Writing about rape, again · 10:38pm Jan 25th, 2014
Oh, boy. I don't know if I should post this or not. It's a response to a comment by mlpfyi on that persistently troublesome story "All the Pretty Pony Princesses", and it's too long to post there, so I'm going to direct her here. Please, everybody, be nice.
Hello. I'm writing to ask why you feel you need to include the topic of rape in this story. Was it because you as a writer are ready to treat this painful subject with the great compassion, sensitivity, and gravity that it deserves, or are you simply using it as a plot device in order to quickly generate sympathy and drama? Please be honest with yourself and seek the true answer to that question. Keep in mind that nearly 1 out of every 5 women has been sexually assaulted, and these women may be among your readers.
“But rape doesn’t only happen to women, and it’s not the only thing that happens to women. You can lose your job, your house, your car, your kid, your best friend, your business, your family, your faith, your following, your office. If men are reaching for the worst thing that can happen to women and choosing rape out of a deficit of imagination, then that’s having a character be sexually assaulted for shock value. If you want to tell a story that’s about the worst thing that happened to a specific woman character, you should be thinking very specifically about her and less about your and the audience’s default answer to a question.”
-Brit Marling
>>3814096
I appreciate your politeness in speaking about a very emotional topic, though I doubt my answer will satisfy you. I don’t know how personally painful the issue of rape is to you. Possibly you should stop reading this now. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m not here to help you. The issue of whether society should tell authors what to write or how to write it is painful to me, and I’m here to say my piece about that. It took me eight hours to write this, and the only reason I wrote it was that I didn’t want you to feel that I was ignoring you. So please take that as a sign of respect and concern.
1. Rape is a real thing and should be treated like other real things
Was it because you as a writer are ready to treat this painful subject with the great compassion, sensitivity, and gravity that it deserves, or are you simply using it as a plot device in order to quickly generate sympathy and drama?
Short answer: I didn’t “treat” rape. I used it as a plot device. I needed some triggering event drastic enough to cause the mayor to finally intervene.
We can usually only focus on one thing in a short story. Everything else leads up to or points to that one thing. If you’ve read my blog posts, you’ll know that this story bothers me because I don’t know what its purpose is, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what that one thing is. It even has a warning up front advising you not to read it! The story came to me and demanded to be written, but I still haven’t figured out what it’s about. But I know it’s not rape.
Stories are about characters who go through horrible things. We write about people giving up on their dreams, suffering from prejudice, losing loved ones, dying, and, yes, being raped. And often those horrible things are merely there in order to talk about something else. Because that’s how stories work.
Take, for instance, orphans. Harry Potter was orphaned in the back-story of that series. Was that treated compassionately in the story? Yes, I think so. The author worked Harry’s feelings about it into the story many times. Okay, now how about Batman? We all know that Batman watched his parents being murdered. Was that treated well? Some people would say it was used compassionately, to help give Batman a vulnerable side. Some people would say it was a cheap writing trick, playing the orphan card to win sympathy and excuse his bitterness and self-isolation. In the Little Orphan Annie comics, the orphan card is played to win sympathy for Annie, and as a plot device to pair up a plucky, sympathetic, lower-class American with a jaded, wealthy capitalist pig industrialist; if she misses her parents, we never hear about it. In The Pirates of Penzance, the orphan card is lampshaded and played for laughs, as characters repeatedly claim to be orphans to take advantage of the pirates’ soft-heartedness.
But I’m pretty sure neither D.C. Comics, Tribune Media, nor any acting group staging The Pirates of Penzance, have gotten letters from orphans complaining about treating orphans without compassion.
But rape doesn’t only happen to women, and it’s not the only thing that happens to women. You can lose your job, your house, your car, your kid, your best friend, your business, your family, your faith, your following, your office. If men are reaching for the worst thing that can happen to women and choosing rape out of a deficit of imagination, then that’s having a character be sexually assaulted for shock value. If you want to tell a story that’s about the worst thing that happened to a specific woman character, you should be thinking very specifically about her and less about your and the audience’s default answer to a question.
If you believe that, then you should accept that rape can be a story element, just as losing your job, your house, your kid, etc., can. If every problem as traumatic and as important as rape were treated as sacrosanct, writers would be unable to write anything at all.
2. Telling people not to talk about rape is bad, not good
I have a story about racism that one reader said struck close to home for him. I have a story that takes place in a war, and it upset one person who'd been through a war, to the point that he still sometimes has nightmares about it. This present story has a character who's mentally unstable, and I've gotten private messages from people who have their own experiences with or fears about that, who found it very upsetting. But none of those people said I shouldn't have written what I did because it hurt them.
And yet, it’s common for writers who write about rape to get letters complaining about it, no matter how they write about it.
Why is that? Is it because being orphaned, or an oppressed minority, or going through a war, or mental illness, is so much less traumatic than being raped? I don’t think so.
One reason, I think, is that our reaction to rape is screwed up. An orphan can admit in public to being an orphan, and it isn’t nearly as awkward as for someone to admit to having been raped. An orphan isn’t tempted to blame themselves, or feel “tainted”.
Being a bastard, not an orphan but an unacknowledged child, in the Middle Ages, was probably similar to being raped. It was considered shameful to be a bastard. The problem wasn’t that people talked carelessly about being a bastard. The problem was that society had social roles defined by inheritance, and weird religious beliefs that sin could be inherited and that your virtue determined your social role. Bastards were conceived in sin, and both that and their loss of their inheritance and social standing proved their lack of virtue. “A bastard” meant “a child born out of wedlock,” and also, “inferior, adulterated [notice the root of that word!], untrustworthy”. See King Lear.
The solution to problems like that is to get people to think about these beliefs, and about real bastards. The way society does this is gradually, accidentally, by telling stories that have some of these elements in them and are not false.
There have been many societies, and there still are some, in which marriage and slavery were hard to distinguish from institutionalized rape. In the most extreme form, let’s say among Alexander the Great’s army or the Mongol horde, forcible rape was the usual way of beginning a marriage. I’ve often wondered how a society functioned with so much trauma. Few people recorded how those women dealt with it, but I suspect that its being out in the open, rather than taboo, helped them.
But what is happening instead is that there is a movement to suppress writing about rape. I Googled these phrases:
“Writing about mental illness”:
- Sue Sanders wrote about her husband’s bipolar disorder. She received vitriolic letters from readers—not because they wanted her to treat the subject more sensitively, but because they thought her husband was a jerk and should man up and stop being bipolar.
