Because the word ‘rape’ tends to bring out the fanatics, permission to quote anything from this piece is only granted provided you quote this paragraph as well: The discussion of ‘rape’ in literature is not intended to trivialize or use for sensationalism the word or the act. Do not quote any parts of this without quoting the link to the entire post.
I put the above because there have several gratuitous, publicity seeking attacks on the lives and careers of people because of it. Self-elected judges, juries and executioners, much in the vein of race-fail etc.
Rape, gentlefolk, is a reality. It happens. It always has. Greek mythology is full of it. Type in the words ‘the rape of’ into Wikipedia. The first four entries will take you articles about classic art, sculpture, literature, even poetry. And yes you can tell me the rape of the Sabine women wasn’t rape-rape. And I will tell you ‘Shut up Whoopi.’ Maybe in the later sanitized versions, but the real event would have been rape as we know it. That’s gone hand in hand with warfare and raiding and enslavement since humans left the bit of Africa they evolved in, and before, and since. It was as much part of the vast brutal East African slave trade (into Arabia and Turkey) as it was of the westward trade into the Americas.
There is nothing new about the use of rape as a device in stories and plot-lines, poetry, and art and indeed even opera. It’s usually a serious matter, although the classical Greeks seemed to think it was Okay if it was one of the gods or nobles who used the behavior of their gods as an excuse. I beg the ‘rape shouldn’t be in literature’ squad to immediately start a petition to get rid of that beggar Homer, and stop him writing forthwith. And while they’re at it they can definitely get rid of Arthurian legend too, because what happened in Tintagel cannot be described as anything but rape.
Yet it’s become the latest ’cause célèbre’ because the threat of rape was used as a plot device in a Lara Croft game. I’ll spare you the links because I’m not giving them the traffic. The feminists (only some of them only, apparently. The others have just been very quiet) are up in arms. How can such a feminist role model be treated thus? What what do you mean the gamer wants to protect her from this? You sexist pig. She doesn’t need your protection. How dare you imply women need to be protected because we cannot protect ourselves. Oh it’s only for men gamers, And much more…
Your mileage may vary… but I don’t care who you are, or even what sex you are. But if someone is going to try and rape you, I’ll do my best to help you. Even if you out-weigh and outfight and out-shoot me. And that’s not belittling. That’s solidarity. And yeah, belt up. There is no-one (in the real world, not the Incredible Hulk, or even the Credible Hulk) who cannot be taken down by larger numbers and people with more cunning, strength, skill or straight luck. Sorry that doesn’t gel with your feminist wish-fulfillment, but it might just stop you getting raped. And as any martial artist will tell you, women on average, no matter how skilled, are no match for men in a fight. Yes, sometimes they’ll win. But a gambler who always put money on the guy would win all too often. Men are just, courtesy of testosterone, bigger, faster and more aggressive. I’m a small guy, so I understand this all too well (and I’ve been rock-climbing and diving and doing silly berserk sports for a long time. I’m tougher than most as a result. I still would lose, just because of size, a lot of the time). A feminist myth that encourages women to believe they can outfight a possible rapist… is not doing them a favor, or ’empowering’ them. It’s making them into a possible victim. By all means learn to shoot (I would encourage every woman to be able to do this, because sometimes that can equal the score. Not all the time.), but learn to run and learn to seek protection with others. Because, if faced with real trouble, that’s what this very un-female guy would do. And I have a nose that’s been broken nine times, learning this (Ok, the last time was my over affectionate dog.).
Me, I think any game or book or movie or artwork or poem that encourages kids (or adults) to protect others probably deserves a gold star. Because this is not video-world, and there are no real superheroes.
Rape is real. And Lara Croft isn’t. It should be in books. It’s in mine – in PYRAMID SCHEME, where the Greek ‘heroes’ (AKA raiding brigands and pirates if you were on the other side) plan to rape the male and female characters, because that’s what happened to captives. And the Ancient Greeks weren’t homophobic. It’s not something trivial, or ‘old’. It’s more likely to stop it happening, than to make happen because of giving someone the idea. South Africa is the rape capital of the world (a situation made hugely worse by a culture in which a survey found – and no I am not joking – 30% of women say ‘no’, when they mean ‘yes’). It’s also not the most literate spot on earth, particularly among the sector of society doing the bulk of the rapine. Books do not put the idea in their heads. Go attack BDSM instead. I know it’s ‘cool’ and really popular with all those buyers of 50 Shades of Grey, and it may be consentual but the idea of tying someone up for sex is lot closer to encouraging someone to have someone else at their mercy, than ‘chivalry’ is.
Mad Genius Club 
30 responses to “The rape of…”
Shh! No Logic!
