*Trigger Warning* Rape: A Crude Plot Device?

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kuwisdelu

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Thus, I kind of wonder if a lot of people's fantasies work this way. You can't enjoy something that honestly strikes you as wrong, so the part of your brain that wants to enjoy it anyway has to come up with a loophole that allows the rest of you to join in on the fun.

I can easily enjoy things that honestly strike me as wrong. That's one of the reasons fiction exists.

All kinds of people enjoy reading about things that many of us would agree would be pretty horrible to experience in real life, and generally this isn't regarded as strange.

Yet when that enjoyment becomes sexual in nature, all of a sudden people start objecting to it.

I think more people just need to accept that it's perfectly okay to be sexually aroused by something you find "wrong", and that enjoying that arousal is also okay.
 

Flicka

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In general, I just want to say I agree with kuwi. People's fantasies are many and varied and the whys of them are, I think, mostly obscure, like most of our traits. They are also very, very hard to discuss without TMI:ing. :)

Thus, I kind of wonder if a lot of people's fantasies work this way. You can't enjoy something that honestly strikes you as wrong, so the part of your brain that wants to enjoy it anyway has to come up with a loophole that allows the rest of you to join in on the fun.

I don't view this as "repression", however. (In fact, I dislike that word because so often it gets used a tool to try to bully others into validating a worldview they don't organically believe in.) People have beliefs and morals, and those are real, worthy, and valid, but the human mind is a gumbo of a lot more than just our conscious beliefs. Thus, having a fantasy is not necessarily a simple thing. Sometimes, the individual needs to tack on an indemnity-from-liability clause to the fantasy in order to enter it without discomfort.

Yes, but personally I think a lot of people's fantasies about being forced are not really using the the force as a vehicle to get to what really arouses them - sex - but about being aroused by the very act of being forced or by the act of submission. In fact, I think a not small number of women (and quite possibly men though I never discussed this with a man) experience your feeling of "no, I can't enjoy this, it's wrong" about the element of force rather than the element of sex, precisely because they find rape such an abhorrence and by enjoying the fantasy they feel like they are condoning it.

Like I said about the other discussion I read, some people did tell them they did and that by being aroused by such fantasies, they indirectly contributed to the attitudes to rape in the real world and to rapes happening IRL. Therefore, I was curious to hear if people here attached the same sort of stigma to that sort of fantasies. I was also curious about how people thought you should handle it when sex and sexual fantasies may be in element in non-sexual fiction elements, like in erotic romance. Do you condemn it because it gives the wrong signals or is it OK because it's really just a part of the fantasy? I am reading this thread as people mostly being in the first camp.
 

TheNighSwan

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I think of fantasies as plays anyway; in a rape fantasy, the character is being raped, but the actor obviously is not — so the actor can enjoy acting out this scene because they're in control, whereas of course they wouldn't like that at all if it happened in real life.
 

Celia Cyanide

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And Luke and Laura on General Hospital? I remember so many girls in school just sighing and swooning the day after they'd gotten married on the show.

Not a book, but yes, that too. Ick! I didn't watch it, but I knew about that storyline, and I never understood why they did that. He raped her, and then they went on to be the big romance of the show. As far as I could tell, they didn't retcon it out. I don't know if they do that on soaps.
 

Roxxsmom

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That citation is from 1987, so I doubt it's accurate anymore.

Which one, the friends to lovers being the most popular one, or the one in the paper about 50% of romances having rape in them? I'm assuming the latter.

I read fantasy/short piece years ago in Playgirl of all places (we used to have read-alouds in my college dorm), where the gal was on a subway going through a tunnel, and the lights went out, and the guy behind her got, um, frisky and they, well, you know whatted, while standing, in the anonymity of darkness.

When the lights came back on, she "discovered" that it was really her husband, who just so happened to be on the same train (unbeknownst to her up until then).

Unexpected sex (often with a stranger or someone who is known but one has not had sex with before) is a really common fantasy for both genders, and possibly for the real biological reason of not "wanting" to put all your reproductive eggs or sperm in one basket (that human sex is most often social, not procreative, in nature is another factor that may be important here too). So is unplanned sex in "forbidden" places, even in places where discovery could be disastrous. Maybe the desire to prove oneself to a partner by taking sexual risks plays into some ancient test of fitness place in our brains too.

