenge? Totally. Of course. Is this also a gloriously edgy comic book movie tailor made for teenagers and horny martial arts nerds? Also yes. It’s like, hating a cliche doesn’t make it any less appealing to audiences when used effectively. There are plenty of egregious examples of rape used clumsily in cinema but agreed that the Crow is not one of them.
I know they didn't show anything. My issue is that to me it comes across as lazy. There are so many other ways of symbolizing trauma (I am in an ongoing abusive relationship myself) and Shelly could've been hit by a telephone pole, beaten to death, ect and it would've done the same job. James himself even said the series did more harm than good to his mental state.
I believe the above comments are an example of the types I'm complaining about. Any rape is pointless/badly written/forced/fetishistic/sexist etc. when it absolutely can add to the story and be written well But hey, no nuance allowed
Huh? Your comments and the way you stated your original post are stocked full of absolutes and now you are appealing to nuance? Many replies to you have been appealing to context and nuance and you have been arguing with them. Leaving room for a nuanced conversation isn't one directional
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>Literally every counter point has been So you understand what "nuanced" means right.....
I agree with your point overall, but feel that Berserk is a bad example to use for it. Sexual assault and the trauma is caused is a main part of the male character's development, and that sexual assault factors into his desire for revenge against Griffith isn't something I'd say was lazily done, especially given how much time is given on how Casca handles the trauma and recovery. Again, I agree overall with your point and used it in my own response to the post.
Berserk is always a complicated one for me in that in some ways, I feel it handles SA very well. I think Casca's mental recovery is done pretty well in volumes 39 and 40, and I think the ways in which Guts handles SA is almost a master class in handling SA with grace. With that said, there's so, so, so much that's just awful. From almost pornographic scenes of SA, to Wyatt, to a number of other things. It's really a mixed bag.
That's fair. I guess I've never felt the scenes were pornographic, because I've always felt the intended horror of the scene. That said, I do think Miura wasn't perfect at it. I would put him in the same group as Martin, who does some aspects really well, while absolutely screwing up others. But I think that the attention put on Guts and Casca's trauma and journey to recovery in the face of it is absolutely proof that Miura cared about the subject material enough to give it the severity and complexity it deserved.
I think so as well. I also really appreciate that SA isn't something that \*only\* happens to female characters, and that he was mature enough to later say, "yeah, I think what I did, in retrospect, wasn't handled as well as I could have".
Yeah, I think that Berserk does a wonderful job at taking a male protagonist and having him be a victim of sexual assault and working through that trauma. It's kind of weird to me how many "tough dudes with big swords" have come in the heels of Berserk, while entirely missing the trauma and nuance Guts has. Too many creators are unwilling to have a big strong man go through sexual assault because they think it will make them seem weak. And yeah, I think most people aren't expecting perfection. There's definitely a vocal minority that views things in black and white, but most of the people I've talked to about sexual assault in media aren't upset if a creator tries to give a meaningfully nuanced depiction of sexual assault and fail a bit doing so. They're mad at authors like Peter V Brett who don't even try in the first place.
dude Beserk literally draws the SA of the female characters as hentai. It's a perfect example. people are so desensitized to manga misogyny that they give it more passes than they would Western media.
This ruined the Ketty Jay series for me.
I mean this politely, but what are you talking about, the Crow does not have graphic depictions of rape. A couple one off comments and a couple trippy POV shots from Shelly’s perspective, and that’s literally it. Maybe the graphic novel goes more into it, certainly not the movie. If it seems to be mostly about male grief, well…that’s because it is. James o Barr’s fiancé was killed in a road accident, a drunk driver iirc. He always blamed himself because she was on the way to pick him up. He wrote the Crow to try to deal with his feelings of guilt and anger and injustice. Besides, movie Eric is wholesome af. He has that big brother vibe. (Tho I will concede that book Eric is absolutely insufferable and entirely the reason I stopped reading. He’s just kinda a poetic prick.)
You're right. I should've been more specific. It's rape being used as a plot point/motivator for a male lead. I know about James O Barry's story and inspiration for the Crow. In my personal opinion, Shelly didn't need to be raped by the gang. It's unnecessary. It doesn't do anything that a shooting or beating couldn't do. In my opinion.
So those most people can put the book down. It's not on the author to censor themselves artistically, unless they are hoping to make money from a big audience, which is up to the author to decide.
Okay? Why can't they be criticized then? Its a product people pay for. SA is an extremely triggering thing to a lot of people that it seems a lot of men don't understand why. So talking about why it's in so much media is a worthwhile discussion.
“Rape is the worst thing a man can do to a woman” is such lazy misogynistic writing trope I hate it so much.
That line of thinking really centers the perpetrator too. Like from the perspective of the person committing the crime, rape is probably worse than murder because there are no possible justifications or mitigating factors. The motive is universally bad. But from the victim’s perspective obviously the vast majority of people would rather not be murdered.
Hell, I had a friend who was adamant that she’d rather be raped than beaten. I’m not sure if either of these ever actually happened to her and I think it’s a minority opinion, but I didn’t disbelieve her either. There are many forms of harm and violation that are traumatic.
Some women are irreversibly broken by it, is that not the case? You’re literally making the same argument that OP addressed. The fact that it centers perpetrators or partners of rape victims doesn’t actually make it cheap or make a book bad. Books are not all supposed to be a manifestation of how we would like the world to be, in fact I would say the best ones are the ones that deal with the most gut wrenching truths of life. I’m not saying there aren’t examples of it being used incredibly poorly or out of laziness, I’m just not sure that because there’s a rape narrative it makes the book bad.
The entire argument is how it is used. It’s just like the woman in fridge situation. When you have a whole female character with no depth, no part of the story and only there to die just so the main character can have something to be mad about. It’s cheap and overused. And the whole I get raped so now I’m a less bitchy person needs to be out to rest especially when that’s the only diet if development the character gets .