I’m taking another damn swing at windmills, aren’t I? Yeah, well, if it stops one possible victim thinking they’re Lara Croft, and infuriates the 10 000… well, it was worth it.
If I might nit-pick a little, I do wish you’d say “some feminists.” Feminism has never been, nor will ever be a monolithic entity. There is no pope of feminism saying what the official word is.
I am a self-identified feminist and I am not up in arms. You have implied that I am or should be. Not gonna happen unless I know the *exact* context the rape threat is coming in and, even then, I’ll weigh the pros and cons first.
Treating feminism, women, men, or any other group as an essentialized, monolithic entity is (in my view) as un-feminist as it gets.
Egads. No, Dave is going with the loudest group of “feminists.” That is not what you believe in? Great. Then WHAT do you believe in?
Feminism is the end result of singling out women for particular restitution and enshrining as a minority (even though we’re the majority. Never mind that.) Feminism is the insane belief women are somehow deserving of special treatment (across all classes, educational levels and intelligences) because their grandmothers were “oppressed” (everyone is oppressed in some way. Sad result of having a body and living in the real world. The other is a Marxist fairytale.)
You’ll say “but feminism isn’t that. We just believe in equal rights.” Really? Then why single out those who have vaginas. I believe in equal rights too. I believe in equality before the law (the other is a fairytale too) life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for EVERYONE.
If that’s what you believe in, why call yourself “feminist”? What is there about having a vagina that makes you special? Oh, wait. Calling yourself a believer in individual rights is so no politically correct. I see.
Hey, Dave, I hold the windmill and you tilt!
I’m disinclined to pile on someone who obviously has good intentions but I wonder if you’ve thought about why, even though opinions are not monolithic, the various and varied definitions of feminism seem to equal whatever the feminist deems “all good things.”
I don’t dispute for a moment that there was good reason to advocate for the vote and compelling reason to advocate for equality under the law, full adulthood and ownership of property in one’s own right. It even made sense to call it feminism, sort of. (Despite the post-suffrage women’s “movement” being founded by bored women privileged to have servants (the “wife” all women are supposed to have.))
But “all good things” applied to the concept of “feminine” is pretty awful even if everyone has a different idea about what those things are.
Switch it around to “masculine” and check.
Unfortunately, words don’t always mean what we think they should mean. They get redefined by consensus usage. People in software can insist all day long that crackers break into computers for criminal purposes while hackers do so only for the challenge; but in the common usage of the term, hackers are the criminals, not the innocent snoops.
You may think you get to define feminism, but the culture as a whole has a much louder voice than you do — and so do militant feminists who largely drive that definition.
That seems a fair enough request. I’ll edit in the word ‘some’. However, I have yet to hear a bunch of ‘feminists’ having a good non-unitary bicker. Telling the extremists of feminism that they’re not speaking for you, and moreover they’re making idiots of themselves and you. This comment reminds me of the constant chorus of ‘all Muslims are not the same.’ To which my same reply “Then show me. YOU go and tell the extremists they’re being Dickheads, and they’re giving all Muslims a bad name.” It never happens, and I’ll bet you’re not going to have the courage to go to websites of various feminist gamer-critics and tell them this either. Which means, de facto, you all carry the reputation of your most extremist members, because they’re the ones every one is aware of. It’s like a bunch of students living in house – the one who keeps her bed made gets terribly upset when people say she lives in a pig sty.
Here’s the thing – as several others have already said, it’s the most extreme self-described feminists that create the perception of what feminism is. If the argument isn’t happening out in public, dirty linen and all, the loudest noisemakers drive public perception.
This is why I refuse to describe myself as a feminist. I’m a humanist. I don’t care what the wrapping is, whether you’ve got an innie or an outie, or any of that. I care what kind of person you are.
I’ve almost for certain not been employed because I’m female (geologist, remote positions where none of the facilities are set up for either/or and there are no females on site), and I’ve been told point blank that company X did not send women to mine Y (It was close to a war zone and could have gone hot any time). That’s life. It’s unreasonable to expect someone to replumb everything for one person, and I wouldn’t want to work for a company that would send women to a location where they’re going to be seen as “prime playtime” – where that mine was, the men would likely only get killed if the mine was overrun. The women would be raped and possibly worse first. Not to mention if men were killed in a situation like that the media response would have been “tragic, but they knew the risks”. Women, you’d have heard the screams halfway to Jupiter. But the loudest segment of feminism would claim that both situations were sexism.
Call me clueless, but I had to google Lara Croft to find out who the heck she is.
