This discussion is open for anyone to contribute, any sexual orientation, gender, or experience with the subject matter itself. I ask we all be mindful of each other’s experiences as this is a very sensitive subject matter. A gentle reminder that two people can go through the exact same experience and feel extraordinarily different about it.
I’m both a writer and SA survivor myself. I’ve found myself feeling very conflicted about how to handle the depiction of SA in literature and am just interested in hearing other people’s thoughts. What’s your opinion on what’s tasteful and distasteful? Ethical and unethical? What’s perhaps too gratuitous and descriptive and what accurately captures the experience when it’s so emotionally complicated to experience? Is it better to talk about it in the abstract or directly? Is it possible to be, maybe, too honest about it and expose people with no framework to comprehend the material to a very raw and vulnurable experience? These answers are likely best considered on a case-by-case basis, but in the broad abstract or in citing specific examples I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts.
**Some thoughts I’ve had on some specific examples:**
*The Handmaid’s Tale* is arguably a gold standard when it comes to describing the experience of sexual assault in a way that’s accessible to I imagine most people. It uses symbolic imagery more or less exclusively, focusing on mostly the brain’s ability to depersonalize from the experience as an act of self preservation. When it comes to descriptions that are both tasteful and safe while still accurate to the experience, I’d say this is it. I think this is the best choice for the novel itself and is appropriate to the story it’s in, however, it is worth pointing out that it does whitewash a lot of the more inscrutable elements of experiencing sexual assault. The unflattering elements that would be alienating to anyone who hasn’t experienced sexual assault in real life. This novel isn’t really written with this goal in mind, but in a sense that does make it perhaps alienating to those looking to feel seen by the story they’re reading.
*Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid* is the polar opposite in many regards to *The Handmaid’s Tale* in it’s depiction of sexual assault. It’s so unapologetically honest and raw about the ugly vulnerability and, I suppose, mind prison surviving sexual assault can put you in and makes no attempt of trying to be accessible to people who don’t understand exactly the experience it’s describing. The novel focuses way more on the psychological aftermath of the assault rather than the event itself, which is frankly (in my experience) where the actual torture really starts for a victim. As a survivor it feels very cathartic, very real, however the amount of times I’ve seen the discussion online focus on people’s utter befuddlement to the constant, almost grotesque depiction of profound psychosexual chaos leads me to believe it’s uniquely hostile to people who aren’t already farmiliar with where it’s coming from. That the protagonist is perpetually trapped in this purgatory of sexual hunger and repulsion simultaneously is extremely hard to understand from an outside perspective, and i understand why. That discussion of the novel itself seems perpetually locked in the question “what’s with the constant obsession with nipples?” And the only answer really possible to give is, “sexual abuse just makes you a little weird sometimes, I can’t explain it either but it’s a mood,” is, you know, worth pointing out. (There’s a bit more too it than that but without going into spoilers that’s basically the gist.)
*Boy Parts by Eliza Clark* isn’t focused on sexual abuse specifically, but contains sexual abuse content that is . . . Extremely challenging. Like *Juniper and Thorn* is on the “extremely honest” perspective of things but in a manner I wouldn’t blame someone for feeling straddles the line of ethics. I don’t think it crosses that ethical boundary even though it dares to tip toe boldly close to it, but I’m willing to be told why I might be wrong on that. The novel itself is all about how blury the line between victim and abuser can be, which is why I love it so much, but I could see how someone could feel it’s validating some extremely toxic ideas, even though I don’t think it is. It suffers from the same problem media like *Gone Girl* and *American History X* do where I’ve seen people with less than stellar media literacy skills get the entirely opposite impression the work was intending to convey. I’ve never seen anyone justify their toxic assumptions about sexual abuse victims using *Boy Parts*, but it’s not that pervasive of a piece of literature and I can see the tell tale signs I’ve noticed in challenging media that is in it. It sucks, but it does beg the question if some types of narratives when explored through fiction need to be idiot-proofed. Is it the responsibility of the author to ensure elements of their work can’t be misconstrued when tackling subject matter that could cause harm to others, or is that entirely too much responsibility to put on the author and an unrealistic expectation? I don’t know the answer, personally.
by ThisDudeisNotWell
9 Comments
An example i want to bring up is the liveship traders by robin hobb. It shows the effects of someone who was raped in child hood and gives that pain to someone else. It also deals with a character who isn’t believed when she tells she has been raped. In later books in the thirteen book series it is mentioned again. Not in a big plot point but in a “this still has an effect on her even if she has learned to live with the trauma”.