- Time to Change asks people to blog about their experience with mental illness and discrimination.
- Rob Delaney explains why he wrote about his mental illness, and why it’s important for other people to do so.
“Writing about orphans”:
- Joe Bunting advises writers to have their main characters be orphans, because it’s an easy way to make their character arc more dramatic.
- An interview with the author of Orphan Train
- Sick Heroes asks why so many characters in 19th-century novels were orphans, and suggests they symbolically represented social problems.
- Several books note that Charles Dickens loved writing about orphans.
“Writing about rape”:
- Jim Hines sets out rules for when and how it’s acceptable to use rape in a story. A good piece, BTW, which I’ve seen somewhere else before.
- Rules for journalists: How to write about rape incidents in a way that shapes social consciousness about rape properly
- “How to write about rape prevention without sounding like an asshole” castigates people who tried to suggest steps women could take to reduce the chance of being raped, because they’re “blaming the victim.” It actually says,“DON'T write "how not to get raped" columns in the first place.”
Some of the articles about other sensitive topics practically begged writers to write about them. None of them implied that people should avoid writing about them. But all of the articles on writing about rape were cautions not to write about rape except in certain circumstances or certain ways.
If you'd had a specific objection to something I'd written, I'd consider it. But you made a vague, accusatory comment, not pointing out anything I did wrong, but asking me to justify why rape should be in this story. The message that sends isn't "treat rape respectfully", it's "shut up about rape." And that only makes the problem worse.
3. You are being used
The other reason why people ask us not to talk about rape is political. They want to mold people’s perceptions in ways that will encourage a particular approach to dealing with rape in a particular way.
This is not an inherently bad thing. The civil rights movement was political. People politicized rape because they believe they can reduce it by changing how people think about it.
But political movements require unity, and this has resulted in the adoption of a specific set of concerns and a standard socially-accepted rape narrative. The development of this standard narrative has been bound up with practical political concerns. For instance, it's allied more with the Democrats than the Republicans, and so you can't advocate making it easier for women to get concealed carry permits, because that's part of the Republican party's agenda. It attracts many people who are focused on female oppression, who mustn't be alienated by contradicting, or even neglecting, their narratives.
The politicization of the issue has gone so far that I question whether much of the original concern about rape remains. Rape has many causes, and yet mentioning possible causes of rape beyond just-so stories about power relationships is forbidden. Pointing out that legalizing prostitution decreases rape is forbidden. Suggesting that statutory rape isn't quite the same as tying someone up and dragging them behind the bushes is forbidden. Questioning whether rape should really have the same penalty as murder is forbidden. Asking why women who falsely accuse men of rape are almost never prosecuted, and get slaps on the wrist if they're convicted, is forbidden. Suggesting ways to reduce the chances of being raped is forbidden. Exploring why some women want to have sex in a way that "isn't their fault" is forbidden. We are told to do nothing except take the one approach that doesn't work, which is to repeatedly tell men not to rape women.
The only conclusion I can draw is that the people leading the voices demanding rape be treated with "respect" don't care about rape at all.
Instead of seeing so many people accuse authors of exploiting rape in fiction, I’d like to see people accuse bloggers of exploiting rape to push a political agenda. Anyone who writes, “DON'T write ‘how not to get raped’ columns in the first place” is not primarily concerned about actual rapes, or they wouldn’t get angry at people for trying to prevent them. They are more concerned about the social attitude toward rape, and how they can use that. There are many Republican politicians who rave against abortion, and are secretly grateful for it. And there are strong parallels with the successful movement to forbid whites from writing about race, which succeeded in its political aim of making public discussion of race in America completely one-sided. So please forgive my cynicism.
I have only two personal encounters with rape. One is that a women I dated was assaulted in a subway station, apparently in an attempted rape. She had a knife. She used it. Advising her to carry that knife was forbidden by the people who claim to be concerned about rape, but it worked better than all the righteous indignation in the world.
The other is that, when I was in high school, my social studies class went to a courtroom to watch a rape trial. A young woman was babysitting. After putting the kids to sleep, she invited her boyfriend over. He left before the parents returned. She claimed he had raped her. There was no material evidence and no witnesses. She didn't call the police. The kids never woke up. The prosecution's main argument was that the defendant spoke using street slang. He was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. But we're not supposed to talk about that, because considering how many men's lives are destroyed by false accusations could turn a proper, politically-motivating rant into a discussion, and we know those don't do any good.
(And maybe I should mention the time one of my girlfriends asked me to pretend to rape her. I did. She had multiple spastic, whole-body orgasms. It was the best sex she ever had. I found it deeply disturbing. But I'm not supposed to talk about it, because then I'm claiming women are "asking for it".)
4. A story is not an essay
Another problem with asking a writer to treat a topic respectfully will be difficult to understand if you don’t write yourself: I don't know how to tell the difference between treating something with sensitivity and using it as a plot device. I never ask myself, "What plot device can I throw in here to generate drama?" I imagine things that could happen, and some of those things grab my imagination more than others. I can't tell whether that's because they're thematically important, or because my subconscious wants cheap entertainment. A story is not an essay.
5. Asking a writer to treat a topic respectfully is a category error
I can’t treat a topic with "compassion, sensitivity, and gravity". A topic doesn’t have feelings. I only know how to treat characters with compassion, sensitivity, and gravity, and I believe I did that. This sounds flippant, but understanding this distinction is core to understanding the difference between stories and essays. Stories can only approach truth through the eyes of characters. They don’t deal with topics so much as show characters dealing with topics.
A writer’s responsibility is to avoid falseness
I take my responsibility as an author seriously, as seriously as anyone I know. I take that responsibility to be to present the world, or at least a tiny part of it, as it is, without lies. I can’t wrap this story up nicely with a quick bout of psychotherapy, or say that Twilight’s innocent and pure worldview makes her happier and wiser than us, or have a deus ex machina solve the problem. I would think very hard before writing a story about rape in which someone brought it on themselves, or enjoyed being raped, or recovered from it quickly.
Even so, I may have done that. Rape is a central plot point in “Twenty Minutes”. There’s a point where the mare who’s recently been raped hugs a strange stallion out of desperation. I wondered for a long time before publishing it whether that wasn’t too unrealistic, whether she would have been able to do that in those circumstances. I finally concluded that a), I didn’t and couldn’t know, b) nobody else could know either, and c), I would publish the story anyway, because rape was not the central thematic point, not the issue the main character was dealing with, so I could tolerate some improbability. And this story is more about mental illness, but my depiction of it isn't realistic. That's the main thing that bothers me about this story.