It's all speculation, though, and impossible to prove.

The thing is, we all have fantasies we know we don't really want to live (and that we couldn't live and that we know shouldn't be lived) in real life. I read a story once where the whole premise was something that would be completely illegal "quid pro quo" sexual harassment between the male boss and a male job applicant during a job interview. It was still hot.

But such a scene in a work of non erotic literature would not be hot and if it's portrayed as sexy outside of the context of a carefully constructed erotic fantasy setting, then it would feel wrong in the same way that a scene in a mainstream fantasy novel where two people have sex while fending off sword thrusts during a battle would.
 
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Mr Flibble

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I think of fantasies as plays anyway; in a rape fantasy, the character is being raped, but the actor obviously is not — so the actor can enjoy acting out this scene because they're in control, whereas of course they wouldn't like that at all if it happened in real life.

I think that is the thing -- the fantasist controls everything - is the director if you will.

And they know IRL it would be different but they are not fantasising abut RL

It's a fantasy they can make it end any way they like. They can make anything happen on the way


Which is, ofc, the attraction(That and no STDs :D). Why it is a fantasy, not something they court IRL. Things we control in our heads are NOT teh same as having that play out IRl. Most sane people know that.
 

jeffo20

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As far as I could tell, they didn't retcon it out. I don't know if they do that on soaps.
They didn't retcon it out. I got into the show a little in the later 90s or early 2000s and they had a storyline in which their son (and this may be the only instance of a soap opera child aging in real time) found out about the rape. He did not treat it like it was some wonderful, beautiful love story. Lots of anger there, serious damage to the relationship with both of his parents, but especially with Luke. AS I recall, about the best either Luke or Laura could say about it was that he 'didn't understand.'
 

Lillith1991

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They didn't retcon it out. I got into the show a little in the later 90s or early 2000s and they had a storyline in which their son (and this may be the only instance of a soap opera child aging in real time) found out about the rape. He did not treat it like it was some wonderful, beautiful love story. Lots of anger there, serious damage to the relationship with both of his parents, but especially with Luke. AS I recall, about the best either Luke or Laura could say about it was that he 'didn't understand.'

The bolded always gets me in such stories. What is there to 'understand'? He raped her, and that's it. Who would ask someone to be comfortable knowing their father isn't only a rapist, but had raped their mother?

Honestly? It's thinking like this which keeps me from talking to other people who are fans of the character Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. They just, they make excuses for him and act like he would be awesome to meet in real life despite the fact that he tried to rape Buffy when she broke up with him.

Now, he is one of my favorite characters. He actually is my favorite character on the show bare none as a matter of fact. But I'm not going going to give him a pass for it. Why should I do so? I can honestly say I hated him after that until as the show put it: Evil commited the ultimate sacrific for good. In other words, much as I really liked the character before, it took him giving his life to save the world and woman he had wronged in order to get back into my good graces.

And stilll, despite how much I enjoy this character, fics where they end up together after he attacks her make me gag and want to vomit. Even future fics after the end of Angel, where the character made further redemption progress during the course of the show. It is just a no-go for me. No matter how much he is redeemed, I genuinely don't believe that they could be together after that. It would always, and rightfully, be something that hangs over them no matter how much time passes.
 
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kelliewallace

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In my current wip on submissions, my MC gets raped by her husband. Normally, I wouldnt write such a scene, but it was an important for the story - a way for the husband to ascertain power over her. (Side note: He's dominant, overbearing and wishes for a child at any means. Not the nicest character Ive created)

When I began researching pubs, I would email them and tell me of the scene. Many of them said, 'not interested, unless you made it a flashback'. Being the stubborn author I am, I refused and kept it in. Not sure if that scene will hinder my wip.

Most pubs are quite open to it and I might have to change it regardless during editing once its sold.
 