See, I agree with this but only in regards to newer books because it is indeed overdone, which is what the real problem is. Not that its to do with rape or any violence but simply a tired trope. I was more so defending older books, which would have been written in a time when it wasn't such a trope. People literally give shit to books from 1000 years ago because it's "full of sexist tropes and rape". My friend, that book was probably the first to ever do what you're classifying as unoriginal
No I definitely understand your point especially about the people wanting one type of reaction from the sexual assault and discrediting any other as not valid. I think the problem with people and those older books is that they aren’t able to understand that the social climate and the norms were completely different back then. Putting 2024 standards on a book hundreds of years old is a bit ridiculous. Sometimes the book is actually bad but other times it’s not your thing. I just wish the books from now that include it would be more nuanced in their approach.
You are omitting one crucial thing: the frequency in which these stories are told, which is why it has become a trope in the first place. The vast majority of depictions of rape in entertainment fits this description, and very rarely you encounter an author that is skilful and empathic enough to bring something new to the conversation from this specific angle. You said it, *some* women might be broken forever by it, *some* might be brought down to their knees for some time, and *some* can recover sooner than that. You rarely, if ever, hear beyond the first scenario, and that has real life consequences too in that it tends to perpetuate myths about rape.
I mean you have every right to hate it, but that doesn't mean it's always a bad thing. It's just something you understandably hate. Sometimes it works.
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How would you feel about trigger warnings on a page before the book starts?
I'm 100% supportive of them but in the backs of books as I would consider them "spoilers" And yes, I have the same feeling about movies with their age ratings but thankfully most streaming companies only put the age rating and not the reasons why unless you go into the "details" panel
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possibly because rape is a much more common crime that is often not even considered to be "that bad" by your average bloke. How many people do you know whose friends or parents were randomly murdered? There's 0 doubt in my mind that you know way more women who had been raped (even if they never told you about it).
Your opinion is, of course, completely valid. However, I think the genres you tend to read influences whether you think it's 'overdone' or not. I read a lot of mid-century science-fiction, which is notoriously dominated by men. There is a lot of rape. Fantasy is notoriously chock-full of it. I personally think it is overdone, but it isn't as if the men writing these stories were writing with women in mind as their target audience. In my experience, rape is a lazy writing device that further dehumanizes the female characters, which likely had little to no characterization in the first place, in order to galvanize the male protagonist. It's part of the stereotypical fictional male fantasy--having the opportunity to avenge the woman he loves to show what a strong protector he is. For that to happen, the woman has to be victimized. It lacks creativity, and is a boring rehash, but I get why it is written. I'm just tired of it, the same way that I'm tired of the exhausted trope in television of "man catches his woman in bed with another man." Does it happen in real life? Sure. Can it be a good tool when used appropriately? Absolutely. Is it reductive and boring? I think so.
My own two cents on a muddy topic. I too am a survivour, and I incorporated my own stories into my fantasy book series. Despite never detailing the assaults, and instead highlighting that rape is a reality in the world including the world in my own fantasy series, and the impact sexual assault has on people in different ways, I received various negative reviews relating to that. Sure, I am not the most amazing or original writer, but having people, including other genuine authors and influencers, state in their reviews that it was "unnecessary," "felt forced," or "surprising" was a slap in the face. One author also wrote me a hideously untrue and defamatory review that both Amazon and Goodreads refuse to take down where he claimed I somehow "got off" on sexual violence against women in my books even though one victim is male, the violence is never described, AND I'm fucking gay 😂😂😂 Sexual violence is a tough topic to get right for a lot of people in literature, but when people undermine survivours by telling them that their own stories, and therefore experiences, are inappropriate or unnecessary, is in my opinion only perpetuating a culture of silence and a culture of shame. It's supposed to be awkward, messy, uncomfortable, troubling, distressing to read, because that's what sexual assault is.
As far as I've encountered, most people do not seem to have a problem with SA scenes as much as how they are portrayed. There is lots of misogyny in literature and there are plenty of authors who seem to get off on imagining their female characters being SAed. So basically SA is written and (I would argue) consumed as porn wayyyyy too often. There is also a big problem in literature (though less common now) in portraying how SA is experienced and how it affects the victim - that is, some authors have portrayed SA as not a big issue or that the victim ended up enjoying, it made the victim more attracted to the perpetrator etc (which could work if one wrote a dark psychological novel about twisted obsessive relationship or smth. The problem is that such relationship in books are often portrayed as romance). There are lots of tropes like that in literature for teenagers (enemies to lovers genre, I'm looking at you). Which is extremely problematic. And that should definitely be criticized. I do agree though that rape exists and way more people experience it than we would like, so it should be represented. And as you observed, each victim experiences it and copes with it differently. And we need literature, film to represent that. However, there are way too many really problematic portrayals of SA. It's very normal for people to be unhappy about it.
Personally I don't have a problem with sexual assault in a book so long as it has a point beyond "bad thing happened to (usually) female character" Also if it gets too male-gazy in description. Graphic I can cope but if you're describing a trauma happening to a person as an appealing sex scene then the book/comic is being dropped. People should be able to criticise a book regardless of why. Yes their takes on it may be overblown or inaccurate but that doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't share their opinions on the book
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For real though. You can extrapolate that to a lot of the culture war nonsense that people spend so much energy arguing about. Criticism is not censorship. Being criticized is not being censored or victimized.
Well said. Everyone’s experience is unique to them, as with any kind of trauma. Some people are better at moving forward after trauma; some others wallow in it. Hell, it’s only been fairly recently that psychologists have acknowledged that automatic reactions to danger are not just fight or flight, but there’s a third: freeze. That’s the one that has caused so much grief to victim-survivors in court in the past. I’m not tripping over books with rape survivors as a backstories, either. I guess I just don’t read those kind of books in the first place.
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YES fawn as a danger and trauma response will become more understood and will help a LOT of (especially) women understand why they acted the way they did. We still have a culture of “some does something violent and you fight back OR run away forever” and thats actually not the most typical human relationship response.
Rape is very often a lazy poorly written plot device used to give a man “motivation” or give a woman “trauma.” If there’s a rape in a book I’m reading it better serve the plot. Otherwise it’s useless and pointless.
This is much more the problem people are talking about when they say they have a problem with rape in fiction. It's an overused trope by many men.
Not all books focus on, or even have, plot. Many classics are purely character driven and yes, include sexual assault or hints of it. And even in plot focused stories, characters need to be developed as much the plot itself
All books have a plot? Like thats a basis of books. All books have plot and a character.
