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Violence! Rape! Agency! The rapiness that comes before


Kalbear

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I'm back, against my better wishes. I say fuck your privelege because you use it as a blunt instrument, a way to hide from the conversation. Its dishonest. I have, at no point, said that men are not more priveledged, especially white men. My entire argument hinges around the fact that dealing with rape in a more meaningful way, at least according to you, is for you to deal with. I called into question the fact that your argument was based, in the beginning, entirely around the problem of the character being a lesbian, and not that the rape itself was bad. Authors, in my mind, can do as they please when addressing different issues. It is not for you to bludgeon them into it.

That's fine - but it's also not up to them to disallow my criticism of it on certain grounds. And what the heck does 'bludgeon' mean here? I wasn't emailing Joe Abercrombie. I wasn't even aware that he read this board. I was writing my opinion on a message board. If you believe that this is synonymous with a nationwide boycott or something, I think you've seriously overestimated the power of 29k posts.

I need to address this one last point. This is bullshit, Kalbear, and you know it. I did not bring up PTSD and violence and all of that, until after we had questioned why it should matter that it was lesbian rape and not just rape. Please, there was something of an organic flow to the conversation, don't pretend like there was not. Perhaps, in some sense, you are right - the topic did get derailed by discussions about violence. But i call into question anyone that puts their candle forward as being the most important, especially those that assert that it is an ssue that has to be addressed by every author that wants to put it in his book

I disagree. I disagree that it was bullshit. I disagree that you had brought anything to the table other than criticizing other posters. I disagree that you put anything forward other than saying how wrong someone else was. That's what I called you on - that you didn't bring up how important PTSD was, but that you criticized other folks for not prioritizing that over talking about what they were wanting to discuss. And that's derailment and your privilege showing up.

If you have a problem with that, good.

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I'm not really all that interested in all the discussion and such that's gone on in this thread, but I just read an essay that should probably be considered in it.

Writing about Rape by Jim C. Hines

Hines is a SFF author with quite a few books published - most of them on the YA end of things. But he's also a former rape counselor and outreach coordinator for a domestic violence shelter.

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Except he, and others including myself, have called you out for your double standard. Firstly, i want to contest this continued assertion that it's juvenile porn-level treatment. If we are referring to Abercrombie (the original source of ire), the sex is equally as disgusting between Logen and Ferro. With Morgan, in the Steel Remains, Cold Commands, and all of his books to be honest, the sex is more explicite. Personally, i gloss over most of the sex because i'm not really interested in reading it. Much the same as battle scenes do not do much for others. As for battle scenes and violence, i draw you back to when i called out your double standard. Part of what i have been saying from the beginning is that there is no mention made by you that the violence needs to be treated with the same kid gloves and special care as the rape. Soldierly characters are not expected to deal with PTSD for all of the nasty shit they did (i just read a section in my history book about the final fall of Constantinople, which is pretty brutal, as was the fall of Jerusalem), so why should rape be dealt with in more depth? Why the special distinction? In Abercrombies book, i asked why torture and everything else was glossed over while the lesbian rape was a point of hate.

That's a bit silly. Why did the threads titled "Survivor X" only talk about the show "Survivor" but not the show "Big Brother" or "Jersey Shore"? Why, indeed.

I do not remember this issue being addressed, which is what has led me to bowing out of this conversation several times, because it seems that some people have a candle for this issue and cannot fathom it actually working or being useful for narrative purposes. We always gloss over the violence, which today remains a huge problem, but we cannot do it with rape. Why?

So... unless I'm equally outraged at every infraction, I cannot be outraged at a single one?

That's a cliched and old trick, my friend. At least for those of us who've been engaging in discussions about minority groups. What, you want to talk about how black Americans are mistreated? Why aren't you talking about the abuses that women suffer? You're such a hypocrite, to care about the issue that you, well, care about!

And there are many cheap narrative tricks that authors do all of the time to elicit emotion. No writing is perfect, and many times the author is trying to say something else. Your issue is not necessarily his issue, but it does not mean that he cannot draw on things that help to make his job as a writer a little easier.

I'm not seeing anywhere here that makes criticizing the particular usages in particular work not acceptable. Yes, there are cheap tricks used all the time. Yes, the author is trying to get us to a narrative point using this device while not really engaging in the implication of this device. All that is true. How does that de-legitimize our criticism, again?