Writing is making compromises. Everything is two steps forward, one step back. I’m doing the best I can. If you think I’ve written something false, show me. But don’t write me a vague letter asking if I treated a topic with respect because I mentioned it in a story. That cripples writers, and stories. If I’d written a story that used rape as a source of humor, a comment criticizing that would be called for. But when you ask me to justify myself for having implied in a story that there had been a rape, without having made that the focus of the story, you are just hardening me against your concerns.
That... was a really interesting read. Don't really have much else to say, though
Top lol, Bad. This is Doge Days, I just changed the name.
She wrote the same thing on one of my stories as well. Responding to it would've been too awkward for me, so I'm glad you did it here.
I hate awkward situations with a passion.
There's a recent fascinating Alan Moore interview that goes into this very subject in great detail. Not sure how much I agree with him, but he makes his case on a lot of things that he's been criticised for very openly.
http://slovobooks.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/last-alan-moore-interview/
I'm really glad you wrote this, usually when I happen across a blog or some such with someone whining about how rape is portrayed it's absurdly inaccurate.
I've seen a lot of positions on it, that "all men are pigs who only want to rape", that woman somehow "ask" for it, the list of terrible finger pointing and such goes on. And it's nice to finally see someone that isn't categorizing one group as rapists or likely to be raped.
I mean really people? All men want rape? Woman ask for it?
While I respect your views as a reasonable opinion about the subject of rape in a meta sense, they have nothing to do with why I personally abhor it in most (and especially Pony) fiction.
Most people who complain about rape in fiction make a bunch of arguments and excuses for why.
I prefer to be honest: it fucking bothers me.
No political bullshit. It just fucking bothers me. I am squeamish about it. I don't want to read about rape. Rape is one of a few subjects or actions that tends to generate instant empathy unless you have none.
To me reading about rape is like reading about someone eating shit, or getting their testicles or breasts crushed in a hydraulic press, or episode 5 of Attack on Titan.
I accept that rape happens in real life. It hurts me emotionally when I hear about it. I come to read fiction as escapism. Especially Pony fiction. I like to imagine that in Equestria, rape does not exist and that makes me overjoyed.
Obviously it depends how it is presented. If a character was raped 7 years ago and is recovered, or if rape is implied as a danger or concern a character has, it is less disturbing. I mean who isn't concerned about bad things happening to them or hasn't had something tragic happen?
But if it happens in the story, especially to a main character, especially with any level of description, it is fucking awful and I do not want to read about it. And if you write about it I will avoid your story. Rape in stories is one of the main reasons I have angst aversion and tend to spoil everything I read or watch.
Rarely have I been prouder of the fact that I follow someone. No idea why I didn't do it sooner.
1758207 I totally understand that. The strange thing is that I write a lot of stories that are darker than anything I would want to read.
Okay, let's go ahead and get a disclaimer out of the way.
I've been raped.
It wasn't violent, it wasn't something I called rape at the time, and nobody ever answered for it. I knew the person who did it. I trusted them. I still do, but not when they drink, because they make very bad decisions when they drink. Like not, y'know, asking for explicit consent.
In fiction, I'm with you. Fiction's one thing. Fiction is the never-was and couldn't-be. Fiction's about the rawest shreds of human experience, massaged and strung and woven into a fabric. I firmly believe nothing should be forbidden in fiction. Nothing.
Journalism, and material intended for potential victims or past victims -- that I can't follow as much. But the points are made eloquently even if I cannot quite agree.
Having said those things, I want to ask you a question I've found to be instructive: What's the last thing you did to avoid getting raped?
For me it was making sure I was in a well-lit area of the parking lot the other night when I made a grocery run by myself (a very, very rare occurrence, that). I've taken different routes on a regular basis, called friends, taken cabs I couldn't afford, etc. And then it happened anyway, with a friend of mine.
Ask this question in a room of men and women and you get a real grasp of one huge part of the problem with men writing rape. It's not that they can't, but the rules for men about rape are radically different than the rules for women about rape. It takes more work because it isn't something they get taught about, constantly, by society, to think about.
Think I got into a bit of rambling here, so I'll just leave it at that. It's a complex topic.
1758138
I didn't think anything identified the commenter as female . . .
I feel like I ought to leave a comment here, but I'm at a bit of a loss for what to say.
I think that I agree with everything you say here, though I don't know that I have the courage to aver it in a public fashion like this. I'm very much an ivory tower intellectual, though, and the topic of rape is, quite simply, just not one that touches my life in all but the most distant ways. That 1-in-5 statistic masks the fact that rape is anything but random. It's fairly easy to find subpopulations in which you're more likely to get murdered or robbed; to think the same wouldn't hold for rape is nonsense. And it's hard to imagine any scenario in which quashing debate about a topic by dictating how it can and can't be discussed will actually result in a net social good. Ideas stand on their own merits, and dictating which ideas can be discussed is tantamount to saying you don't believe certain ideas can hold up without handicapping the playing field. (I have so many things I could say about that inre religion, but I'll save it)
For what it's worth, I thought the use of rape in "All the Pretty Pony Princesses" was in no way inappropriate, if for no other reason than that it was entirely subtextual. It's the one element of the story I missed in reading it, and while I thought it served a solid explanatory function, I didn't think the story needed it to cohere. That's pretty far from cheap exploitation, in my mind.
Anyway, I feel somewhat awkward saying this because yes, I am intimidated by the gatekeepers of discussion, but good on you, BH, for this post. It's thoughtful and it's honest, and I think that's exactly what we should be asking of ourselves whenever we discuss hard topics.
Well said.
There are no words I could possibly put in this comment to properly express my gratitude for the existence of this blog-post (without me coming off as an absolute ass, at least).
1758233
The majority of stories I plot out in my mind or just fantasize about tend to get progressively darker and angsty in conjunction with my personal stress, depression, and anxiety levels.
When I reduce those levels, my thoughts, fantasies, and story concepts are far more positive.
I don't think I'd have had a problem with it in the story if the story had been written well. The problem was, the story was honestly not very good, and because of it the rape felt artificial and forced upon the audience as a cheap plot device for a subpar story. I do not think I shall go into it further than on account of not wanting a flame war, but suffice to say rape can be written well (coming from someone whose partner and mother were victims of rape), but the story has to be written well to go along with it.