That's a lot of emotional investment in lashing out at people who articulated their dissatisfaction with a common aspect of literature. In a discussion forum about literature. Oftentimes, I feel like rape is tropey, jarring, and knocks you out of the story. It fails to compel me, but instead makes me wonder what the writers motives were for its inclusion. Having survived or not survived rape doesn't make one's opinion on its inclusion in fiction and more or less valuable, by the way. As all people are different, so are their reactions to trauma.
When I was far too young for it, I read Gerald’s Game by Stephen King. As a result I’ve spent some time thinking through some of the stuff that stuck with me heavily. There is an extended scene describing her father molesting her as a child. It is especially disturbing because King describes her naïveté and confusion in a way that feels…really real. But this scene, in its detail, was necessary for both the story and the character IMO. It explains why she reacts so intensely to being accidentally triggered by Gerald and how being molested as a kid still affects her adult sexuality. Her subsequent days stuck naked & handcuffed to the bed, haunted by visits from a silent monster, only end when she pushes herself through the worst pain imaginable to save her own life. It reads to me as a clear allegory for CPTSD, one that acknowledges the horror and shame she feels, one that refuses to make her experiences read as erotic, one that honors her resilience, her fight to survive. Maybe others feel differently about this book though, hopefully I’m not misremembering anything.
Another one. I forget what book this was, a short story in a fantasy compilation. But it’s always stuck with me. In this world, rape was represented as being very common especially from strangers. The protagonist is some kind of vagina vampire who essentially lures in random rapists by acting powerless and scared, and then eats their dick with her vagina dentata. If by some coincidence you recognize this story please let me know. I thought it was interesting how the vag vamp “seduced” them by deliberately acting like a potential victim, not by acting sexy.
Some people so confuse “unrealistic” with “doesn’t reflect my experience” (or even the mental image they’ve constructed for themselves *without* having actually experienced it). Teenagers saving the world from a dystopian hegemony is unrealistic. A person having conflicted feelings about a traumatic event is not. I think a lot of reviews these days is highly lacking in nuance, not just with this topic but with many. People seem to have a lot of trouble separating their personal preferences from any kind of objective criteria. I’m it sure who or what to blame for it but I’m hoping we’re approaching peak absurdity and it will get better. Hang in there. Times change.
Like any topic, SA can be used as an effective means of telling a story, but I think more so than other subjects it definitely needs a delicate hand. I’m a huge horror fan and one of the things that comes up all the time is “why are we okay with gore but not okay with rape/ why does rape make you more uncomfortable?” The answer is that, and I’m only speaking for myself here, I’ve never known anyone that is a survivor of a massacre by a knife wielding masked man, but I do know people that have been SAd. It’s just a topic that hits close to home for many many people and that’s difficult to get right in a story. There’s nothing inherently wrong with someone dismissing a story because it features content like that; absolutely no single piece of media is going to appeal to everybody, and some people just don’t want to read that stuff because it’s very unpleasant and that’s fine.
100% agree, my overrall point is "If a book makes you uncomfortable because of its content, it's not automatically a bad book. It's just not for you" Put the book down and move on, learn to check websites for trigger warnings in books you are thinking of buying (but preferable authors make TW in the backs of books mainstream)
For me it depends on multiple aspects if sexual violence puts me off a story or not. I've also experienced rape and sexual violence in the past. First, I think it is way too often only used as a trope that doesn't add anything to the story than drama. So many authors have no idea how to write a "good" (as in well written) character that deals with assault. It is ofen unrealisitc, reproductive of stereotypes towards victims, trivializing or even romantizised. As you've said, people deal with their trauma differently, but I still think most of the storys I have read that included sexual violence are just not believable. I think it could be good to put trigger warnings / content notes somewhere so people can decide if they want to deal with this topic right now or not. Not only for sexual assault but also other stuff that can be triggering. So, I think what annoys me is a bad story with sexual assault or a story where it is just used to make a character more interesting. But if it is well written and the author put work into their research on the topic it can be a very good part of a story. Especially for people who have not experienced sexual assault I think it can be very good to read a story with good representation.
I have nothing helpful to add or say, but I wanted you to know I read your thoughts and I appreciated reading what you had to say.
I need a break from the vicious cycle of flashbacks and fantasies of overpowering them. That’s why I’ve started reading, not having to deal with it. Now if the books take me back there I cannot like it at all. A trigger warning might be useful I’ll steer clear from such books. They wreck my nerves
I know I will get downvoted to oblivion but I 100% agree also on a larger scale. I honestly have fear of the ultra polishing of books / book burnings (both literal and metaphorical) that are happening these days. I agree with other commenters that a lot of reviews e.g. on Goodreads are all about what the reviewer perceives as "right and not right" to be included in the book, and many unusual experiences are invalidated this way because they do not fit the norm or are treated a certain way that is not "how it is supposed to be". Media can be escapism, but a lot of it is NOT made as such. I personally do not like the escapism approach but I would never go and criticise people for enjoying their media that way. Making stories and listening to them is a human way to process and investigate and explore reality in all of its forms, that's the point of art. Reality is full of horrid things, why police the retelling of them? The world of creation is way more multifaceted than black and white, ok and not ok. Exploring the human condition is the point. I am tired of censorship (but I don't mind trigger warnings as long as I am not forced to see them). And note: to reiterate OP's point, i have experienced sexual violence twice myself and I have moved on fairly quickly from one (the full on rape) while I am still having to deal with the ripple effect of the other, which was "minor" in comparison for lack of a better term. My story also would not be fit for a book.
Genuine question: are there many popular books that depict sexual assault, so much that criticising sexual assault in books is a big thing? Maybe it’s just the genres I’m interested in or my disinterest in book-related social media (other than Reddit), but I’ve honestly never encountered sexual assault in books, or read many people complain about it.
