I’m really goddamn tired of the way themes like abuse, rape, and pregnancy have become...

I’m really goddamn tired of the way themes like abuse, rape, and pregnancy have become writer’s lazy shorthand to avoid having to actually put in any work in the characterization and backstory of female characters–as though you can just slap on the title of Rape Survivor and have all you need to know about a character. It’s like modern day stock characters.

Let’s not even get into the way it reduces women’s identities to what happens TO them as opposed to what they DO, because honestly we could go down that rabbit hole for HOURS. No, lets talk about how it normalizes violence against women, how there is such a horrific lack of female characters who haven’t suffered some kind of sexual abuse for the sake of “character development” or worse–motivating the male main character’s revenge arc.

Let’s talk about the fact that I am not now, nor have I EVER been defined by my abuse. Let’s talk about the fact that women are PEOPLE, and that you can’t just pull an Abuse Victim ™ out of your writer’s drawer and be done with it. The number of women who have suffered rape and sexual assault is a fraction that gets scarier and scarier every year, but if you look around you, you will still see people–human beings–living their lives in beautiful, terrible, diverse ways that have nothing to do with their abuse.

I am 100% sick of seeing rape used as a plot device. But worse than the way it’s used as a plot device, I am literally revolted by the way it’s used as a defining trait. I can’t turn on my television without seeing women in situations of domestic abuse, of sexual assault–without seeing women literally dead in dumpsters. And these female characters aren’t even given the decency of an actual personality. They’re all just Victims.

I am sick of the social narrative that sees women as nothing but their own abuse.