Layla Nahar

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I remembered seeing this thread some time ago, and until recently I can say that I haven't read a book with rape as a plot device. But I'm reading one now. I had been thinking of translating it (bought it a long time ago for the cover...) but I wouldn't really want to participate in selling it. I plan to read the whole thing for the practice (anyway). I think I would be ok with the incident if it happened once and it's the MC's motivation for revenge. But it's not once, it keeps happening night after night (she's a servant). It's fairly unpleasant to read. I keep saying 'enough already, I get it, he's a bastard and she's a helpless victim'. I imagine that it's this writers way of showing just how bad this guy is but the whole thing is sitting wrong with me...
 
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Emermouse

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I can understand, Layla. Any shocking plot device kind of loses its power when it's on every page.
 

Discord

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One of the best written rape scenes I've ever seen done was in the TV show Private Practice, for a few reasons:

Perhaps most importantly, it was horrifying. Rape should be horrifying. Not exciting, in a "oh my gosh, the protagonist is in peril! What fun!" way, and CERTAINLY not in a titillating way, like when it's shot with long, sexualized shots from the point of view of the attacker. The scene was excruciating to watch, and makes you want to turn off the TV.

Almost as importantly, the focus was on how the victim was feeling. We, as the audience, identified with her, we were not forced with the camera point of view into the position of the attacker. The message was clear: this is what rape does to people. It is not a cheap plot point or a lazy way to tell the audience how your villain is oh-so-evil. This is the reality of it from the victim's perspective.

The rest of the storyline was then about how Charlotte (the victim) got past the trauma. She didn't disappear as soon as she had served her function as "rape victim". She didn't exist solely to be victimized. She was a full character, something terrible happened to her, and then she worked to move past it. She continued to have agency. It was still her story.

Just my two cents. I agree, rape should be treated with extreme care, but I think that's an example of how it can be done right.
 

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I think it can be a crude and lazy plot device. In a lot of books and films female characters problems are often related to their gender. Its lazy. The character could be struggling with being a mother, the loss of a child, struggling to get pregnant, finding a man (and living happily ever after), or work life balance. Rape is often used a problem for female characters to struggle with and it's probably used a little too much.

At the same time though that doesn't mean writers shouldn't or can't use rape as a good plot device. I just don't think it should be inserted into a story because it is seen as traditionally a female problem (which is not true and a whole different discussion)

If you want to write a female character well you should aim to not define her by her gender. Captain Kathryn Janeway is an example of this. Throughout 7 seasons of Voyager very, very rarely is her gender brought up as a problem or an obstacle in her way.

Janeway is not a mother but loves her crew and is as protective of them as much as a mother would be of her children. Janeway is lonely and does spend the 7 seasons missing her partner but she gets on with running her ship. She doesn't need a man to live happily ever after. She does what needs to be done. Janeway does not need a man to protect her. She will do bold and even reckless things but she will follow through with her decisions. She is smart and loyal. She will not hesitate to throw a punch or to charge into a fire fight. She is as smart and crazy as any of the boys. That's how you write a strong willed female character. Do not define her by "female" problems. Write them as equals.
 

Roxxsmom

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If you want to write a female character well you should aim to not define her by her gender. Captain Kathryn Janeway is an example of this. Throughout 7 seasons of Voyager very, very rarely is her gender brought up as a problem or an obstacle in her way.

I think there's room for gender-focused issue stories. Sometimes women enjoy reading stories where other women cope with female-centric issues. They're a part of life. Since the female reproductive role tends to be more consuming and energetically costly, it makes sense that such would be a focus for many women at some point in their life.

And rape happens. It's something most women probably fear, and many women experience. So stories that show a woman triumphing over such can be uplifting.

It's been discussed elsewhere (can't remember if it was upthread in this one, or in another such thread) that male rape is often ignored or off limits in fantasy and other adventure genres. For some reason, a man triumphing over the shame and fear of his own sexual victimization doesn't seem to be as appealing a topic.

But back to women-focused issues, including rape when it's used in a realistic way and not as a lazy cliche. It doesn't mean that these experiences are the sum total of what it is to be female, or that there aren't plenty of other issues women face where their gender is not at all central. These kinds of stories are really cool when they happen, and I do wish there were more of them. Or just stories that mix all these elements in a more realistic way, the way they often are for men in stories written by men.
 
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Once!

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If you want to write a female character well you should aim to not define her by her gender. Captain Kathryn Janeway is an example of this.