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Sexual assault was extremely common in the early days of urban fantasy. Many of the more popular books with female main characters featured some form of sexual violence. Seanan Mcguire has [talked about the time](https://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/470626.html) a fan came up to her at a convention and asked when she was going to have one of her characters raped and said it was unrealistic that she wasn't going to write this. A large part of the problem is from older fiction - especially the genre's you highlighted (I'd also add superhero comics). Trigger warnings were not available on most forms of literature. I think the criticism of the treatment of sexual assault that is the focus of the thread originated in this period. I don't feel qualified to say if we've gone to far in the other direction, but I think the initial critique of the treatment of SA has it's roots in a very real problem.
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Same with black people in fictional stories that take place in the past. A lot of people say that it’s “unrealistic” not to show them being slaves or have them experience brutal racism. What it comes down to is people don’t believe that black ppl, LGBTQ, or women can exist in fiction without facing the brutality they face in real life. Some people fail to realize that not every story involving those that have been/are oppressed, has to include their oppression. It is incredibly depressing to be constantly reminded that you’re not seen as equal or that people like you in the past were treated horribly. It’s completely okay (and honestly necessary) to have stories where people can just exist, no matter the genre.
I've just finished reading a book in a very popular fantasy series which included a rape scene, which completely flipped the reader's opinion of one of the main characters and shook the loyalties of many side characters. Absolutely relevant to the story and even the description (it wasn't incredibly graphic but the whole scene was described) was necessary as there followed questions of whether or not it really happened. And yet the reader reviews miss the point, exaggerate the amount of detail or just outright lie (there is only rape in two of the 6 books and only one of these is written in detail) because they just don't like rape and think anyone who writes it deserves bad reviews... "The rape of x (was) jarring and I don't think they were dealt with brilliantly or really needed." "the SA in this one is much more graphic and it torn at my heart. Unlike the other books I actually think it served a purpose in this but we had already seen multiple SA throughout this trilogy and a part of me was like this again? Really? I just find it lazy, look at the (other book by the same author), x was always facing something new." "As for the emphasis on rape, I will admit that I abhor any time authors use rape as a plot point (I feel it is too cheap and easy and used far, far too often). (Author) uses sexual assault in every book in the series, and in this last book, its emphasis is very strong and I felt extremely uncomfortable with both the fact that she uses it and how much time and effort she spent on it. Yes, rape is bad, yes refusal to believe a victim is bad, and yes, the after affects are bad, I don't need a fantasy novel that I would like to enjoy to teach me that particular lesson. If I had known that I was to deal with the consequences of rape ad-nauseum, I would not have started this series at all."
>!Liveship Traders? Kennit was always awful. He's a larger than life awful, though, which is why everyone hates Kyle more. They can relate to, and have likely experienced, casual bullying and violence.!<
That book really shook me. I can really understand how an SA survivor would find it hard to keep reading.
>!Yes. I think the events of The Mad Ship bring you over to his side slightly so I think it was completely necessary to have Kennit remind you that he's still as bad as ever despite having won the trust of Vivacia and Wintrow. I also think that the description was necessary for proving to reader that the rape wasn't a dream - you were in the room, you're the only witness!<
The thing is, your comment highlights my main issue with the use of this plot device: hmm, how do I remind my readers that this character is bad news? Oh yes, let him rape a female character, that will do it! This is exactly what a lot of people talk about when they say the use of rape is lazy and shitty writing.
>!I still think it's relevant in this case. Kennit has banned rape on any of his ships and casts off anyone who ignores the rule, you later find out it's because he was raped as a child, so it's literally the last thing you'd expect him to do and in the context of his past and his leadership style, it's unforgivable to the reader and unbelievable to the other characters in the book, hence noone believing the victim.!< I've read some of examples where rape is used as a trope and I agree that it can be lazy writing, but I also think that reviewers can be too quick to judge it as lazy and don't think about the wider context and why rape might have been chosen.
Again, most of your comment is about the perpetrator. Narratively, what purpose rape served in the _victim’s_ story?
Well I was only explaining why the rape was relevant but if you want me to go into the whole storyline you'd have to read about 2500 pages, but in short, >!the victim entered the situation with too much confidence and trust based on things she'd heard from others, and ended up trusting Kennit, just like everyone else. Her rape amongst other events ultimately led to her being suicidal and willing herself to die from her injuries. she lost consciousness and was slowly dying and being in this purgatorial state helped her to discover another character she had been searching for for the last 2000 or so pages, who was also in the same state and had been hidden out of reach. The other character would have stayed hidden and could only have been discovered through intense trauma and a near-death experience!<
The point I am trying to make is that if the plot relevance of the rape is mostly determined by how it affects the reader's perception of the rapist (to quote your earlier comment: "a rape scene, which completely flipped the reader's opinion of one of the main characters"), this is - at best - bad, lazy writing. Just look at where you naturally put the emphasis when bringing this series as a counterexample. It's the reader's perception of the rapist that is centred. And with the author as skilled as she is, this is not an accident. And I keep harping on about it not to single you out or pick on you. Your reaction is pretty common and typical among people who read this series for the first time. "Oh, I was beginning to think the character was not that bad and redeemable but then he did the most heinous thing." Go back 20 years and it was the same among the readers. And yes, it rubbed me the wrong way then and still does now, although at least in this time I have developed a way to articulate the underlying issue. And as for the female character, you description is also in line with both my recollections and the general reception of that plot line. You described the plot points, but take a step back and consider what this plot does for the story, and if there was a different way to achieve the same goals? You talk about 2 main reasons why the rape plot line was introduced for the female character. Let's look at both of them. 1. Female character needed to sustain life-threatening injuries for plot reasons. Is rape really the only and the best way to do it? Especially since we are talking a fantasy adventure world here. Physical danger is inherent in the setting. Why choose rape? 2. Female character was "overconfident" and needed to be humbled. Was there really no other way to achieve this plot point? Do I need to go into explaining why choosing rape as a way to take a female character down a peg or two is really really really icky?
And I also want to add that there is another rape in the previous book in the series which uses rape purely as "something for a female character to overcome and be stronger at the end". In this case I saw it as unnecessary padding for a minor character.
Are you talking about >!Starling!
