Writing about rape · 12:28am Sep 12th, 2013
Tarol Hunt writes a webcomic called Goblins that I read. In the backstory of one character, Kin, a snakish mermaid, she was held captive by a villain and repeatedly tortured and raped.
Some real-life rape victims say Tarol makes light of rape by showing it as being less devastating than it really is. Last week a polite but insistent woman told him why she was upset that Kin recovered sufficiently to kiss a man after only four years of strips and some much-lesser but hard-to-compute (actually undefined, because of time-warping magic) amount of story time.
I’ve spent over a decade in various chatrooms, forums, and support sites for survivors of severe abuse and/or rape….and not one person in all the online places I’ve been to has ever indicated in any way that even a partial recovery like that, so soon, was possible either for themselves, or for any survivors they knew either.
Thunt finally revealed that that storyline is based on his mother's experience being held prisoner, raped, and tortured for 4 days when she was 16. He wasn't trivializing rape. He was working through his own issues, getting back at the torturers in a comic the way that real life didn't.
This can happen the opposite way, too, when people say you're making a big deal out of nothing. I started reading Infinite Jest, and chapter 2 is about a guy with a debilitating addiction to marijuana. I scoffed & put the book down because I've known people who've used a mind-boggling amount of marijuana, and I never saw signs of addiction in any of them, let alone a life-destroying, heroin-junky-level addiction. It sounded like something from a Just Say No campaign. But it turns out the author really did struggle like that with marijuana addiction.
How do you write about rape, death, war, racism, addiction, or any emotionally-charged topic that other people have a lot more experience with than you do, without offending or turning away some of them?
The conclusion I'm drawing from this is, You don't. You offend people. If you aren't offending anyone, you're probably doing it wrong. People are quick to assume that their experience with something dramatic is universal, but it usually isn't.
If someone tells you you're dealing with a traumatic experience wrong, they might be right, or that assertion might just be their way of dealing with their own traumatic experience.
How do you tell the difference? I don't know.
Can you write about traumatic issues in a way that helps some people deal with them, without hurting other people who can't deal with them that way? I don't know. I hope it isn't all zero-sum.
I wrote a story called "Twenty Minutes" about war, rape, marriage, and parenthood, four things I have no experience with. I worry that it's unrealistic; the interaction at the end of chapter 1 happens very quickly for someone so traumatized. Still, even if I knew for sure that it was unrealistic, I think would leave the story as-is, because I think the larger picture is more important.
"When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself."
Thus spake Oscar Wilde. But, eh, what did he know, right?
For me, personally, it's a matter of knowing... something about it.
Basically, if I deal with a traumatic thing in a book or fic, I want to be sure I'm showing it in a way that will make sense to someone, whether that person is me, someone I've talked to, or someone whose account of it I've learned from research. It won't be correct for everyone, it might not even seem correct to most people, but I'll know that I'm coming from someplace real.
I, personally, would feel that I was being disrespectful if I made up a reaction to trauma, and someone called me on it, and I was talking out of my ass. But that's just me.
it depends on what your dealing with since each case is different, but there isn't a way for everything, just a way for some things
Eakin wrote about rape not too long ago, in a story titled "No Good Answers." It drew some pretty heated comments. It was also about the moral implications of society's response to any horrid crime, and the ramifications of society's response.
Eakin's story and the outspoken response it generated convinced me to never, ever write about rape.
I have, however, written about war and, tangentially, the trauma it causes all involved. So far I haven't gotten any backlash from it. I think if you treat a subject with enough humility and respect, never implying that you are all-knowing or have all the answers, you'll be fine.
Still not writing about rape, though.
It's cool to see another Goblins reader on here - I don't think the series gets nearly as much attention as it deserves (probably because the early strips are kinda lame both art and humour wise, and turn people off before it starts getting good). Thunt seems to attract criticisms on the various rape aspects of his comic, but I've never seen him react in any less than perfectly courteous manner. He seems like a really cool guy.
Regarding the issue proper, it has to do with actor-observer bias and the fundamental attribution error (basically meaning the different ways we judge ourselves versus others and underestimating the effects of situational effects compared to personality traits). When we try to do empathy, we try to put ourselves in the other's position, but this isn't actually much good in a lot of cases because people arrive at situations with different history and personal baggage. This is why there is no definitive way to handle sensitive emotional topics.
To answer the specific question on how to address a charged issue without turning away some people, I'd agree that you can't. If people have a significantly different personal history and value system, not to mention particular emotional triggers, you won't be able to connect with them and risk them interpreting your failure at communication as an insult to the seriousness of the issue. To answer how to determine how you know whether you're helping or hurting someone particular someone, I'm going to have to again answer that I don't think you can for certain. Dropping another undergraduate psychology term, the Dunning–Kruger effect makes it very hard for someone not an expert in whatever, to realize exactly how effective they are at it. As very few people are experts at working through deeply troubling experiences with others, I'd say it's uncommon for anyone to really know whether what they say will be all that helpful to anyone.