Kudos (and a rep) for mention my favourite starship captain!

But I'm not so sure that all female characters can be as gender neutral as Janeway. Being a starship captain does require a different mindset to many other jobs.

And she is not entirely gender neutral herself. She has strong maternal feelings for the crew, in some episodes she explores her sensuality - Fairhaven and "delete the wife" comes to mind.

Where Janeway is interesting is that she is both a woman and a starship captain. She finds solutions to problems that are different to the solutions that, say, a Picard or a Kirk would have found. She is not simply Picard with breasts. And hair.

For me, equality does not mean gender-neutral androgynous. I would be as bored with a generic sexless starship captain stereotype as I would with a generic male or female stereotype.

And that, I think, is also the problem with rape scenes. If they are genuinely necessary for the plot, if they are well handled, if the characters react in appropriate ways, then maybe.

But if the scenes are there solely (or mostly) to titillate, if the characters are two dimensional victims/ attackers, if the scenes objectify characters instead of giving them more detail, then, no, thank you.
 

Ravioli

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While rape shouldn't be used as a "crude plot device" or made all cutesie like in some pseudo-BDSM novels, one also needs to be careful not to generalize it in the negative direction. Some victims kill themselves, others shrug it off. Hence it's really up to the author themselves to determine how the victim deals with the rape. I honestly don't really like the "All rape victims are self-harming heaps of misery huddling in a blankie" approach. Yes: some victims CAN be perfectly fine afterwards.
But, how ever it is written and dealt with, you need to do your homework and have some empathy to see how it can work. There is no one way rape works.
 

Roxxsmom

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For me, equality does not mean gender-neutral androgynous. I would be as bored with a generic sexless starship captain stereotype as I would with a generic male or female stereotype.

I don't know. An agender person could be an interesting character. They exist in the human experience, and maybe that would even be the norm for another species. But in SF and F, it's not all that common.

One book I remember reading with an agender person (who was agender and asexual, both biologically and psychologically) was called Halfway Human, by Caroline Ives Gilman. And come to think about it, this person was raped at one point in the story also.

Not saying that I'd want most characters in most stories to be agender, or to be agender because the author doesn't know how to present men and women in rich, nuanced, authentic, and non-stereotypical ways.

I think an important facet of a victim's reaction to rape is that the author needs to find a way to make sure that they're not being proscriptive about the way they present it. If they really want to present a character who is able to just shrug the experience off, or who tells themselves stories about it (like it wasn't really rape, or if I had done this, it wouldn't have happened) in order to carry on and cope with it without falling apart, then I think they should try and find a way to get across that this is only one of many possible coping mechanisms, and it's not inherently better (or worse) than another.

I think rape victims are pretty sensitive to stories that feel like they're telling tell them how they *should* feel about their own experience.
 
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Ravioli

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I think rape victims are pretty sensitive to stories that feel like they're telling tell them how they *should* feel about their own experience.

That is the most important and empathetic thing I've read about handling rape victims in a long time.
I'm also sick of authors throwing in prostitutes and rape victims as the angst/tearjerker element if all they want to do is ooze sympathy for those trapped in this cruel, cruel world. Want a dark environment? Throw in beaten and daily-raped sex workers hooked on heroin they were forced to take. And more often than not, I can tell those authors have never, ever had any contact with either issue in real life.

I write about rape as well as hookers, but mostly because sex sells - yes, I am that insensitive and as a person with experience in both areas, I get to be (like black people get to use the n-word). If I want to elicit sadness from a reader, I wage a psychological war on a previously happy, innocent MC who is slowly robbed of all that makes him believe in the good in the world, and then marinaded in his own despair. But I don't need rape as the inciting incident. It's too cheap and too obvious because rape being the one worst thing to happen to someone has become a trope. To some victims though, rape is a mere physical violation no more traumatic than a beating.

Personally, I hate those pity parties and forced feelcopter rides. As with all transgressions against anyone, people need to see how the victims are handling it, and adjust to that rather than demand they handle it in a typical way that is easy for outsiders to grasp. I get just as miffed when people who haven't so much as looked at a real life sex worker, demand all sex workers feel like victims, suffer, and be abused. If one comes along and says she chose that career and actually enjoys it, those outsiders start screeching that this isn't true, so she must be lying and needs help blah blah blah.