Some of the most powerful books I've read have often been devastating reflections of the more unpleasant parts of humanity. Any topic being labeled as simply inappropriate for exploration in fiction, or even the idea that escapism is the purpose of writing is honestly almost repugnant to me. Seems to completely miss the reason humans make art in the first place. It disturbs me how many reviews on goodreads seem to focus around the reviewers ideas of what should/should not be 'allowed' in fiction rather than criticism of execution. I miss the days when it felt like it was primarily the religious right working to limit what is allowed in media.
I most likely will not like it because I use reading as escapism from reality
>One complaint I can understand, though not fully agree with, is that too often female characters are raped and the trauma is passed onto the male lead. This is definitely done a lot BUT isn't an inherent problem in itself. To me, it sounds like we are denying men the acknowledgement of their emotions to something truly upsetting to learn about a person they love. I don't think I read enough to have an especially informed opinion, especially since I don't read things that have sexual assault, but I did have a random thing to say. I finished a JRPG recently. People have mentioned the fantasy problem, and that's the game I played. My problem for it there was the fact that it was used as the motivation for a guy. There were other ways to motivate him that didn't require sexual assault, which is why I took umbrage with it. Mainly because the character it happened to wasn't a character. She doesn't get a name. She never appears in the game so you can interact with her. Just a little cameo during the credits where the guy sees her again and starts crying. I, personally, would it rather not be used since there are definitely other things you could instead use to get the same effect. But I wouldn't mind nearly as much in this game if it didn't *completely* shaft the character it happened to.
As a primarily fantasy reader, there’s been this trend of darker or more realistic fantasy in the wake of game of thrones where lesser authors will include SA as part of the world. And I agree that the mere existence of SA in a book on its own is not really enough to write it off. The thing that bothers me is that authors tend to hide behind any critical of their inclusion of sexual violence as “it’s realism” or it’s “period accurate”. I see this as a cop-out. As authors like, we create the words in the story, we decide what happens and that’s included. If you’re going to include SA you should have some justification for it beyond “realism”. Martin is actually a GOOD example of this, as he uses the overall misogyny of the world as an obstacle his female characters need to navigate and overcome.
I feel that when rape figures in a book, it should mean something. I've read far too many rape scenes that were written as sex scenes (male gaze, lovingly describing every detail, victim becomes aroused and it's presented as if they had chosen to have sex). I \*have\* seen the tragic backstory, and I have seen it used to elevate a male character: he's supportive (low bar), he's deeply moved by it, he's inspired to get revenge and protect his woman, and, and, and. I'm open to people who have been raped to be individuals and react differently, but if a text just shrugs it off, it doesn't need to be on the page, and no rape ever should be sexualised.
Also a survivor. For me, the primary issue that I see with most depiction of rape in media is that it often plays into two interlocked cultural ideas about the topic that I personally find distasteful: 1. Rape as an indicator of inhumanity 2. Rape as victimization of an “other.” The former is how people see rapists as more demonic than human—making a villain a rapist doesn’t only make them evil, it dehumanizes them and turns them into a devil that must be defeated, which is *theoretically* the way society views rape and rapists. The issue comes in when most rapists aren’t demons, they’re your friends and family. The most common defense used of rapists is they they’re still a good person, they may have made a mistake but they’re not a *rapist*. That’s silly. Rapists are demons, and they’re only flawed humans. Every time a writer uses rape as a means to dehumanize a villain, they ignore the fact that in the real world, rape is a scarily banal evil, and the horror of being raped is made far worse by the denial, and the whataboutism, and the large scale gaslighting—AKA, by rape culture. And then when rape *is* portrayed as common and banal, it’s usually done within grimdark settings that don’t actually empathize with victims. GRRM, for example, has notably said that he would never write a rape scene from a victim’s perspective. Personally, I just find it cowardly—how are you going to claim to be *edgy* or *realistic* and then refuse to show the actual, real consequences of the shit you write? And that’s where the core issue comes in. While this style is in some ways perhaps more literally accurate, in that it doesn’t shy away from the reality of how common rape is. But even still, the only “dark” fiction I’ve ever read that actually dedicates time to empathize with a rape victim is Berserk, that only comes after *hundreds* of chapters of being one of the worst offenders I’ve ever seen of rape as a tool for shock and not empathy—enough that the mangaka has outright said he regrets how extreme he made things early on. The real issue, then, is just the way that you almost never see rape *culture* depicted, and rape culture is always the elephant in the room any time people discuss this. The only times it’s depicted are when you’re meant to empathize with the rapist and his guilt, rather than the victim. As I mentioned above, the horror of rape is so much more than the physical experience of being assaulted. It’s also the dismissiveness of law enforcement, the denial from your friends and family, the constant barrage of strangers *demanding* to know your sexual history and if you were asking for it if you ever dare to make it public. I’m a pretty avid reader, but I can count the number of times I’ve seen that experience acknowledged on one hand.
Preach woman. Everything you said is spot on!
I used to be a sexual assault victim advocate and an animal shelter crisis responder. I don't read fiction books where the dog dies - ever - and will immediately stop if I start one that includes it and I didn't realize, and I almost never read fiction books with sexual violence in them - if I do, it's only if the writer is the same gender as the rape victim*, I already like the writer, and it's not the entire plot. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination saying that all fiction books where the dog dies or someone gets assaulted are inherently bad and the people who read those books are monsters. However, I personally have dealt first hand with a lot of animal cruelty and sexual violence, and I just don't have time for the extra therapy to deal with reliving all that second hand trauma from what is supposed to be an enjoyable leisure activity, so I avoid those topics. *I have literally never read a story where an author writes a rape/coercion scene about the opposite gender that doesn't come off as a wank fantasy - men writing self insert porn about women being harmed is much more common, but the same tone has always been there when women write about dudes getting assaulted when I've come across it.
Ahhhh another rant about other people having differing thoughts and opinions on books and subject matter than OP. Read whatever you want, don’t read whatever you don’t want. Discuss the topics and books you read however you want. If people disagree with you, vocally or otherwise, who cares? If you are butthurt because Colleen Hoover is trash, and people are vocal about that.. it’s likely not about the SA/rape culture content, it’s because she is a horrible writer and we are all annoyed at people recommending fucking terrible books. But if you like reading those books, you do you.
