For context, I am a 23 year old woman who was raped a few years ago after a man took me to his home while I was in an drunken unconscious state. I awoke just towards the end and immediately left and walked home, trying to comprehend if that had really just happened. It did and I have since recovered mentally and emotionally so please, your heartfelt sorry’s, while appreciated, are not necessary 🙂
So, I’m sick of people labelling books as bad only because it includes sexual assault in the narrative. Especially when said people go on a rant about why they think the book is bad because of it. They say how it doesn’t describe the act of assault accurately to real life. They say it shouldn’t be included at all because media is supposed to be escapism. They say it’s overdone.
Rape is different for every single victim. There are SO MANY variables and types. Some victims black out. Some are hyper aware. And some even orgasm. The only commonality to occur is, by the end, we are riddled with disgust. Hell, not even that. Some victims don’t realize what it was until months later. But to say a book did a rape scene “inaccurately” because the woman didn’t resist/did resist, didn’t cry/did cry, did orgasm/didn’t orgasm etc. drives me mad because it perpetuates the notion that rape is so black and white. It’s not.
The aftermath. This is another grey area that is constantly made out to be black and white. Not every victim has the same road to recovery. Some will, sadly, carry it for their whole lives. Some really do move on from it after a couple of months. And to echo that one comment from before, some might not even know it happened for a long time and as such don’t start their recovery for a long time. Both me and someone I know were victims and we had different roads to recovery. I recovered a lot faster than she did. Yet, if my story were to be put into a book, it’d be labelled “inaccurate”.
People say rape towards characters in a story needs to become a constant reflection on them to “at least service their character”. Again, it is different for every victim. Some do remain skittish, such as refusing to ever be alone with a man again, whereas others are the opposite. Within a year of my assault, I was comfortable to go for a drive with a man at night, so long as he wasn’t a total stranger (but I’d rarely do the same with a female stranger either). Something we women have to constantly shout from the rooftops is how common sexual assault and that most men would be shocked to learn the woman next to them is potentially among the 1 in 4. Yet so many people pretend that a female character in a novel must be physically, noticeably, effected to the point everyone can see what has happened. That is not the reality for many victims. I have met women, and even one man, who I knew for years. I wouldn’t have ever thought they had been assaulted until they told me. They remained so unchanged that some of their own family didn’t even know. Stop demanding for an “accurate” portrayal to look like a lone survivor soldier having just returned from WW2
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. Yes, I agree we need more of the female victims perspective but can we stop making it out that books, especially ones that are 50+ years old, are bad just because it showed the male leads story over the victims?
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? All of them are horribly sad and evil things. Why should only one get a layer of cultural censorship? Especially seeing as rape is probably less commonly written about than most of those equally horrible things and when it is, it’s in less detail.
Escapism. If you consume media for escapism, then that is fair enough. But that’s on YOU to pick out said escapist material. Storytelling media has been around since ancient times and has always dealt with horrible situations that plague human society. I don’t think Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey as escapism for his fellow Greeks to chill out to. He wrote them as direct reflections of the evil that came with war. Media today has the right to continue writing stories as direct reflections upon our society, which means writing about very dark topics. P.S. I am all for trigger warnings in the backs of books just as we put age ratings on the front of movie covers so people know what to look for/what they’re getting into
Lastly, I hate when people say that, despite all these reasons, it should still not be written about unless super sensitively and specifically (and only by women) because it may be traumatizing for victims to read. While this is true for some, it is not true for all. I, a victim, can enjoy books that feature it. Again, people, some of which probably aren’t even victims themselves but trying to be white knights, are putting every victim into one tiny general box, which is almost as harmful in its ignorance as the men who deny rape cultures existence.
And one small side note. I do not even agree that it is overdone. Out all of the tragic backstories I see a character be given, rape is among the very few that I see depicted. Either I’m dodging bullets or people are just picking up trash books from indie published authors (no hate on them but they are more likely to be badly written). And for those I have come across, it was set in a time/place where I’d expect such a traumatic moment to be apart of the characters life. But that ties into me not reading books for escapism.
So PLEASE, can we stop with painting this subject with such broad black and white strokes and admonishing writers for including it? The only criticism I see worth giving is if it happens to be glorified or made a joke of. And I have never once in my life of reading come across a book that did such a thing and if it “did” it was through the eyes of a first person psychotic narrator like in Clockwork Orange, which is as much a form of commentary as providing the same story in third person.
Odds are, the book is not bad. It’s just not for you. Put it down and move on. I don’t like high fantasy so when I read a book that reveals a talking dragon lives in the cave to grant wishes, I don’t review bomb it or hate on it online. I put it down cos I don’t care for books with wish granting talking dragons.
P.S. I am 100% all for books having trigger warnings to help the more sensitive people avoid books with upsetting material. I’d rather that then they waste their money on a book they won’t want to read and proceed to review bomb it or hate on it in online forums
by PallasPenguina