These outisders seem to WANT to have a victim to pity. Whatever a person tells you they're feeling, take it for face value no matter how true or untrue - they have their reasons for their claims, respect that and move on.
 

Roxxsmom

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I read fantasy, so I've run across more portrayals of prostitution at the other end of the continuum--lovely (if slightly tacky) houses filled with giggling girls who help the intrepid hero by giving him a place to hide, or nursing him back to health, or maybe even just being a prop that he visits at some time in the story because that's what dudes are supposed to do in that style of world building that has no women that aren't prostitutes, priestesses (if the fantasy gods allow it), or housewives/mothers. No examination at all about why the women ended up being prostitutes, how they feel about it, or what it's like.

Oh, and romance novels, where it's often the "fate worse than death" that our orphaned heroine is faced with, now that she's lost her home (and possibly her virginity).

It's refreshing to run across a prostitute character who is somewhere in between "degraded victim" and "happy hooker" and is a real person.
 
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Ravioli

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I've been a receptionist for hookers (not using the word derogatorily, just that prost..ti..tititut... is so long and awkward) and most worked there by choice, 60% of those enjoyed it for being nymphomaniacs, in love with their own reflection, or whatever. Those who got negative about their job, usually weren't so for reasons essentially different from reasons cashiers start getting grumpy: annoying customers, boring long days, etc.
Actually, only 1 of the girls I've ever worked for, was known to have an abusive pimp and refusing to do anything about it, the other lady's pimp was her cuckold if I got that right, sharing in the earnings but not forcing her to do anything. 2 I knew of, worked there to pay off their kid's education or their dream house as quickly as possible. One wanted to save up enough to convince courts that she should have full custody of her child. Another one just wanted to buy a Ferrari and didn't wanna save up for more than a year. She drove off into the sunset in it after shouting at us the French equivalent of "Booya!".
 

Menyanthana

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Hi, long time lurker, casual poster...

What about other genres though? Mystery or crime for example. If the main story is the investigation of the crime, and say the crime is rape / murder. That sort of story would be unlikely to follow the aftereffects of the victim’s rape, especially if the victim was also murdered. What’s everybody’s opinion in that sort of story situation?

That's simple, I just don't want to read it. Rape investigations don't make for good stories, anyway. The victim knows who did it, the problem is to prove in court that he did it. And there is not much your clever detective can do to help with the latter.

And if you plan to have a murder, why add rape? Does it serve any purpose in the story?
 

The Otter

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The reason I don't generally watch shows like CSI, Criminal Minds and the like is the constant stream of rape, sexual crimes, beatings and tortures. I'm not trying to criticize anyone who does enjoy crime shows, but to me it feels like watching sensationalized rape porn coated with a very thin layer of fake moral outrage. And the victims are almost always women. Watching these shows, you'd think that a woman can't set foot outside her house without being kidnapped and repeatedly raped. And there's often this squicky lingering on their emotional suffering afterward, like when the victims are forced to tearfully testify and relive the horrors, etc.

Men are actually more likely to be the victims of violent crime (when you look at violent crime as a whole) yet it's relatively uncommon to see these type of shows focus on male victims. And when they do, it's usually another man doing the victimizing. I can remember exactly one episode of a crime show (I think it was Law and Order) where a man was raped by a woman, as opposed to the thousands of examples of the reverse. It just gets tiresome.

As a side note: While rape is undeniably a horrible and traumatic thing, I also find the idea that it's "a special kind of evil" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil) or the worst possible thing you can do to a person troubling in its own right. I've even heard people say that it's worse than murder because the victims then have to live with the memories (implying, I suppose, that the victim is better off dead. Gee, how nice). I can't help but wonder how many survivors internalize this cultural attitude and how detrimental it is to the healing process.

Rape is a horrible thing, but it's just one of many horrible and traumatic things that can be done to a person. Our culture just has a weird obsession with women being raped, whether we're sensationalizing it or indulging in moral outrage and painting it as a fate worse than death.

If people must write about rape, I'd like to see more stories where it was part of someone's past but something that didn't define them.
 
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