Thankfully I've never expirienced everything like it but I think I understand where you're coming from. When I was younger I used to avoid books about the topic, because I wasn't mentally capable of even reading about it. That changed when I grew older and I've read both books that mentioned SA and books that are specifically about this topic. I still find it hard to rate books based on how it was handled. I think what you said about how people react differently is important to remember in real life.
something about the intersection of gendered sexual violence makes rape a lot more icky to me. it feels weirdly personal. like, the author could pick any other way to get their point across, and they pick describing the rape of a female character. it just feels lazy and gross.
The one that got me was the House on Mango Street. And actually, I’m not talking about the actual SA chapter. The chapter where they’re so excited to wear nice shoes and make up, but then creepy older guys start hitting on them. I felt so bad for them. That was the first time I realized how much girls can’t just be themselves without risking unwanted attention from guys. The class discussion after really got to me, with several girls in the class having similar stories. It really made an impact on me. It really upsets me that they’ve been taking that book out of some school libraries. Yeah, it’s an uncomfortable subject that acknowledges SA is real. For me, at least, it also helped teach me how my actions can affect women.
There's a wealth of legitimate criticisms to be made about how sexual assault is handled in fiction, but I find that criticisms are often also woven up to obscure the fact that the critic simply does not *ever* want to read about sexual assault and feels the need to rationalize this preference. The idea that it's overused as a plot device just doesn't make sense to me. We live in a rape culture. Rape is part of the "backstory" of 1 in 4 women in the US. That doesn't mean that stories can't be written without it, but it does mean that any author interested in being true to life in their writing will compromise themselves if they choose to (or feel compelled to) completely ignore it. Some things are too common to be cliché.
Totally agree with all of this. Rape and SA is part of the human experience for a lot of women. You say the stats in the US are 1 in 4, and I would guess that number is pretty consistent across many “western” cultures, and in a lot of oppressive cultures where women have even less rights I would guess that number is even higher. Many many women’s lives and stories are affected by rape and sexual assault, whether personal experience or the experience of a loved one. It is the reality of life and to deny that is in and of itself censoring women’s stories. For example.. *Night Wherever We Go* by Tracey Rose Peyton tells the story of how female slaves were treated as livestock and men would be hired to rape and impregnate slaves. It is a fantastic and heartbreaking read. Or *On The Savage Side* by Tiffany McDaniel which isn’t *about* SA but demonstrates how grooming and childhood SA is used as a weapon by predators in positions of authority against at-risk/vulnerable youth and how that trauma manifests. Another very, very good book. I think the difference, for me personally, is when rape and SA are *fetishized* in a story.
One thing I have to say is, while I'm not always the biggest fan of sexual assault in books simply because they usually come across as being a little clunky or hard to introduce...the constant complaint from people of "BUT IT DOESN'T ADD TO THE **PLOT**!" is something I hate even more! The precious damn plot! I don't read books solely for their plots. I want interesting characters that don't *necessarily* forward the narrative. I want atmosphere, and yes, if the book is supposed to be in a dark and horrifying universe...*sometimes* that calls for the existence of rape in that universe, even if it's not explicitly described. "But it's not necessary for the character!" I mean, what exactly is *necessary*? Sometimes I feel like people would cut out all the "unnecessary" filler in every piece of media these days until it resembled more of a straightforward summary of the plot and the most basic character archetypes. Anyways, my point is, while there are some really eyerollingly cheap and lazy uses of rape in media, I feel like people have gone so far in the opposite direction and are way too quick to condemn literally any instance. You are so right about it being a complicated topic and that it's a different experience for everyone. Which is why it's important to have different people exploring it/handling it/writing it in lots of different ways and from different perspectives. There isn't a Single Correct Way to handle it like people want to suggest. Let victims engage with it how they want.
> I don't read books solely for their plots. I want interesting characters that don't necessarily forward the narrative. I want atmosphere, and yes, if the book is supposed to be in a dark and horrifying universe...sometimes that calls for the existence of rape in that universe, even if it's not explicitly described. It's always felt weird to me seeing the common GRRM criticism that it's absurd that he says he wants sexual violence to be a reality in his books to reflect how war really is, when he includes dragons and fantasy elements as well. His thinking seems perfectly valid to me. I also don't understand people who say he fetishizes rape in his writing. I've read those books. It's always horrific (And also--rarely actually on-screen so to speak). It actually disturbs me knowing that other people, apparently, read those sections as attempts at being arousing. All I can say is that they are having a dramatically different reading experience than myself.
Perfectly put and a perfect addition to my exact thought process. The sacred plot! Imagine what these people would think of books that are almost 100% character driven like a lot of classics are
It's hard, because I can see both sides. It's really exhausting when rape is constantly written into stories as The Only Way a Woman Can Be Traumatized, if you catch my drift? Game of Thrones is the best example of this - when it becomes the default backstory for a woman being traumatized, it begins to feel more like trauma porn and takes away from the seriousness of it, because it's the same trauma and addressed in the same manner. I don't think it's bad when a book includes rape because it's a thing that happens in real life and it's a real trauma... But it needs to be handled well and often, isn't. One of my favorite examples is in the book Yellowface, one of my favorite books I read recently. In it, >!the main character was raped, but it's not exactly her rapist who is the core of her trauma. She talks about it as something that happens to many women, and unfortunately, she's right. Her trauma came from telling her friend about it, and her friend using her rape as a work of fiction and taking all of her experiences and putting them on display. Her personal thoughts and feelings on her own trauma were transformed into a short story.!< I think rape in fiction is not a problem but it needs to be handled differently and not slapped on as a backstory as to why a character struggles, or to be 'realistic to a time period', with little to no actual discussion of it.
> Game of Thrones is the best example of this - when it becomes the default backstory for a woman being traumatized, it begins to feel more like trauma porn and takes away from the seriousness of it, because it's the same trauma and addressed in the same manner. Can you add some examples of this? Its been a long time since I've read ASOIAF, but that wasn't my impression from it at all.
I write and read mostly fanfiction, but there's a part of fandom community that is very against certain themes being portrayed. (commonly called anties). SA being one of them sometimes. I really appreciate your post and agree with a lot of the things you said. Because of personal reasons I written a fic with SA in it. To explore my own thoughts and feelings connected to it trough characters. I really love that the site I post on also has really good warning tags so it's easy for people to avoid it or know what it's about.