1758261
This is, I think, both an invaluable perspective and thought exercise as well as an excellent argument for why guys should write about rape (or anything else they want to, honestly). I'll just say that I did write a story about rape, No Good Answers, that didn't get graphic about it but did make it the central element of the plot.
There are a lot of reasons that guys don't usually talk about rape unless we're pushed into it. It stays a quiet, undiscussed problem for the girls and women who we love, but we shy away from it. Why?
Because when we do talk about it, we inevitably screw it up.
Seriously! We're idiots. We don't have the context to approach it the way women do, as a part of their day-to-day concerns. We come across as hamfisted and clueless.
That's why we need to talk about it more.
A guy says something stupid about rape, even innocently, and they get pilloried. Crucified. I'm not going to stand up here and defend Tedd Akin's 'legitimate rape' comment, but if I said something like that or equally stupid (I'd like to think I wouldn't, but who knows), in a public forum? I'm DOA. So we shut up and don't share our perspective on the issue for fear of the social consequences.
There is no way that isn't a bad thing. No way. Because it breeds a callous resentment that's so much worse. I wouldn't enter into a conversation about rape with a rape victim, and if I did I wouldn't be honest and open for fear that I'd say something 'wrong.' So I don't get to learn about it or exchange ideas with them.
We need a safe space, somewhere we can get all the stupid misconceptions out of our system and be corrected in a gentle, nonjudgemental fashion. Let me be clear that I am in no way drawing an equivalency between that and actually fearing rape in real life. I swear to you that we want to address it, but we really don't know how to do so and we're scared to try.
Writing about it can help us with that. If (when) we do screw up, gently correct us and share your own experiences. Because we don't have them. Most of us want to understand, but we're scared to make the first move for fear we'll have the wrong opinion and end up on a sex offenders list.
I'll even close by going so far as to say that I think that writing about rape, when it's done well and respectfully, leads to fewer rapes happening in the big picture. And I think that's what everybody wants.
1758429
Oh, I have a story here.
Someone asked ages ago (like a year, so a decade in Internet Time) if being raped makes one better at writing about rape. I read the question, wasn't sure if it was quite serious, and figured I should do what I always do: Treat it seriously, and if it's a joke they'll just tell me I didn't get it. I explained that I've been writing a long time, I was writing before and after my rape, and it helped me grasp some of the insidiously sneaky issues that crop up, but I don't think it put me leaps and bounds ahead. (Roughly.)
What I did not expect was that the poster completely shattered. They deleted their post. They sent me a long apology. They told me they'd had no idea a rape victim could have possibly seen what they posted, apologized for it being a joke, etc.
I wasn't offended. Rape jokes don't offend me automatically. Bad jokes offend me. Rape offends me. I wouldn't tweet a rape joke, but I've told a few in my life, and I have taken refuge in audacity more than a few times in my life.
I got into a dialogue. I explained that I wasn't thinking it was necessarily a joke. It seemed like it could be serious, but poorly worded. (Which was the best case scenario in my head for it being a serious question.) We talked, and I told him I wasn't offended, and it was years ago. Most of the major fallout's already happened, although I have some lasting anxiety issues possibly related to it. (He seemed genuinely upset to such a degree that I kind of felt stupid for saying anything.) I assured him that it was awful, it had repercussions, but I didn't get scars and I didn't get killed and I didn't have to get an abortion. I got off pretty easy, really.
It's writing. I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. I think writing about anything in fiction is okay, it kind of damn well has to be, and if it's not something's very wrong. So yeah, if a writer asks a question about rape, I'll take a deep breath and try to answer, within certain comfort zones. (I've done buckets of research on rape for stories. One rape experience, and being taught to hide your body and not let boys touch you, doesn't teach you the psych theory behind that stuff. There is no such thing as 'too much research', ever.)
I get that. I really do. I think a lot of women get scared about discussing it in certain circumstances as well, for other reasons. The reasons men are terrified of discussing it, I suspect, are in part the hope that the specter can be avoided by never saying its name. (Society does that overall, but I think men end up doing it more because they get so little information about rape in some cases.) The thing I like about that question is that it tells the men in the room (sometimes for the first time ever) that they're missing out on something that is a constant part of the human experience.
Honestly, I like seeing when someone does experimental things with rape tropes. It's part of why I liked Rumble's Reluctance. Having a male character experience straight rape as traumatic was refreshing and different. Having that character experience it as traumatic, then internalize it and keep letting himself get abused while clearly not feeling love, was a punch to the gut. I'd never seen that before.
I do it, and I think more of it should be done specifically because fiction's a place it can be done without affecting actual, real-world victims (like with journalism or prevention literature). Would I have written Sonatina if it was a real-life account of a rape? Fuck no. Fuck. No. No way. Not my place.
Would I write about my own rape, as a nonfiction narrative? I don't think I could do it justice. Maybe that'll change someday. That'd be about the only rape I would feel comfortable covering explicitly in nonfiction, because I was the victim, and if I want to own it, then I'll own it. But nobody should make that decision for anyone else.
But fictional rape is important. Sometimes it's even lurid. (Plenty of rape victims have fetishes for rape scenes, since that's pretty common. Sometimes pornography isn't simple entertainment, and can actually prove cathartic. Sometimes you can use pornography's tools to fuck with the reader, like when Regidar wrote about Scootaloo in If You Must.)
It's important because fiction is a place where, to some degree, we can take a viewpoint without necessarily checking it against our own self-image first.
A very well thought out reasoned blog entry on a sensitive (to say the least) subject, and with well thought out reasoned responses. I have to admire your logic and your willingness to stand up and speak your opinion on a topic that can gain such frothing rage, as well as the caliber of people who follow your posts and respond to them. Kudos all around.
Unspoken in that praise is the inescapable fact that if you had published the same article in the New York Times (provided they would even run it), the vitriol in response would be hip-deep and rising. Sometimes I think that pony fans are the only sane people in the world. But I digress.
The reason we write characters as orphans is to avoid their links to established parents. We want to show them earning friends and gaining achivements with nowhere to go if they fail, a 'Win or Die' approach to life that adds tension and conflict to a story. Much the same added tension and conflict applies to a character who has undergone some sort of violent attack. Like a rock heaved into a pond, the story tracks both the impact and the ripples that result, and how they interact with other ripples and rocks in their life. (Ok, so it's not a perfect analogy). I had one story (subsequently changed to tone it all down) that showed a female character getting her drink doctored with the ultimate aim of (censored), and the subsequent result of the male character who engineered the deed winding up in a simulated situation much the reverse. I had ten times the backlash over the female character than the male.