In summary, you do the best you can by drawing on your own experiences. Some people will have a similar enough mind to yours to gain some benefit from what you're doing, and others won't. If what you're trying to do is work through your own issues, I'd say do whatever you think will help (within reason, of course), and nuts to anyone who think you're dealing badly or not being properly respectful of the severity of the issue as it effects others (again, within reason).
We just aren't wired to really understand others.
I have a past-tense intersection with this and a future-tense one too.
In "Traveling Tutor and the Librarian" I had a college+ age party where one of the stallions tries to 'gimmick' Twilight's drink with the intent of doing things not G or PG rated (he fails, of course). I wrote it a bit too casually, and the audience reaction was just one step short of "Hang him" and "Hang the author too". Then to compound my error, I wrote a dream sequence where Luna imposes a little extrajudicial punishment, which *also* got a violent reaction (my poor email). First part here, second part here. There's only a few sentences changed between the first version and now, but the impact is much more aligned with the rest of the story.
The future-tense version I'm fighting with now is "Diplomacy by Other Means" where I have a griffon who is abusing an earth pony servant, and it goes horribly down from there. (darker than I normally go) The only way I'm writing it is in past -tense without direct witnesses, but I'm going to be tiptoeing through the minefield.
1343449 Also, what she said. Don't go making stuff up at random, and don't try to make up "logical" responses to emotional issues.
1343486 I agree with that last part. What can traumatize someone could make someone else laugh their ass off.
Interesting, I just recently had a conversation with a friend that personally knew someone who had been raped, and that said rape victim was able to recover in four years.
I find that in this, the use of subtext and allegory is incredibly valuable. It's what I'm doing to approach the subject myself.
1343449 This is precisely why I have, while planning out the above-mentioned fiction, looked to some of my more worldly friends for their knowledge on the subject of rape.
1343486 We are many eyes staring at the same object, yet we cannot come to an agreement.
She's a Yuan-Ti: half humanoid, half (chinese) dragon.
I'm rereading this sentence, and I'm realizing it's bothering me. Not because of any accusations against Thunt, but because of the implication that no one can have sufficiently recovered in a shortish period of time to do something lightly sexual. The problem is, what would someone who holds this opinion say to someone who did, in fact, make such a recovery? All I can think of is some variation on that their rape wasn't as bad, or that their recovery isn't healthy, both of which could be pretty damaging.
I'm going back to my first point in my first post; don't make assumptions about other people's situations.
I'm also reminded of a blog post user LunaUsesCaps made a while back, talking about suicide and a fic of hers. Worth reading as an example of personal expression and misinterpretation from others.
Of course, the funny thing is, rape victims react to being raped in extremely varied ways. A lot of the more broken people then whine endlessly when people "don't take it seriously enough", despite the fact that, you know, not all rape victims end up shutins who can't deal with people for the rest of their lives. I mean, let's face it, are mentally healthy people really the sort of people who are going to dwell on that experience the rest of their lives? Of course not.
Indeed, there is actually some reasonable statistical evidence to suggest that rape victims actually become MORE sexually active and promiscuious after being raped on average. Of course, a lot of people don't like reality.
Frankly, here's the correct solution:
You write about it anyway. The people who whine about how you're belittling their trauma are all broken people anyway, so you don't really need to worry about it. Their opinions are worthless.
The truth is attempting to offend no one is lame, boring, and dishonest. If you aren't offending at least some people, chances are you're not doing anything interesting.
People get offended by Harry Potter and My Little Pony for crying out loud for promoting witchcraft and sissifying men respectively.
Write about what you want to write about. If you want to write about a disabled character, go right ahead. Some people will be offended by it, but whatever. The same goes for rape, incest, abuse, sex, violence, war, anything - anything you say or do will get complained about, even if it isn't terribly serious. Magic will get people whine at you for being anti-Christian. Any mention of any religion will result in unhappiness, and if no one is religious, then people will claim you're anti-religious anyway.
And let's face it - if you get offended by a random fanfic about ponies, you probably don't have any worth as a human being in the first place.
I gave Rainbow Dash Gets an Abortion a place on my recommended fics wall, and it has more downvotes than upvotes.
Some people recover more quickly than others?
It's almost as if...people are different, you know?
No. Madness, madness...
Well there are 3 groups of "writing rape" as I see it: Dramatizations of, or paralleling, real events, which cannot be done "wrong" as long as it is accurate; fictional narrative based on real life examples, but not specific to any one incident, which is tricky because realism does not always equate to believability; and finally there is entirely fictional versions of rape that may be influenced by common knowledge on the subject but does not reference reality beyond that, rather is a depiction purely from the author's imagination and is related to by the characters involved based on the characterizations and the author's story/plot needs, I don't even need to explain how easy this is to fuck up.
All I will say is that if someone is writing in the 2nd or 3rd group please try to have an actual point to including rape in your writings. It's too easy a crutch to make characters suffer and incite audience reaction in stories.