The feminazis that refuse to admit that there are any physical differences between men and women drive me nuts.
ask me to back equal work for equal pay and I am there. Ask to back something that is wish-fulfillment, and could get people hurt, I’m not
I escaped an assault by a larger, stronger perpetrator ONLY because an even bigger friend of mine intervened, and the perp didn’t want to get caught in a fight in public. As it was, bad dude’s friends caught me alone and threw me down a couple flights of stairs a few weeks later. And yes, I fought back against the dude – it didn’t stop him. The other time I was assaulted, it was by a group of guys. They “only” wanted to humiliate me, but it could have gotten very bad very quickly. I would probably have been able to hurt a few of them, but not stop them.
I’ve used it twice in stories. Once, the main character was mentally and physically prepared for (she was trying to assassinate the guy) and she still almost got overpowered. In the second story, greater numbers won out. Ladies (and guys), it happens, especially in rough parts of history/ the world/ the galaxy. Don’t let “I should have tried harder” eat into you.
(nod) It’s not that it can’t happen. There are 20% of women who would kick the ass of 50% of men, and give the next 30% a hard time. Luck will sometimes play a hand. But it’s not something to gamble with.
I’m a fan of all of the above: learn to fight, learn to shoot, learn to run, learn to be aware, and learn how to choose the best tactic. That last one requires learning humility as well, because without humility you overestimate your chances.
Yep. It kind of requires getting licked enough to realize that its going to happen sometimes.
And then there are those of us who do not have the physical ability to choose the option, “Run”…
(dryly) Then walk, or move your wheelchair or crawl away if possible, or use some intelligence and try and avoid the place and situation in first place. Or take backup. Yes, you should have the right to go where you like, do and wear what you like. But ‘should’ and ‘do in practice’ are not the same. I’m not calling faults or playing blame game. If I chose to jump stark naked into a subzero sea, and a 20 foot swell to swim a mile into Kergulen… I’d be in my ‘rights’, I’d also die. There are city places I will not go, things I will not do, because I am not that stupid (and I am pretty stupid). It’s not her fault for wearing miniskirt into a Pakistani village, but who ever you blame and prosecute after, you can’t undo what would happen. Fight if you have to, but fight with intelligence and deliberate attempt to disable as much as possible or kill your attacker. And I’d try for the latter because ‘sufficient’ force is hard to judge, but dead rapists don’t do much raping.
“Fight if you have to, but fight with intelligence and deliberate attempt to disable as much as possible or kill your attacker. And I’d try for the latter because ‘sufficient’ force is hard to judge, but dead rapists don’t do much raping.”
I wholeheartedly endorse that statement. (My, that sounded almost like a politician)
you should worry about yourself 🙂
On the writing perspective, I freely admit that I don’t shy away from the prospect, the threat, or the actual assault – if it’s required for the plot. I try not to go into loving detail of all the unpleasantness, though.
There’s a difference between confronting something unpleasant and lingering over it.
Yeah there are those who seem to be enjoying it :-(. Sometimes as a way of showing evil the perp is, and sometimes… eh.
That is one of the problems with the topic. The people who have absolutely no tolerance for rape and other really atrocious things (incest, child abuse of various forms, etc.) see this as a black and white thing. For them it is. But it isn’t for everyone and that’s the place where most of them seem to be missing the point.
Some people are going to have issues with this because they can’t handle it. If they’re smart they’ll avoid books with stuff they can’t handle. (And don’t tell me they can’t. All they have to do is talk so someone who has read it and ask, “does it have “X” in it?” If it does then they put it down and walk away.) If it’s an issue they can handle even though they think it’s bad, then they should read the piece and evaluate if they think the author’s handling things in a responsible manner. If they don’t read the piece then they really can’t comment. If they do read the piece and think the author handled it well or badly then they should probably do a sane and level-headed review for it on some book sites so that other people can be better informed on the subject.
Shh! No Logic!!
Jean – absolutely.
Among the things I write is alternate history set in the 15th century. I’d strongly recommend that anyone who has serious issues with any of the practices we find abhorrent now but were normal then avoid those books. (Okay, only one published so far)
Among other things, it was the norm to slaughter the men, rape the women and either kill or enslave them, and often the same for the children. If the conquerers belonged to a culture where that was the norm, the men would be raped first too. My protagonist has started being a bit more restrained with his armies (Vlad the Impaler. Yes, I know), largely because a trail of devastated, burning towns isn’t something you want when you’re trying to move an army without your enemy realizing what you’re up to. When he discovers it makes the people he conquers very eager to help him, he keeps the tactic going – but when he has reason to slaughter everything and let his armies indulge before they kill the women, he doesn’t hesitate.
For me, writing Vlad this way is keeping as close to the nature of the era as I can without totally grossing out modern readers (I also take care not to go into too much detail about just how much carnage a battle of that era caused, although I do reference it. Readers running to the bathroom to expel their last meal aren’t going to buy more of my books.). I don’t want to whitewash anything.
I’m not going to tell anyone they have to look at things my way. Aside from anything else, it would be boring.