Is it a perfect representation? No, no depiction is because every situation, person en consequences are different. What it does is clear a bar that i find very important. That bar is very simple yet gets failed all the time: its a horrible thing so it has a horrible impact. To many times the heroine (this happens more often to female protagonists) gets raped and she shrugs it off like a scraped knee. Even worse is were it’s allmost fetishized.
I think SA (wich is more than just rape) can and should be used in fiction but to many authors don’t think about the impact it has on someone and treat it like just another plot device. That causes it to feel cheap and is the equivalent of some regular human getting hit by a train and just shrugging it off.
*Rape: A Love Story* by Joyce Carol Oates might interest you.
Fade to black or mentioning it in dialogue. Any sort of description at all makes me ill/gets stuck in my head.
I think description is necessary if it’s going to effect the character throughout the book or have huge ramifications. Even if the graphic descriptions are left out but the characters thoughts are still going on while it’s happening or something, it needs to affect the reader in my opinion.
In Great Circle >! A character gets raped by her husband and it ends up being the thing that forces her to leave the already bad relationship. Part of the rape is him forcibly removing her diaphragm which leads to get being pregnant. She actually gets raped repeatedly for a few weeks after the initial one but only the first one is described because that’s all that’s needed to get the point across, the rest are mentioned in passing to get across that it wasn’t a one-off!< a lot of people criticise this book for descriptions of sex and sexual assault but I can’t think of a single instance which wasn’t relevant to the story later on.
I write noncon and dubcon books covering things like dark mafia, trafficking, sex assault and – worse. I also read a lot of dark or noir fantasy. I like books that are very specific with trigger warnings. Especially in the harem books so there’s no surprise when it comes to different types of relationships. But also part of my stories include the aftermath. Trying to pinpoint triggers and getting help – based on my own experiences.
Sometimes going into the details of the trauma is necessary to uncover just how much damage it does to the character and what they have to do to overcome that damage. Especially in revenge stories.
I think it’s important for taboo kinks as well. What might be my kink, may be someone else’s hard limits and a hard pass.
Anything involving kids is a pass for me. Mention vague bits of what happened but I don’t need the imagery in my head. But a lot of these stories – characters come away from childhood trauma too.
I think it’s fine if there’s a TW and/or if it’s written in a very respectful way
I think a lot of the people being “triggered” are really just uncomfortable, which is sensible when talking about SA. There is nothing wrong with saying you don’t want to read about it, but you’re not triggered.
I think it’s a very complicated issue and there’s no one right way to go about it.
I’ve read My Dark Vanessa, which is a book about grooming and features several very detailed SA scenes. The first one I remember very vividly. It’s awful. But it is meant to be so. The MC is gaslit into believing that it was consensual, and even to a certain extent gaslights herself, and of course you, the reader, want to scream that no, it wasn’t okay! It was monstrous! Scenes like that, and the whole book, illustrate how easily groomers can manipulate children, by pushing small boundaries, then bigger ones, then slightly bigger ones, always shifting the goalposts so that to say no to X feels unreasonable when you just said yes to Y. And after that, the ways in which the SA-er prevents the victim from seeking help by making them doubt the validity of their own experience (>!in one line, he mockingly asks her if she’s going to tell the police she was ‘raped into screaming orgasm’!<). We, of course, can flip back the pages and see it written there plain as day, but memories and emotions aren’t so concrete, especially when you’re young.
I think SA should be handled with extreme care, and it often is not. most of the time, it’s added for bogus ‘character development’ on a female character (like Sansa in GOT S8, who is glad she isn’t a ‘little bird’ anymore… gross) or glossed over almost entirely. But it can be handled well.
I haven’t thought about rape and sexual assault in novels a lot (and tend not to seek out books with those themes), but felt like I should mention The Kite Runner as an example. I read it when I was pretty young so my memory of the details of it is a little shaky.
But as a young boy, the protagonist, Amir, witnesses (but does not intervene in) the rape of Hassan, a boy who is a close family friend, early in the book and loathes himself for the remainder of it. Amir can’t deal with being around Hassan due to his guilt and takes additional unforgivable actions to push him away.
I won’t spoil more, but Amir is the first protagonist I ever really loathed.
And I do think The Kite Runner is worth a read for adults interested in these themes.