Another part that has been contentious, and i mentioned this to you before with your hot lesbian comments, is this focus on good looking. You should not have to bring up the fact that they are good looking, rape should be enough.

Wow. Point completely missed.

Listen, rape is a continued and serious problem. I imagine it always will be. But every book that has rape in it need not be a prolonged study of it, nor should it be. Authors should not feel that it has to be, or that they need to address it in further depth simply because some feel that they should.

I don't think that authors should feel obligated to address the human dimensions of rape and sexual violence, if that's not what motivates them to write fictions. Similarly, I am not expecting authors to be talking about race and ethnic divisions in their work if they are not interested in exploring those themes.

However, if an author does include rape, or ethnic divisions, or other current-day social issues, then I do expect them to respect those issues and to do it in such a way that does not come across as exploitative or dismissing. If my options were (1) fictions that feature no ethnic minorities or (2) fictions that have ethnic minorities but they are used in superficial and stereotypical ways, then I'd choose (1). Same with other issues concerning different minority groups. The contention here is whether a particular book is using these issues in a superficial or stereotypical way, or not, and that will depend a lot on the reader's own exposure to the issues and their sensitivity levels.

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I really like that Jim Hines essay! He hits on a couple of issues that tend to bother me when books include scenes of sexual violence. One of the biggest issues for me is when the author minimizes what happened by having the victim look on it as "rough sex".

But in this case, it felt as if the author were the one minimizing. Not only did the victim start thinking about it as sex, but also nobody else in the book ever seemed to acknowledge it as rape. The author presented a violent rape, then brushed it off as no worse than a bad date.

When this happens I start to feel crazy, because it matters to me but not to any of the characters in the book. At this point I have to make a choice: do I keep reading as if I don't really care and put it out of my mind or do I put the book down and move on to something else, where I don't have to divide my mind in this fashion? If it seems like the author doesn't really care or doesn't understand the gravity of what he/she just wrote, then I'm gonna put the book down every time. Also, I guess I'm tired of reading rape scenes from the perspective of the perpetrator or some other guy who is not himself the victim.

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+1 kcf and hines. i had already begun to revise my writerly conceptions of sexual violence because of the abercrombie/moon affair, but that essay is decisive in a napoleonic way.

ETA--

The contention here is whether a particular book is using these issues in a superficial or stereotypical way, or not, and that will depend a lot on the reader's own exposure to the issues and their sensitivity levels.

it's almost as though it were authorial malpractice. much like attorney malpractice, where the lawyer has failed to properly represent a client's interests, so too an author can fail to represent a particularized group's interests. this charge requires an acknowledgement of "group rights," which is somewhat alien to the classical liberal conception of rights, but it's not at all difficult in certain lefty conceptions. the group, it goes, has a right to be properly represented, even in fiction, as by the bye representations, even fictional, can affect the non-fictional outcomes of the group, through indirect influence on attitudes and affects of readers, who act in non-fictional ways on the basis of the attitudes and affects acquired through consciousness production proceeding through the apparatus of fiction. it's not exactly a difficult thesis, though it appears to be controversial enough among those who predictably counter that it's just a fantasy story.

so, i suppose that we should authorize a right of action for professional liability of fiction producers, to wit: the tort of authorial malpractice.

the essential elements of the offense might be (and i am willing to submit to learned amendments):

a ) an author who produces a piece of fiction;

b ) the piece of fiction fails to represent properly a protected group; and

c ) where the impropriety of the misrepresentation or malrepresentation causes damages to the protected group.

the damages would have to be quantifiable. the protected gorup would be defined by statute, but we could easily have it track the standard anti-discrimination statutes (race, color, sex, national origin, religion, disability, age) and the asylum statute (race, nationality, religion, particular social group, political opinion)--might even add in gender, gender identity, transgender status, sexual preference/orientation. might also add crime victim status. okay--maybe not political opinion--let's face it, some political opinions deserve a bit of rigorous interrogation, mine especially.

more interesting than the scope of the right is the scope of the affirmative defense. we are in first amendment territory here, so defenses similar to those found in defamation and privacy law should be available. there likely should be some additional defenses available to authorial malpractice defendants in particular. no idea what they might be.

anyway, once we have the law set up, i'm signing up clients. i take 35% plus costs.

