That certain age and rape
The odd thing about writing fiction is that you're constantly trying to put meaning to a world that you made up, events you created, and yet because you're digging around in your subconscious you find universal truths without realizing it. Today I read about the horrible events in Steubenville, where a young girl was carried dead drunk party to party and repeatedly raped. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a mother of young writer in Alpha. She'd been horrified that the book her child had read contained a rape scene and came to me and did a "isn't this bad, writers shouldn't put this in books for teenagers."
The problem was I had a book coming out with an attempted rape.
So here I am, face to face, with an upset mother.
So I considered for a minute and tried to explain to her why, no, I didn't agree with her and it forced me to think about my decisions in what I wrote and why. This is what I said to her:
I think it's important that when rape appears in fiction, that the characters who are presented as good and noble people - the heroes of the story - react with horror. If the characters react with negatively, then the reader learns through their emotions that this action is wrong, and shouldn't be brush aside, or is in any way okay.
My character was a young woman who is experiencing her first dating experience. She is going out with a person she has known for a long time and thinks is a good, trustworthy person. Up to the point when he attempts to force her into sex, she would have trusted him with her life. By putting this into a story, I hope to warn young girls that men can seem to be a good person, claim that they love the girl, and still do something totally wrong. The girl are not doing something wrong by trusting this person, they think they're safe because this man seems good. Its not their fault that the man betrays their trust in them, that man is at fault. By having all my characters react as if the man is at fault, then the reader gets this reinforced lesson that rape is bad, that the victim isn't guilty, that the rapist is the wrong that they betrayed the girl's trust.
I added in that while I was growing up, the stories I read had this weird cutoff point. There were the stories about mild crushes, where the characters would pass notes in class and "go out" but rarely even did more than hold hands. They served as guideposts for our first romances. And then there were the adult romances, where everyone already had sex some time in their shadowy past, but the focus is now on this one love affair of non-virgins. There were no stories where the woman finds herself for the first time alone in a room with a man and he wants to have sex. There were no guideposts on how you quickly decide what you want in your heart of hearts. There's no advice on how you get a half-naked man out of your home. And certainly, nothing about having to face him a few days later, as you try to figure out what happened late at night, while the lights were out, and you were scared.
The problem was I had a book coming out with an attempted rape.
So here I am, face to face, with an upset mother.
So I considered for a minute and tried to explain to her why, no, I didn't agree with her and it forced me to think about my decisions in what I wrote and why. This is what I said to her:
I think it's important that when rape appears in fiction, that the characters who are presented as good and noble people - the heroes of the story - react with horror. If the characters react with negatively, then the reader learns through their emotions that this action is wrong, and shouldn't be brush aside, or is in any way okay.
My character was a young woman who is experiencing her first dating experience. She is going out with a person she has known for a long time and thinks is a good, trustworthy person. Up to the point when he attempts to force her into sex, she would have trusted him with her life. By putting this into a story, I hope to warn young girls that men can seem to be a good person, claim that they love the girl, and still do something totally wrong. The girl are not doing something wrong by trusting this person, they think they're safe because this man seems good. Its not their fault that the man betrays their trust in them, that man is at fault. By having all my characters react as if the man is at fault, then the reader gets this reinforced lesson that rape is bad, that the victim isn't guilty, that the rapist is the wrong that they betrayed the girl's trust.
I added in that while I was growing up, the stories I read had this weird cutoff point. There were the stories about mild crushes, where the characters would pass notes in class and "go out" but rarely even did more than hold hands. They served as guideposts for our first romances. And then there were the adult romances, where everyone already had sex some time in their shadowy past, but the focus is now on this one love affair of non-virgins. There were no stories where the woman finds herself for the first time alone in a room with a man and he wants to have sex. There were no guideposts on how you quickly decide what you want in your heart of hearts. There's no advice on how you get a half-naked man out of your home. And certainly, nothing about having to face him a few days later, as you try to figure out what happened late at night, while the lights were out, and you were scared.