Good examples are the manga Berserk where the protagonist as a child is sold for a night by his mercenary adoptive father to a comrade, and later this affects his feelings and experiences including how he relates to specific events in the plot, and the film Chronicles of RIddick where it is one of the factors used to show the genesis of the character Jack and the moral that intentions and outcomes can fail to match up spectacularly.
Bad examples include the manga Hellsing where a similar scene to the one in Berserk occurs late in the story for the sole purpose of making the protagonist seem less omnipotent and more sympathetic, and the 2013 film Evil Dead where the protagonist is raped during possession for no reason other than to make it more shocking to the audience.
(No I do not include rape fetish gratification because that is just porn with a fetish, it's no more writing about rape than vore is writing about cannibalism.)
1343474
I think it's also the context. Meta context. As in ponyfic. A more mature source would probably have less of a response for the same subject matter.
Okay... this has to be a troll comment. No one who genuinely listened to (and cared about) rape survivors would make such a ridiculously offensive generalization.
Let me clarify something first: If you are a survivor of rape and abuse, you have every right to feel however you feel about it, and you can and SHOULD react in any way that makes you feel better (that doesn't involve harming others). If your response is to never set foot outside again, that doesn't mean you "need to toughen up." And it doesn't mean you're less valid than another victim who copes by resolving to not let it define their lives forever. Are we clear on this? Good.
But the person who wrote that comment? Leaving aside the fact that it is a preposterous generalization, it is also saying to those who don't let it define their lives: "Your method of coping isn't valid, because you haven't suffered enough for me to deem you as psychologically healthy, so please cry more so I can use you as a data point."
1344243
It isn't a troll comment. I mean, the person who made the comment is a horrible person, but they aren't trolling - they genuinely believe it.
And I will note that, in actuality, if you are paranoid about ever setting foot outside again, that is in fact unhealthy and you DO need to toughen up. But it obviously isn't that easy for such people. Or perhaps it is, and they simply cannot believe it to be so.
1343912
THANK YOU. It's depressing how many people DO NOT GET that very simple fact. They get so highly strung they stop separating fiction and fantasy from reality. Where if you write something about anything they have strong feelings on, it /must/ have some sort of real-life parallel rather than just being words on a page, no matter what you say.
Part of the reason I wrote about rape was cathartic. I don't think the person who sexually assaulted me understood entirely what they were doing: They were hammered, I was hammered, and they have a bucket of psych issues that are probably never going to get entirely worked out. (And, of course, I am a bucket of issues myself.)
I wondered for a while why Sonatina was entirely from Octavia's perspective, and I think it's because I was trying to get into the mindset of someone who simply didn't understand the significance of what they were doing. I intended her to come off childish and petty, but possible to sympathize with in theory, and the mixed responses I've gotten about her (everything from "kill this Octavia" to "god, she's a total wreck") makes me think I hit close to the mark.
I don't know about helping others, because I write for myself first and can't really figure out how to do otherwise, but I also generally assume people reading my work know the difference between reality and fantasy.
If I started a story telling myself, "This is going to be socially responsible literature," it'd be over by the time I finished thinking it. I have way too many anxiety filters about my behavior in public and speech in public and applying that sort of thing to my story is what would happen, and I don't even think I could actually write something with that restriction in my head.
1344896
If you were both hammered, then didn't you rape them, too?
1345597
I wasn't initiating, and it wasn't a guy.
1345606
Does it matter?
1345653
I can't tell if you're asking whether it matters that it wasn't a guy or that I wasn't initiating.
Yes, offend people. Toe the line between offending people and being offensive, if you dare!
Reading from a forum of people who have been utterly devastated by their experiences can be incredibly moving. Still, I found myself more impressed not by those who spoke of a life in shambles but by those who had both survived and rebuilt.
Even more impressive are those who dared to find patterns in comparing their experiences to others, and made models based on their thoughts about human sexuality.
Meanwhile, 6 years later...
I'm acutely frustrated that you summarised my thoughts on this that I've been trying to get at over about four different blogs on writing about hard stuff. Sometimes you just...go for it. Other times you recognise that maybe, as a writer, you're working through some shit. Writing fiction may not be as obvious a way to cope with stuff as writing down thoughts and feelings in a journal, but I think there's a lot of value to be placed in working through stuff with smoke and mirrors in place.
Or in trying to figure it out as an outside observer. I don't know how many family members I meet with on the regular during a crisis incident that are utterly... lost as to their partner/child/parent's feelings and why they feel that way. Sometimes explorations of the darker sides of psychology also forces us to think about it and build an empathy for those going through it. Or trying to find a way to grasp... something. Some stability? I don't know.
Despite my knowledge of how to help individuals work through trauma, it's... still very hard to talk about. But I figured I'd drop a comment on here, on a 6 year old blog post, just to say thanks for finding a way to say what I think I've been trying to get at.
5112383 Thanks! Re. necroposting: My attitude is, If something were no longer worth replying to after 6 years, it probably wasn't worth writing in the first place.