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this charge requires an acknowledgement of "group rights," which is somewhat alien to the classical liberal conception of rights, but it's not at all difficult in certain lefty conceptions. the group, it goes, has a right to be properly represented, even in fiction, as by the bye representations, even fictional, can affect the non-fictional outcomes of the group, through indirect influence on attitudes and affects of readers, who act in non-fictional ways on the basis of the attitudes and affects acquired through consciousness production proceeding through the apparatus of fiction. it's not exactly a difficult thesis, though it appears to be controversial enough among those who predictably counter that it's just a fantasy story.

And not even "just a fantasy story," for we have seen here already several readers rejecting the notion that author(s)' written work has any social or moral obligation at all towards the larger society. They'd argue that if it's within the artistic desire of an author to write a series of books featuring, say, black people as lazy stupid sub-humans who need the white people to guide their lives, then well, these authors owe nobody nothing to refrain.

I'll have to say that they're more right than wrong on this. Still, the concept of "authorial malpractice" is an intriguing one. Send me your newsletter? ;)

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This review of Singh's Immortals made me reflect on something Arthmail has noted - that we do not give the same weight to violence in narrative that we do to sexual assault.

I think the question returns to desensitization but also to metaphor and agency. There is, IMHO, a difference between depictions of war and depictions of torture. Violence offers an avenue for catharsis because soldiers are shown as having some ability to at minimum keep themselves alive or go into death with courage.

Torture, however, makes people incredibly uncomfortable and we even have the word "torture porn". The question might be asked - Do we have a torture culture in the same vein of Do we have a rape culture? I think the answer is that torture culture is not pervasive physically save perhaps for tolerance regarding torture of terrorists, but the idea of stripping layers off people and putting them in their "place" is something we in the West do get off on.

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What scene specifically? I know alot of Outlander fans, I'll see if I can run it by them over the holidays. (tactfully of course, not "So, isn't the book series you really like about a rapist and his stockholm-syndrome suffering victim?")

You ever get any opinion on this form the Outlander fans? Cause this one still blowws my mind.

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That's a bit silly. Why did the threads titled "Survivor X" only talk about the show "Survivor" but not the show "Big Brother" or "Jersey Shore"? Why, indeed.

Are you saying conversation on violence has no place in this thread? It is in the title after all and I am actually surprised that it has gotten so little attention. I would have liked to see some conversation over it. I have watched a family member struggle with PTSD for the last 15 years after being the victim of a horrifically violent act. Hell, how many people a year are the victims of violence? Torture? Pushing this subject to the side as inferior or not as important because you dont personally care about it is pretty insensitive. Violence is easily more prevalent ( alot of it senseless, glorified, or just thrown in to increase teh gritty) in sff and it is completely true that it is glossed over. I just dont get how it isn't a valid topic.

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It is a valid topic, I think TP was more saying conversations simply flow toward certain topics.

Was thinking about Watchmen:

<p><br></p><p>Does anybody buy this idea of the woman falling in love with the guy who tried to rape her? There is no reason for the mother to love the Comedian that I remember.</p>

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Are you saying conversation on violence has no place in this thread? It is in the title after all and I am actually surprised that it has gotten so little attention. I would have liked to see some conversation over it. I have watched a family member struggle with PTSD for the last 15 years after being the victim of a horrifically violent act. Hell, how many people a year are the victims of violence? Torture? Pushing this subject to the side as inferior or not as important because you dont personally care about it is pretty insensitive. Violence is easily more prevalent ( alot of it senseless, glorified, or just thrown in to increase teh gritty) in sff and it is completely true that it is glossed over. I just dont get how it isn't a valid topic.

I think you're missing the context of the argument.

Also, in particular, I haven't "(p)ush(ed) this subject to the side as inferior or not as important", let alone doing it "because (I) dont personally care about it is pretty insensitive." But then, isn't this rather the same accusation that Arthmail was making? So isn't it a bit circular?

By all means, discuss violence, the agency of people suffering from violent acts, and the implications. I'd like to read a good treatise that problematizes violence in the SF/F genre.