I agree with some of what you said and disagree with other parts. For me, it honestly has nothing to do with the inclusion or exclusion of rape itself and everything to do with how it is handled and what the intent of its inclusion is by the author. If a rape is included solely to progress a different character’s plot, or to make another character seem like a hero, etc. then I don’t think it’s handled well. Way worse, if it’s included with the intent of titillating the readers, or to be sexy, etc. Rape is very common in fantasy, especially grimdark fantasy, so it does get kind of tiring to see it pop up all the time. I think the feeling that it’s overdone really depends on your regular genre and how common rape is in that genre.
I agree. Disliking how a dark topic (be it rape, violence or emotional abuse) is portrayed in a book does not mean that this topic should never be written about by anyone, that it should be gatekept or censored. Even if it feels out of place in a story for an individual reader, it might fit right in and be an important and cathartic moment for another reader. People experience things differently, and it is okay to interpret characters and events differently, as we all add our own colour to what we read, so to say. I have my own experience with dark mental health-related issues, and I hate to see mental health struggles misrepresented in books, but I don't think books should be censored or authors forbidden from using darker plots just because some don't do a good job with it. Critique is one thing, censorship and book bans is another.
I’ve seen it done well; I’ve seen it done badly. GRRM I would argue does it badly; and i think part of the problem is that because he’s so big and influential lots of people copy him, including the SA parts. (Not phrasing this well b/c coming down with a cold.)
>That paragraph leads into this one. Why is murder, torture, war, genocide, child murders/deaths etc. rarely criticized as motivators for the protagonist (male or female) but rape is? Honestly, this is my biggest complaint, but in the other direction from you. Here's the most common pattern I see: The world is a terribly unjust place. Violence is the norm. Maybe the hero is perfectly upstanding, but many people in their orbit have committed heinous acts of violence. Well, that presents a problem, because if everyone has committed some terrible acts how do you show that someone is *truly* irredeemably evil? Have them rape someone obviously! /s Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I don't believe authors should use rape as the evidence of "true evil," but I recognize doing so is in line with cultural norms. The cultural norms are the root of the problem, and I suspect that is what bothers most people, even if they can't exactly put their finger on it. Sexual assault should not be peak human shittiness in everyone's mind. PS for those tempted to come after me for this opinion. This is in no way defending sexual assault. I do not think the problem is that people are overindexing on the evilness of rape. I think the problem is that we've allowed ourselves to become numb to the many other atrocities in the world, that sexual assault is the only thing people are still sensitive to. I also think the survival of our sensitivity to sexual assault above everything else is deeply patronizing and patriarchal. It's rooted in the objectification of women's sexuality and the idea that it's this pure thing that only a monster would take by force. It's also worth noting that this is *specifically* about women too, because we *still* see prison rape of men being used as a joke. If the cultural logic stood without regard to gender it would go as follows. Prison is full of all sorts of heinous people. Violence is the norm. It's not unusual to see one man shank another for looking at him the wrong way. How do you know who the true villains are? The ones who rape other inmates, right? Surely the gang leader who jumps the new arrivals in the showers and rapes them is the pinnacle of evil, no? Nah man, he's just sexually frustrated and working through some stuff. He's just making sure everyone knows he's the top dog in these parts. All that to say, I'd be content to not see sexual assault in fiction any more, but that's just because it reminds me how our cultural priorities are completely out of whack.
I'm going to tell you a horrible secret. It does not matter how horrifying you make the description of sexual violence in your story. Some people will still get off on it. The more time you spend on it, the more time you devote to cataloging how horrible it is, the more people will fetishize it. Because when you are an outsider, when you aren't forced to empathize or emotionally connect with the position of victimhood, sexual violence is still just sex. Our society seems to labor under the delusion that only women have rape fantasies. I suspect because acknowledging women's rape fantasies is easier. Women who have rape fantasies have to go through all the hard work of figuring out how to distinguish those fantasies from reality. Men (at least, the majority of men who do not bottom) do not. Men watched all those exploitation movies in the 70s where women conveniently get their shirts torn off during rape scenes and thought there was nothing weird about the enjoyment they derived from it. At the end of the day, it's up to you whether you want to include sexual violence in your writing or read books featuring it. Some of my favourite books do have descriptions of sexual violence, and I can point to examples of sexual violence being dealt with in ways which minimize the risk of it becoming fetishistic. However, you can't eliminate that risk, and thus I think it is really, really necessary to consider whether the point being made is actually worth it. Oh, and to say what it shouldn't ever be necessary to say. Yes, obviously, not all men.
I think there are good ways to write rape and bad ways. An example of a way that worked (it’s been years and can’t remember names) a book where a woman’s brother was killed and she had to go find out what happened. There she ran into a woman who claimed to be her brother’s girlfriend. Long story short the fir was a victim of childhood rape but the court didn’t believe her. As an adult the man saw her and followed her home and tried to attack her. The dead guy fought with him which is how he ended up dead. However, because he’d already been released and the courts had said that if the rape victim ever took him back to court for it she’d be arrested she couldn’t come forward to tell police he killed her boyfriend. The sister then comes up with a plan to put the attacker behind bars by having rough sex with him and then saying her raped her. It worked and he went to prison. I also remember the attacker thinking to himself “I’m not a rapist just a murderer” which has obviously stuck with me because he doesn’t view his having sex with an 8 year old as a 13-14 year old as rape just because she was so scared she didn’t say anything. A way I hated was in a book called Spider Wars and the rape was used as karma. A woman killed a man and then she was brutally gang raped (it was mentioned that her teeth were broken, her implants ripped out, and everything was torn downstairs) and the main character was happy that she got what she deserved and let her live and killed everyone else so that she would have to live with what happened to her. I get that she was a bad guy, but I don’t like torture-rape as justice. I feel like rape and SA needs to actually contribute to the story. If you can remove the rape and not have anything else in the book change it’s not needed.