People talk about this subject with their emotions instead of their mind, and that can really muck things up badly for everybody.
Sure rape is a delicate subject. You are not going to go talking about it just like that, just to everyone, not because it is something forbidden, but because you´ll never know if the person you are talking to is comfortable with that, maybe the other person agreed's with talking about such a topic or start the subject first but thats real life we are talking about...
But this is a topic about rape in stories... I personally think is quite stupid to tell someone else to not write about certain subjects, this is not real is all fictional so i can't see why it is such a bad thing to do. It´s not like if you are writing about a real situation, or about the experience of someone you know, so if you are not harming someone in real life then go ahead and publish that story.
And about you Sir Horse. I respect completely your opinion, and as long that you respect everyone when writing i think you can write about anything you want, because you have all the right to do it. Again, this is fictional so buck everything else.-.- if they did it in Fluttershy gets delivered "something" style, then why you cant do it? (Can't remember the name of the fanfic, they said it was a trollfic but not matter what, that story is a piece of garbage)
If there is people that feels uncomfortable about this kind of things then please people, just don't read it. RESPECT FOR THE LIBERTY OF EXPRESSION IN FICTIONAL STORIES. (I´m keeping myself into the topic at hand because if we go farther we won't be able to speak properly about all of it beacuse there is so many things to treat etc etc)
Let's be honest here: absolutely no problem that happens to real people is given the attention to detail it deserves in fiction. We routinely write and fantasize about mass murderers, sociopaths, misogynists, war criminals, and wannabe vigilantes who do horrible things to many people and never suffer any consequences.
As an example: almost any protagonist in every story ever.
The problem with humans is that we're only people. As mentioned a not-often talked about side aspect of rape is that some people have bizarre, even painful fantasies about being raped or dominated or even abused, or even being the rapist, and the line between fact and fantasy is always tenuously thin. Take that story "The Fall of Equestria" for example. That is a story where every main character of the show is raped and abused and Equestria is turned into a country literally built on institutionalized rape, and it's all presented purely as something to masturbate over, no matter how the author and their supporters insisted that "because the story presents it as a bad thing, it is actually a good thing that it's in the story."
Even if we try to tell ourselves that we can approach these subjects with maturity and bring about better human understanding, the fact is we can't. We're mired in our own selfish fantasies.
Rape is a sexual crime whatever anyone else has to say about it - whatever happens, it's generally about the rapist getting their jollies off another's pain and suffering. The actual act of sex is usually a large part of it. People are drawn to that for better or worse, and like anything vaguely sexual it's fetishized, leading to the belief that talking about rape in anything less than the most grave and serious terms means we're passing it off as a silly, harmless fantasy... but for a relatively large amount of people, that's exactly what rape is. Just like orphans are never written with all the myriad problems that come with being orphaned, rape victims in stories are never going to be written like actual rape victims unless the writer has actually been raped. If my parents were dead, I'd be a little offended myself if I saw a story with orphan characters talking about how great it is that their parents are dead and now they get to grow up as orphans, but then I can't expect them to write a story that understands my point of view either, so... what are ya gonna do? The sexual aspect, I think, is what makes people so afraid. Sex is such a private thing, something that is considered very special, and to talk about it in the same breath as death, violence, and mayhem is extremely disturbing for some people. And, in fact, sex and violence going hand-in-hand is the actual definition of rape, so I can understand the trepidation people have with trying to bring that crime to the same level as many others. I guess the issue whenever rape is brought up should be: are we actually equating rape with these other tragedies, or are we approaching it carefully and realizing it has its own psychology and implications? Are we putting rape on a pedestal as the untouchable subject, or are we going too far in the other direction and saying "it's actually not that bad?" What is the modest, rational middle ground here?
I'm saying I agree with you. Labeling rape as "that one bad thing in the world that nobody can talk about" is ridiculous and downright criminal. But we have, in fact, trivialized and made banal and harmless a great many things from murder to arson to psychopathic behavior. The internet is a vast forum where we can fantasize about practicing these things on other people and say things like the dreaded "n-word" or "faggot" in relative safety. Maybe I'm just unlucky but I've encountered so many boorish men and women that I fear for the future... but then I turn around and think "maybe if we weren't so afraid to discuss these things, people wouldn't vent their frustrations in such miserable ways?"
Hell, just look at my own story "Huggled." People have accused me of writing an ending in which "mass rape" is preceded by downright evil and misanthropic behavior on the part of other characters... but then I look at my story and say "Well, that's actually what's supposed to be funny about it." What do I do with that? All I can do is shrug and say "I'm not actually saying that rape is funny, and this story doesn't actually have rape in it." But just a few dots that don't even connect to a whole, the mere shadow of the crime, was too much for some people. I was encouraged that so many people found Huggled to be absolutely gut-bustingly funny, but the negative comments will always be there too. I'm not sure why some people had such a visceral reaction to it, myself.
I think the inherent problem is you have to assume the people you're talking to are intelligent enough to discern what you're actually saying, and can emotionally divorce themselves to where they can discuss a subject without flipping a table.
In short, I do think rape should be considered less taboo as a subject, because being prevented from talking about a thing only generates frustration and anger, but we must also be careful how we present it.
I dunno. Like you say, we writers can only do our best, and to expect more is to expect the unreal.
... First of all, I have to say that I am pretty much conditionned to be absolutely appalled by this blogpost. I don't know why, but it feels like you're treating the subject like it's no big deal, and I know you're not.
This is odd... and dangerous. Because nobody should kneejerk like that. I agree with nearly all of your points, and yet I still originally felt kind of upset. Fucking toxic to react like this, I tell you.
Point 3 is a bit... poorly handled. It's not an accurate representation of what really happens everywhere. And your little courtroom anecdote is not evidence that rape is treated through a political bias, and more of evidence that rape trials are really fucking messy. (BTW, 99,4% of rapes that do get reported are true. And that's just the ones being reported because so many people are still afraid to come forth with it because, again, it's really fucking messy.)
As for your responsibility to be as true as possible, I refer to the lovely commenter up above who explains why it is nearly impossible to grasp the reality of the thing as an outsider, no matter what your intentions are. I haven't read ATPPP, so I can't pass judgement. I do know, however, that you're a very commendable chap and I do believe that you would "treat the subject with respect", whatever that means.
In any case, I decided to leave a comment because I thought my initial reaction was super weird and uncharacteristic of me. And because I felt that way, there's plenty more who would just the same, and they shouldn't.