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Ask 10 people and you'll get 10 responses

it is comical.

had a feminist legal theory course year ago, and the writings in the "liberal feminist" tradition used agency quite a bit in the senses deployed in this thread (distinguishing the liberals from other traditions). most of the young lawyers and law students in the course initially were thoroughly confused by the usage, and were thinking mostly of agency in its dominant legal significance, which has more or less the opposite meaning:

A person authorized by another (principal) to act for or in place of him; one instructed

with another’s business. Humphries v. Going, D.C.N.C., 59 F.R.D. 583, 587. One who

represents and acts for another under the contract or relation of agency (q.v.). A business

representative, whose function is to bring about, modify, affect, accept performance of, or

terminate contractual obligations between principal and third persons. One who undertakes to

transact some business, or to manage some affair, for another, by the authority and on account of

the latter, and to render an account of it. One who acts for or in place of another by authority

from him; a substitute, a deputy, appointed by principal with power to do the things which

principal may do. One who deals not only with things, as does a servant, but with persons, using

his own discretion as to means, and frequently establishing contractual relations between his

principal and third persons.

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Morrison on rape in comics: http://www.comicsall...m-death-comics/

Good interview. I have not picked up a comic in years, not since i noticed that they had basically cut them in half and nothing was happening.

Anyways, i started the other thread about big name authors hurting the smaller guys partly in response to this thread. While i would not say that i have been wrong in my arguments, i have strongly reconsidered my views in light of some of the reading that i have done. I see the points that have been made, as i saw them before, but i've really tried to look at the problem with fresh eyes. In the end, i think rape can have a place, but it needs to be very carefully considered. Not that authors should self-censor, but...ultimately i think they should ask themselves what the point is. And it most certainly should not be the point of giving a female character a sense of strength or purpose unless it is absolutely vital and is done with due consideration. (All of this has been said by others, but this is now my discovery, so bear with me.)

Many of the articles i have read talk about the fact that female characters have to have some traumatic event to be asskickers. Men often do as well, but for men it usually invovles the death or rape of a female associate, while for the female it usually has to do with the rape of that character. I am reminded of Ellen Ripley and Vasquez from Aliens. They kicked ass without having to rely on these tropes. They were strong, and i am reminded of the many women that i know that are strong without having to have some sort of traumatic event. My wife, my mother, ect. They act and react, not because of trauma, but because they are aware and wish to see things done according to their own plans. Their being human gives them agency.

At this moment i am reminded of the Drow from the Forgotten Realms world setting. If, in a nutshell, you wanted to look at everything wrong with throwing labels out without regard to individuals, the Drow are it. Evil society dominated by black females. Holy shit. Until this very moment, to be honest, i had never really considered how crazy racist/sexist the Drow are. I mean, i still like them...but...that part no longer jives.

In my own writing, i've long struggled with the fact that i am reluctant to have a female POV. Mostly this has to do with the fact that i can only assume that i am going to do it wrong. As a student of history, i've long struggled with the notion of female empowerment in my book as well, because i do not think that a lack of agency historically was due to any one institution, but it was because of a single monolithic reason. Namely, the reason women were considered the lesser sex can be directly related to men. I said to myself, in a world populated by humans, how can men not look to debase women somehow given our own sordid history? Now all of history was not like that, but certainly as soon as the church started to gain power directly following the first Crusade it started to really become entrenched.

Ultimately, however, i have come to recognize that it is fantasy. I have built a world with thousands of years of history, but they are still using swords (though there is a reason for that), the gods do directly affect human affairs, and men or women can shoot fire from their hands. Why cleave to a realistic history that has been badly warped by an alternate world? I mean, even if one assumes that due to genetics women cannot swing a sword as well as a man, she can still burn him to death with a fireball. So how would that change effect the role of women in society? For all of his faults, and for all that his women act like 16 year olds, Rober Jordan addressed the issue fairly well.

I talk often with my wife about my writing, and the problems that i have with it. Not with the writing, but with building a sense of inclusion. As i mentioned in the other thread, i read one time of a fan of Le Guin writing to her and stating that they had cried when they found out that the characters in the Earthsea novels were black. That has stuck with me for years. I have struggled with inclusion in my own writing, namely in that i, probably like many other authors, stick to a conservative view point of fantasy. Being a history minor i have an even harder time of seperating fact and fiction. For all of the magic and the various races, i forgot the point of a single word that defines the entire genre. Fantasy. It can have important themes, and it can transcend many other types of literature, of that i have no doubt. I do not know of any other medium that creates worlds and histories from nothing while still trying to convey important themes and ideas. People that write what is often called simply fiction, can simply say that their characters went to New York. They do not have to describe the city, most people will know it already. If my characters travel to the Euranian capital of Cambriel, bring out the page of descriptions. I think, above all, it makes this genre special. But for all of that, i think we've lost the ability to consider it fantasy when we will do the extraordinary for somet things, and cleave to the ordinary for others.