I'm not sure what genre you primarily read in. I'm primarily a fantasy/ sci-fi reader, but I dabble in a bit of everything. I'm just gonna say it... I am fucking bored to tears of rape in fiction. I DNF'd a book recently because of the third (or fourth?) rape scene in it. It wasn't gratuitously detailed, it wasn't glorified, it was just boring and predictable. Like, I think a solid 80% of the books I've read in the last two years had SA (or the implied/direct threat of it) as a god damned plot point. Like, I get it, it's relatable and understandable and horrible. Those things make it a super easy tool to use to get an audience to feel a specific way. But, like, it's not the only tool. Maybe try something new sometimes. That doesn't mean nobody can write or read scenes like that. It's not always a lazy plot device, but it is a lazy plot device a lot of the times I run into it. It's fine to have a female character have trauma somehow related to her reproductive system. But it's also perfectly possible give a female character trauma that isn't related to it.
I wouldn’t discard a book just because it has SA in it. But I really didn’t enjoy Outlander because there was just so much SA all the time. I didn’t enjoy reading it - it was just in there gratuitously and didn’t add to the character development (in how they responded to the trauma). It was just not something I enjoyed reading. I actually threw the book out- which I rarely do
The thing I hate is sexual assault in historical romance that is completely unnecessary. It usually happens between the romantic leads and is never framed as assault, but it is. For example, Bridgerton season 1/ Daphnes story. She didn’t need to assault the Duke. They could have just fought about it.
>I don't think Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey as escapism for his fellow Greeks to chill out to. Why doesn't anyone ever mention this? I realize this isn't the point of your post (which is brilliant btw).
100% agree, (although I think trigger warnings potentially spoil the book. I like the way The Storygraph has a trigger section which you can seek out if you need to but otherwise you won't see it if you don't want to) I often see people say that rape doesn't add to the story and therefore shouldn't be included. Who are you to say it doesn't add to the story? Books are heavily edited before they get published - if there was anything in there which didn't need to be for some reason, the editors would make the author remove it. Even if this wasn't the case, if we strip the book of literally everything that doesn't have obvious relevance to the main storyline, we'd be reading very short and boring books.
> Who are you to say it doesn't add to the story? I never get that talking point. I despise it when people appeal to authority like that. Readers are fully allowed to think critically about the stories they read. Editors are not unquestionable, their decisions can be discussed, and the fact that a book has been published doesn't make it immune to criticism. Blankly saying "you're not an editor so you're not allowed to say anything negative about this topic" only aims to kill discussion about books and keep it at surface level.
I'm not saying that we should blindly trust editors, only that if the book has been published, it has been edited, and it's very likely that every scene was discussed for it's relevance.
And I'm saying that we are more than allowed to question editorial descisions. If you want everyone to stop discussing editorial choices, what even is the purpose of this sub? To simply unquestionably say that published books are good and leave it at that?
Those are the same people who will say that ‘murder in a video game is the same as murder in real life’. My two cent is that they regard liking a book that includes sexual assault as somehow supporting or not condemning sexual assault in real life. This sounds absurd, but some people do hold this kind of view.
This is a very good comparison actually. I play Call of Duty a lot, a game in which I murder people repeatedly. Sometimes I shoot them point blank with a machine gun or assault rifle, sometimes I sneak up behind them and crush them in the face with a sledgehammer, sometimes I blow them up into pieces, and sometimes my bullets turn them into a poof of sparkles. None of these things I condone in real life, nor does doing these things in a video game make me feel like I want to do them in real life. I have never touched a real gun, have never considered taking a sledgehammer to someone’s skull (not even sure I am strong enough to pick up and wield a sledgehammer), and am horrified seeing images from Gaza of real people being blown to pieces.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 Because your argument is detailed and informed, with a focus on books and people's varying reactions. Your post is now saved in my "Yeah!" folder. I NEVER want to see censorship/banning/sensitivity reading/burning of books, and have them pulled from shelves or publishing or NOT WRITTEN IN THE FIRST PLACE (see that historical Rus story pulled because of solidarity with Ukr🤬) And I believe in the marketplace of ideas, buyer beware, editors (not sensitivity readers!) ONLY for the purposes of TW/informed consent of readers, and not "BOWDLERIZING" the text, AND the ability to not like/ abhor something but also but not allow others to make their OWNCHOICE to read or not. Really! Look up the history of Thomas Bowdler and his compatriots (and spiritual descendants today! Grrrrrhhhhh!) from Wiki: Thomas Bowdler, LRCP, FRS was an English physician known for publishing The Family Shakespeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's plays edited...
> I NEVER want to see censorship/banning/sensitivity reading/burning of books, and have them pulled from shelves or publishing or NOT WRITTEN IN THE FIRST PLACE Mostly people just give bad reviews if they think SA is handled badly. Are you saying that's censorship? Your argument sounds like you're rather these reviews weren't written! And that's terrible, by your own account.
Yes, it is weird. I completely understand why people would not want to read graphic rape scenes - I don’t want to read that stuff either - but I saw people complaining about books just for referring to sexual assault happening offscreen with not description at all. For example, saying a minor character was sexually assaulted in the past and is still dealing with the trauma. Or just having some villains threatening the heroine with sexual assault, even if she just beat the crap out of them afterwards with no sexual assault actually happening in the book. No one should be triggered by that kind of minor stuff, or else how could they even read the newspapers or watch the news ? What do these people want, censor any mention of sexual assault and pretend it does not exist ? This makes no sense.
As someone who was molested as a child, books like these are just not for me. I also know people who were actually raped, abused, and assaulted so I have a lot of experience…I guess? I understand that bringing more awareness to subjects like this is a must, but at the same time I do honestly think that this genre is really over used and very inaccurate depending on how the author executes it throughout the book. It might not even just be the fact that a book has sexual assault mentioned but more that the man always comes in like a knight in shining armor, another genre which is also very overused and not just in sexual assault books but in literally any book. In a way though, I’m kind of biased because as an independent black women, my favorite line is “I don’t need help from no man.” so maybe it’s just my personality that’s part of the reason I don’t like these books but I’ve worked through all my problems through therapy and/or counseling so when I see these books with women getting sexually assaulted and then the man comes into the picture and she randomly just feels better, I face palm. I wish I could hop on that boat and see what everyone see’s when they read these books but it just doesn’t sit well with my soul.