Actually, I thought you went just a little far with Vlad’s humanitarian concerns in the book, to be truly believable. Not for enough for a problem with the suspension of disbelief, and I’m sure more palatable for the majority of your readers, but a little out of character for the history of the times. (Then again that is possibly why Dracula is still revered to this day in his homeland, regardless of how the rest of the world views him).
The problem of course is that most people view everything through the lens of their experiences today. People see the destruction of Persian cities, down to tearing them down to the last stone, poisoning the wells, and sowing the ground with salt. They have trouble looking past that to see how incredibly open-minded and liberal Mongol society was. The fact that they accepted people of all races and creeds, and were the only society at that time, to my knowledge, that accepted teachers of all religions (and even allowed these to not only teach openly, but to talk to and attempt to convert the king. As long as they didn’t try to suppress any other religion, they were welcome in the Mongol camp). But this passes unnoticed beside the pyramids of skulls.
Note to self: consume more coffee before posting.
The comment above did not come out at all like it was supposed to. I was NOT critisizing you, what I meant to do was compliment you on walking the fine line between historical accuracy (meaning common, accepted practice for the time) and acceptability to modern readers.
Oh, and my mind wanders, especially when I’m tired, so I wandered off into an example involving the Mongols, I was not in any way suggesting that Vlad was related to the Mongols. (Although considering the location, this is possible, now that I think about it)
I figured out what you were getting at, and yes, my Vlad is a bit more modern than he would have been so that he is acceptable to modern readers.
He probably was related to the mongols, too. His great-great who founded the principality of Wallachia was named Basarab and came from the north and east of Wallachia – mostly mongol territory at the time.
I gotta say that I do object to the Seventies/Eighties feminist trope of having a female hero’s journey start with her being raped. Admittedly, a lot of male heroes in that era started their journey by having their village and family killed also, but not to the extent that women protagonists did.
It was so universal to have a rape be the first episode in a story, that there were several saga books where the woman was traveling the continent continually getting raped and enslaved, or traveling from planet to planet getting raped and enslaved. Granted, the rapists usually ended up dead at some point, but it did get to be ridiculous. (Especially with the ones where the woman had all-powerful power, but still was getting raped every five minutes, and then going somewhere else where it could happen again. And yes, Jo Clayton’s Aleytys series, I’m looking at you.)
At this point, I suppose most of the younger kids don’t remember this. They’re more likely to find that a female hero’s journey starts with her being turned into a vampire or a werewolf. And in a world where everybody is supposed to be having sex with strangers every five minutes (if you believe the media), I suppose that rape is something that will seem terribly harsh to mention.
But of course, a lot of those Seventies feminist fantasy writers had just lived through the Sixties and “free love.” Candid accounts of the time are pretty clear that “free love” included a lot of rape by supposedly progressive men of idealistically stupid women, some of whom can describe what happened but still not accept that they were victims of crimes. I think a lot of that unhappiness and anger (for things that happened to writers’ friends or writers themselves) came out in feminist fantasy; secretly, they were cautionary tales.
There were also a good few gritty “war story” fantasies (Grail War, I’m looking at you) where the male protagonists would be always raping and sacking, and then they’d maybe angst afterward, before resuming raping and sacking their way across the land. I tried to stay away from that, for fairly obvious reasons. I think most of these authors were non-genre people, or at least I don’t remember their names.
But yeah, other than complaining that the literary trope was getting overused, I don’t recall anyone calling back then for the banning of rape as a plot device. Other than anime fans who’d discovered the horrible implications of tentacles, that is. (And that was more of a Nineties complaint.)
RIchard Monaco was the Grail War guy.
Which brings me to the other trope I could do without. Male characters becoming rapists by accident, or because they think it’s a dream, or because the aliens capture them and make them have sex. (Okay, the last one was a fanfiction trope of the Seventies/Eighties.) No doubt there are some tragic cases in life, but in Seventies fantasy it is usually just creepy. Of course, a lot of this grew out of the “accidental incest” trope in King Arthur and Charlemagne legends, but sheesh.
I am glad to missed the fanfic of the 70-80’s then. (I was reading, yes, but no fanfic made it to SA.) I can’t honestly think of reading one of those, although I did see it as a defence in a rape case relatively recently.
Complain it’s over-used, and I’m willing to look at the figures :-). Seriously, if it was in more than 1:10 I’d agree. And without saying you’re wrong, that is what is so often wrong with ‘oh it’s so cliche, overused etc.’ is that it is like picking up the first typo… after a while all you’re doing is looking for typos. Once a trope gets noticed by a reader (especially editors, IMO), even if it is actually below the level of statistical probability, it’s oh no not another case of mistaken identity. The 25 books between this and the last are invisible. Just the annoying bits get remembered 🙂