In the book i am working on (the first book that i think really has a chance of getting published, or so i hope), i've recently started my...fourth draft i believe. Pulling all of these disperate elements together, plot and character and dialogue, can be incredibly tough. I think for people that have never done it they do not realize how tought it is. It is not to say that an author cannot be criticized for bad work, but there is a great deal of sweat and tears that go into a book. In recent weeks, especially thanks to this thread (and the others), i've thought about the problem more and more. It bothered me that i did not have a female character. It bothered me that i had somehow lost the ability to think of the fantastical. I mean, in my books men and women are pretty much equal. There is a reason for it, but even that feels like a cop out now even thought it is direclty linked to the history of the world. I think to myself, why can't they just have agency and not have to explain it?

I have a unique case in my book. One thread of the plot is something of a quest, though not really in the traditional sense, and the other is a murder mystery. On the quest side is one of three main POVs. He is travelling with some others, including the husband of his ex-wife. His ex-wife is a non-POV in the murder mystery thread. But again, there was one main female presence which was a non-POV. And it bothered me. I wanted to put one in, and did not know where, becuase i have been steadily cutting back on the word count in order to tighten the book. Adding full POV to the ex-wife would have increased the word count, which i did not want to do. And i have seen the female POVs of the books that i enjoy, and the female characters in general, and i'm generally appalled. Consider Robert Jordan, for instance. It was the female POVs that ultimately forced me to give up his books. I simply do not know women like that, and i found that i could not relate. How could a woman? Abercrombie, who i am a big fan of, is almost as troublesome. Ferro is a bitch, and while she may be partly a demon, it does not detract from that fact. Bakker...and so on and so on.

And then my main proof reader said simply, make the husband of the ex-wife a woman. The notion of it was brilliant. In my redraft, it has breathed life into a character that i have always struggled to find a voice for (he was, before he became a she, a minor POV character, so the word count has only crept up a few thousand words.).

What does all of this have to do with the previous threads and arguments? Well, as i felt before i feel now. Terez being a lesbian should have had nothing to do with the rape being a problem. The rape should have been a problem on its own. I have found that in rewriting the Wizard and husband character, making him into a her, that i have needed to change very little - and the character has grown considerably from it. Now i hope that it conveys that this character is not a lesbian, but a woman, and while she is relatively inexperienced when it comes to travelling, it has nothing to do with her being a woman. Her agency has nothing to do with her being a woman, and everything to do with her being a strong character.

And for the first time in a long time i am satisifed. She is now just another person wandering the world. And ultimately, i think that is what fantasy needs to start doing. Men and women need to be people, not based on sex, and certainly not based on agency founded only on the threat of sexual violence. (I am not going to go into my thoughts of the linkage between sex and violence any time soon.)

I hope that all makes sense. I have a pounding headache.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Late reply but very good and interesting post Arthmail. As you note, many of the scenes regarding depiction in general are problematic in that the women are typecast.

I think the point I liked best was you noting women in our own lives can be strong and kickass without trauma. As you note, SFF is a place to break stereotypes and let us think of a different world.

Admittedly, I returned and realized I hadn't seen your post in the midst of posting this review of The Wild Girls, which I admittedly have not read, that talks about depiction of misogynistic societies:

http://www.alexdallymacfarlane.com/2012/02/the-wild-girls-thoughts-about-passion/

So there is a bit of irony in that this book by Le Guin actually returns to the depiction of women as marginalized, but the review made it clear that the manner in which this was done is what made her like the book.

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Was thinking about Watchmen:

<p><br></p><p>Does anybody buy this idea of the woman falling in love with the guy who tried to rape her? There is no reason for the mother to love the Comedian that I remember.</p>

How did you figure she was in love with him? That's not how I read it at all.

Is it so odd that the original Spectre, with 30 years to put things in perspective, may see the Comedian as more than just her rapist?

Is it her duty as a victim to hate every aspect of him forever? Can't she move on?

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