WTAF Is Wrong With You?
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Sometimes I feel the need to abandon my usually refined demeanor to ask a simple question.
What the ACTUAL FUCK is wrong with people?
For those with no link-clicking interest, let me summarize. Someone asked Seanan McGuire when one of the (female) characters in her books was “finally” going to be raped.
I’ll leave you with that for a moment. Let it marinade your brain. Let the word “finally”, the inevitable, the given, the anticipation, stew for a second.
I want to state that I’m not making judgement calls about what anyone chooses to read. If you enjoy something, and you’re not hurting someone with it, go for it. But that’s not at all what this question was about. The person asking in this instance went on to say that it was unrealistic of Ms. McGuire to not write one of her characters being raped. While the estimate that one in six women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime is a pretty stark case for some form of sexual violence taking place in even the altered version of the world she writes about, that doesn’t mean ANY of the following things are also true:
That Ms. McGuire must show any character becoming the victim of sexual assault
That she’s not being true to her readership by not writing about the sexual assault of one of her characters
The the questioner, who also made suggestions about how such events could occur in the course of one of Ms. McGuire’s books has ANY right to dictate what she does or does not write about
And I think, most of all
That the way to bring down, or humanize, or punish, or strengthen, or build up a female protagonist is to “finally” write her rape
Rape and other forms of sexual violence aren’t shorthand for character development. They aren’t a convenient way to get yourself out of a corner you wrote yourself into. They are not, in fact, the “Then, suddenly, ninjas!” of the character landscape. Character growth occurs when a character understands something new about their situation. Sure, that can be spurred by overcoming a terrible event and moving forward as a changed person. I like reading about survivors, and in fact, my own personal taste runs to well-written survivor stories, when I find them. I can understand wanting to draw upon the strength portrayed by a favourite character, wanting to see inspiration in the face of horror.
What I refuse to accept is the idea that someone’s personal journey is inevitable simply because of their gender, as though there’s some checklist for female characters. “Hit puberty: check. Fall in love: check. Finally get raped: check.”
Bullshit.
Writers are going to write the stories that work for them, hoping they connect with other people. There’s a depressingly large group of readers (and writers) for whom sexual assault was or is a reality. Some of them never want to think about it again, some of them want or need to read (or write) about overcoming it, and there are a thousand shades of emotional response sandwiched in between those two. I won’t argue for either side, because all of it is valid, and right, and necessary for the person living that life.
But you can be damn sure that if you think the word “finally” applies to any character’s sexual assault, I want nothing to do with you.