1758261
What I do to avoid getting jumped in general (I'm male) is not to turn my back on anyone I find suspicious in any environment which I feel is insufficiently-watched by people with strongly anti-criminal attitudes. I'm fairly big and strong, and confident in my ability to handle myself if attacked from the front, but I don't have eyes in the back of my head or all-round tentacles. What I do if I find myself in a potentially violent situation is mentally prepare myself by thinking "dangerous animal" about the human confronting me, to turn off all my inhibitions against using ALL of my strength to act in a way to render my attacker non-functional (unconscious, crippled, dead or too cowed to continue attacking).
I live in freaking Oakland, which is a city whose police force explicitly does not bother to follow up on non-violent crimes, with the consequence that they have a huge violent crime problem, because most violent criminals first commit lots of non-violent or semi-violent crimes. Being male doesn't give me a magic protection shield: while rape per se is not my primary concern, being attacked in general is, and the same rules apply: an enemy who is no longer physically or psychologically capable of attacking oneself ceases to be anything but a legal concern.
Avoid a fight, but if you are physically attacked, respond without mercy until the attacker is no longer a threat. Then make sure of it if you have the time and can be reasonably sure that you won't be blamed.
Same rules for both sexes, modified by one's relative size and strength. And yes, I know women are on the average smaller and weaker. Sorry, that's biology, can't do anything about that.
Addendum -- when one turns off one's inhibitions in that way, I find that potential attackers back off. I think they see it in my eyes, that they've just shifted in my mind from "other person" to "target." I'm told that I look very scary when I get in that mental mode.
Okay, I get the idea that refusing to talk about rape solves nothing and just lets who didn't have this forced on them to declare it somebody else's problem. But I still have misgivings about the way you used it in All the Pony Princesses. It's the fact that you just brushed up against the subject in a way that didn't even really register with me at first, before I just rolled my eyes at it. It honestly felt a bit insulting to all of the real people in the world who have been raped and yet didn't retreat into a perfect fantasy land because they couldn't handle the pressure, and I feel that I can cut stories about rape a lot of slack if they study the feelings and emotion in depth instead of just having another woman going crazy because that's what women do, according to stereotype.
The best example of this I've read in the fandom is Cadence in A Minor by Isseus. Even though the author fucked up in tagging his fic and refuses to put a trigger warning on the story, the actual text of the story feels much less stereotypical and shallow than yours does. I absolutely do not want to make you feel bad for this particular writing choice, but if you're going to write a story about rape, you might want to make it about rape, and you should definitely try to research it and represent it accurately.
Also, some of you might not be paying attention after you've had your say before I did, but for everyone still reading, I'd like to add this to the table: http://badassdigest.com/2013/11/14/we-need-to-change-how-we-talk-about-rape/
It's written by one of the smartest people I know (despite one particular writing choice which I have a sinking feeling will turn people away from the article) and mostly speaks about the subject of rape and how it gets talked about in real life, not how it's used in a story.
1758655
You really caught my interest with your comments, and I'm really happy to hear that you're doing well. I'm going to start reading your stories and what you recommended.
1759415
No offense, but you clarified the point yourself. We're all vulnerable to violence and have to watch out for other people trying to hurt us, but you don't worry about rape.
I'm not saying violence is irrelevant. I'm saying that you're worrying about X and I am worrying about X and Y, and if you're going to write about Y, then you need to look at some context about it. "Drawing attention to oneself" has a radically different meaning if you're male or female.
I am not delusional. Men get raped. Men get killed and maimed and shot and strangled and buried alive, just like women. Human life is a fragile thing and there are only so many things one can do to protect oneself. Occasionally some wahoo will trot up with a zip gun and shoot the President, and he can send nuclear missiles like he's arranging a couch delivery.
But nobody ever said, "Well, he was shirtless, so he was asking for it." That'd be insane, in our culture. It's exactly what they'd say about a topless woman getting attacked on the street. (Or, really, a woman who's wearing a skirt too short.)
1759422 ATPPP isn't about rape. I never even decided whether there had been a rape or not. In any case, my intent was that "Twilight" had been in her own little world for a long time before that.
1759454
Then what reason did you have for putting the implication in there? If it weren't for this particular blog post, I'd have no reason to think that you thought about the implications of this decision.
1759452
I worry about it as one of the possible forms of "violence" with which I might be threatened. Once an assailant has overcome oneself, one is at the attacker's mercy, so one must concentrate on not being overcome. It is true that women are more likely to be raped than are men. Nothing I can do about that, sorry -- and I hope I didn't offend you with what I said.
I don't think that anyone's "asking for it." I personally think that police forces should make extensive use of "Muggable Mary" traps, both for muggings and rapes, with any resistance past "I do not consent to be touched by you" used as an excuse to blow the suckers away. I have absolutely no sympathy for violent criminals of any stripe, and believe that their contacts with the law should be milked for as much prison time as possible. Violent criminals deserve to be put in prison for as long as possible.
1759422
I will warn you, straight up, that the two stories I mentioned pull zero punches. Reluctance is a plausible spiral into abuse -- extreme, but still plausible, IMO. It plays with pornographic tropes in sickening ways, and it is just about the worst concept of childhood sexual experience I could imagine.
If You Must plays a different kind of game, but they're both very, very graphic. Just know that.
(Sonatina, if you end up reading it, is probably just about as graphic, and isn't about foals, but it is from the POV of a rapist, so . . . not for the faint of heart.
)
1759222
Just because this particular goal can never be attained in a 100% fashion doesn't mean that attempting to get as close as possible is a waste of time.
And I admit that the ending to Huggled weirded me out a little. I wasn't quite thinking "rape," but I was hoping that nopony woke up the morning after and felt like they needed brain bleach when they connected the dots. And that there was a morning after. Maybe I'm thinking about that too hard for a zany comedy, especially since I never spared a thought to the exaggerated dickish behavior of the characters before the final twist, but that's just me.
1759521
I've already read Not Now Big Brother. It can't be any worse than that (if you get me started on that story I'm not sure when I'll stop). And if I want to write stories that are merciless like this, I'd better read more.
1759533
I've read NNBB too, and IYM and RR go a bit further. Just be aware.
1759372
I kind of hate to pick on this, but I think it's relevant to the point Bad Horse is making.
I have no earthly idea where a number like this comes from. Wikipedia has a page on false accusation of rape which cites a lot of numbers, too—all of which are fairly different from the above. But what's the operationalization for "are true" when you study something like this? You can record what people do and don't get convicted for, but that's a poor measure of the truth of an accusation for a number of reasons (not least because there's a large distinction between unproven and untrue).
