Rape and "Realism"

[the_moonmoth]

Via giandujakiss, here is an excellent blog post about the (over)use of rape/sexual assault in fiction, and the complete logical fallacy that is the argument "but it's realistic!"

The Rape of James Bond

[Excerpt - cut for triggers]Excerpt:

You can have the victims and potential victims refer to [rape]. Not necessarily at great length or in much detail - if it’s such a huge presence

Comments

[the_moonmoth]

It'd be terrible to pretend like the threat of rape was non-existent. But... at some point, we get it. We fucking get it. I don't need it every other chapter. And I don't feel like I need to be grateful or thankful to someone with as much privilege as GRRM for tellin' it like it is.

This a thousand times. It's one thing to be gritty and "realistic" (which in fact the article very neatly debunks anyway), but it's another thing altogether to have rape referenced, implied, threatened, joked about and actually committed so often that it becomes normalising. That is something seriously bad and wrong, and I will never admire GRRM as much as part of me would like to because he just cannot apply a critical eye to this aspect of his work, refuses to even acknowledge that there could be a problem, and worse, insults the intelligence and reading ability of those who argue there is.

And I'd like to talk about her strengths and personality rather than her history of abuse, which happens A LOT.

Yes, exactly this (again). A victim is more than the act that was done to them - treating them as such is reductive and dehumanising, and again gives the man who perpetrated the crime more prominence in the determination of the woman's fate than the woman herself. Which is just so misogynistic. TBH I don't even like the word 'victim', but prefer 'survivor', because of all the connotations that go with the former.