This is one of the big problems we have with this conversation, kind of like the whole conversation about abortion (just to needlessly kick a hornet's nest here). It's very hard to get good data, and most people seem to find the topic too sensitive to be willing to dig into what data there is and what it says. And, of course, for any hot-button social topic, there are usually a myriad of people standing ready to take what data we have and present it out of context to support a given viewpoint. Add in our increasing polarization of information sources, and it's very easy for people with opposing viewpoints to operate in completely separate spheres with everyone believing that their arguments are airtight.
I don't think this problem is as serious with rape as it is with some other topics, viz. almost everybody's on board with "Rape is bad and we should try to make sure there's less of it," and I don't think many people operate in the "Most rape allegations are scurrilous lies" camp—but such a camp definitely exists. That said, the lack of good data and the lack of public awareness of the whole picture of the data we do have is, I think, one of the big contributing factors to the problem we have in discussing rape.
I don't mean to pick on you in particular, BeezelPony, but I think the data problem deserves to be pointed out and your comment provided a good window for doing so. I do think this is important to the overall conversation.
Not that any of us are going to be solving all the world's problems tonight. But if we're lucky, maybe we'll be better people tomorrow than we were today, and what more can anyone really ask for?
1759480
I'm not suggesting that you did, only that there's a societal context for the crime of rape that does not exist for other violent crimes, and that it's gender-biased. (Which, as you pointed out, isn't anyone's fault in particular, it's just how the culture shook out.)
What I'm suggesting is that most men will not ever be targeted for rape, whereas it is a constant concern with women, on top of nonsexual violence.
1759658
I just scoped out If You Must, and I've decided that I'm not going to read it, mostly because I'm leery of Regidar himself. One of my problems with Not Now Big Brother, aside from the vile slander of a character I really like (Shining Armor, not Twilight. I love Twilight more than anyone but how she's used here bothers me less), is that the authors are dickholes who I don't trust with a story like this. Granted, if NNBB was not a pony fic I would be recommending it like crazy because it's visceral and authentic-feeling (leaving aside what we already know about these characters), and maybe IYM is just as well written. I'll never know.RR is still on my list because the author doesn't rub me the wrong way, at least not yet.That was my initial argument, but honestly I may have been a little too hard on Regidar. He may have his charmless moments, but he supported my story and I don't want to do wrong by him anymore. The real reason I'm passing is because I don't want to read the ending (which I spoiled for myself, sorry).
Emphasis mine. The less confrontational way to say this is that they "aren't consequentialist" about rape. There is an inferential gap between people for whom "care" means "shut up and multiply" and people for whom "care" means "get emotional about," and avoiding that ambiguity seems worthwhile.
1759737
Yes, I absolutely agree that the lack of reliable data and the lack of willfulness to get it is a problem.
For those interested, the data I used comes from here.
The only reason I even included that data in parentheses is because of BH's anecdote which made me feel like he thought justice was, for some reason, biased towards punishing any alleged rape.
And yes, may we all grow from this. I know I have, at least.
1759422
Very, very seconded. I'm just skimming this—it's long—but it's also really good, I think, and it deserves reading.
I'm as screwed up on this topic as most guys, I'm sure. 1758429 is hitting the nail on the head where I'm concerned with this: I'm pretty sure I'm incapable of not flubbing any conversation I have on the subject. Tat link may help a bit.
1759784
It was crushing, but very well done, IMO.
(And yeah, Regidar's kind of grown over the years, as I understand it. I've only been on the site since January 2013, so I haven't known him longer than that.)
Badger's a good guy. He called out a story where I was mishandling something related to sexual assault, so while what he does in Reluctance is shocking, I don't think it's done cheaply.
1759920
You know, I thought about it, and I don't even remember the details of my bad first impression with Regidar.
I have Rumble's Reluctance on my watchlist now, and I'm honestly pretty interested in seeing where it goes based on the unique scenario it presents.
1759784
I read Regidar's fic.
Cola is wrong. It does not use it's pornography tropes to fuck with the reader. It uses them in a way I can only term epic fail.
When you have one seven year old accidentally landing on another's face resulting in copious amounts of vaginal fluid and somehow a pleasurable feeling from what amounts to a headbutt to the junk, which then leads to kids engaging in sex acts they do not have the instincts for, it makes you scratch your head and wonder why the author is retarded and couldn't have made it as realistic as he made the actual rape. Then you realize it's just another trollfic written by just another troll and that only people who take the themes too seriously without being discerning of quality will like it.
As for NNBB, one, it's darf; two, it's a retarded defilement of the characters.
I have been recommended a story titled "Gap Year". It is apparently, acording to someone who likes it, the best story about dealing with the aftermath of rape he has read.
1759986
You don't think the disgust you mentioned earlier might factor into your assessment of those works, perhaps?
I don't know if you noticed, but those things could be related.
1758261
Well, thing is...
Yeah, we don't do it not to get RAPED. But well, we do do it not to get mugged or assaulted. Most guys don't spend a lot of time thinking about getting raped... but frankly, most girls don't either. Some do, sure, but most? Not in my experience. Most people don't even think about the fact that someone could walk up to them on the street and stab them in the heart. It is just outside of people's mindsets.
But someone could do that, tomorrow, and chance are good you wouldn't see it coming. They probably won't, but they could.
Thing is, forcible rape is relatively rare compared to non-forcible rape. Does it happen? Yeah. But the biggest source of rapes is casual acquaintances, which is hardly surprising. And such rapes are nearly impossible to prosecute because they tend to be he-said, she said situations. Your experience of being raped by a "friend" is hardly unusual.
Doing your parking lot deal and making sure people know where you are is wise, it is mostly wise because of all the other bad things that can happen to you; you're far more likely to be mugged or assaulted than forcibly raped when you're out on your own at night. A comforting thought, I'm sure.
Of course, being unlikely isn't the same as can't happen, either. It costs you nothing to park in well-lit areas, and makes you safer.
1758276
Not only are rapes non-random in the population, but that actual statistic is made-up. The problem, as it turns out, is that rape statistics tend to be incredibly questionable, which isn't terribly surprising given that many rapes go unreported, and many reported rapes are impossible to confirm.
Now, to be fair, there are studies which show very high "rape rates"... if you define rape as "anything, pretty much". But it turns out there are major political motivations behind massively inflating the actual rape rate.
The NCVS suggests that the rape rate is roughly 0.4 per 1000 people per year, meaning that, over the course of an 80 year lifespan, you would expect on average 32 out of 1000 people to be raped (or a rate of 3.2% lifetime). Given that roughly 90% of victims are female, this would suggest that you'd see an overall rate of a bit north of 6% of women being raped in their lifetimes - or about 1 in 16. That's still a pretty high rate (for comparison, the murder rate is about 10 times lower, .04 per 1000 people per year, or 1 in 160ish people), but it is vastly lower than the 1 in 5 rate that people claim. So why the exaggerated claims?
Well, because it "raises awareness" and because it gets them piles of money. Not that I'm saying that they lie to get money... okay, I'm saying they do. Because they totally do. But 1 in 16 is a pretty high rate.
Of course, it isn't randomly distributed across the population either - most people who get raped, get raped somewhere between adolescence and young adulthood; once you're in your 40s or so, you're less likely to get raped, partially because you're much less likely to expose yourself to the situations that cause most rapes. And most college victims - and I would bet victims in the general population - are inebriated when they're raped. In fact, as much as 80% of college women who are sexually assaulted were under the influence of alcohol at the time. Forcible rapes make up only a minority of rape cases.
And no one will ever know what percentage of people who claim to be raped lied about it (or misclassified an event which was not a rape as rape). Studies have gone everywhere from a minimum of 1.5% to a maximum of almost half, with an 8% "unfounded" rate being reported by the FBI (though unfounded and false are not the same thing). Of course, people fly into a rage over it, but I know of at least one instance - a friend of mine, in fact - who lied about being raped by a guy (who, for the record, I never met, and only heard about via said friend) to get attention and sympathy. So I know people do it, and they do it for entirely predictable reasons, and no one in the anti-rape movement wants to talk about it because, well, it makes them look bad - even though everyone knows it has to happen, because people are dicks and some people will claim completely ridiculous things in order to gain sympathy. And of course it shafts all the legitimate victims as well as, well, when you do have people who lie about it, it draws everyone's experience into question. And you only have to know one person who does it to taint it forever.
1759986
1759784
Oh, and Gap Year isn't bad, but I remember it being very, very subtle, like to the point that it was difficult to read. It felt resonant, in terms of the psychological fallout of rape, though. That was for sure.
1759737
One of my coworkers volunteers her time at crisis hotline. Her centre alone gets around 15,000 reports of sexual assault a year. And those are the ones that get reported and get forwarded all the way to the crisis line. And her centre is only 1 of several.
I do not see what the point of debating conviction rates and accusation veracity is when there are 50,000+ cases a year being reported not to authorities, but crisis councellors in one of the top 5 cities to live in the world, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
1760021
The statistic is that one in three girls born in Western society today are likely to experience some form of physical or sexual abuse or assault in their entire lifelime. And yes that is defined as "anything" not just a penis she does not want being forced into her vagina.
1759998
Sorry to make you patronize unnecessarily, but no. I am well aware of my biases and their influences on my thinking.
I made a specific effort to read and provide feedback on that story since I was assured Regidar was taking the subject seriously and the story was tagged mature but not sex.
While the rape/abuse and Scootaloo's portrayal earned my respect, as well as the candid but not overly detailed description of her assults worked in my opinion, the story jumped the shark in the middle (for the reasons I mentioned) and rushed the end.
The other one is the character corruption, not the incest/rape.
1759986
I read the comments of Regidar's fic and I've already seen this argument before. No comment.
Completely agreeing with you on darf there.
Anyway, as far as the actual topic goes...
I agree with you in most respects, though frankly, I really don't take people's whole "seriousness of rape" thing very... seriously. The trouble is that fiction is not reality, and making light of things like murder, rape, and various other nasty crimes is actually totally par for the course for it. Goodness knows every match of Counterstrike that the terrorists win involves at least five murders, and oftentimes blowing up a building. Many games involve vastly higher body counts. Characters murder in fiction all the time, and it isn't really a big deal because it isn't real.
Good guys don't rape people in fiction, but bad guys do it sometimes. And rape is like losing your family or getting mugged or beaten half to death, a common source of angst for a character to overcome (or in some cases, a way to garner instant sympathy for a character or raise a player's desire to protect them).
I don't think I've ever used rape in any story I've written, and I don't really plan to, but I don't really see anything WRONG with it, and if it fits, it fits. The idea that rape is somehow uniquely serious is very silly indeed.
Honestly I liken such people to the guys who rioted when people drew cartoons which negatively depicted Mohammad - dangerous fanatics who have more than a few screws loose and do it in order to promote their own personal political agenda. No topic is off-limits or uniquely serious, and people have no right to intimidate others with their outrage.
1760021
Virtually all the women I've known in my life could point to concrete actions they had taken to not get raped -- things like "never drink out of a drink I didn't pour myself and keep in my hand", "wear different clothes if I know I'm going to a certain part of town", "carry mace and keep it in my pocket whenever I'm walking in a parking garage", etc.
It's become second nature to most women, and it is invisible to most men. Men talk about what they would do "if" an attacker shows up -- and many women feel unsafe every single day. Since nobody talks about it a lot of the time, a lot of men just assume what you seem to have concluded -- women don't think about it either.
They do.
1760042
I was actually asking. Believe it or not, sometimes people aren't aware of their biases.
You seem convinced I hold you ill will. I've been called wrong, I've been wrong, and I will always be wrong at some points, about some things, at some times. I got over that a while back.
Be well.
1760050
This: 1760057
Also: the problem with rape is that people do not have a "murder drive" but we do have a "sex drive".
We men are exposed to violence and understand it's context and impact.
We can't say we are remotely as familiar with is sex crimes.
While both are morally wrong and evil, murder is unnatural, rape is not. The only difference in many cases between rape and not-rape is consent, not some aspect of the act itself. Consent is a concept that exists only in civilized society.
The problem with this is that people who have these evil urges to molest or rape seek validation from society to convince themselves it is OK.
The read erotica and view pornographic drawings and speak to like minded individuals online. It's mob mentality. They are looking for permission from society because they sure as hell won't ask for it from their victim.
And the way society treats a subject is the way individuals think about it. Do we really want a bunch of guys with no sex crime education or frame of reference on the vulnerability of women to these crimes thinking that rape is a non-serious amusing topic or about as real in their views as their video games treat violence? No. Because if the men do not start taking an active role in rape prevention and social responsibility then we are fucked.
1760081
I do not consider patronizing to be ill willed in any way. It is almost always well intentioned. Just annoying...