Rape in fiction

[Wastrel]

Well, there's a reason why rape was once called "fate worse than death". You're dead, and that's that, nobody knows what happens next, you can imagine anything, it could certainly be, you know, better in the afterlife (or at least nor worse. Or nothing at all, whatever)! While there are enough RL cases to know exactly what could happen to a person after being raped, and it's not pretty.

Personally, I don't mind violence, even graphic (although given choice, I'd prefer it to be brief). Deaths, torture, mutilations, etc. just don't hold that inherent perverseness, that establishment of dominance as rape does. For me, it's psychological aspects of rape (as I imagine it) that make it so squicky.

Which makes your reaction so peculiar. It's only the sex bit that distinguishes rape from everything else that goes on in the genre. Being murdered - being tortured - being a slave - being a peasant starving to death because your lord is overtaxing you - these things do not have "inherent perverseness" for you? These things do not "establish dominance"? "I have murdered your wife, your parents, your children; I have burnt down your town, I have tortured and killed your friends; I have taken every one of your possessions and destroyed them all; I have undone every work of your life, and turned your greatest moments to corruption; I have rendered your name as dung and despoiled your memory for future generations; I have inflicted agonies upon you of body and of soul that no man can contemplate and remain sane; and I have bound you to me in the most abject slavery to serve my passing whim from now until your death at my hands" = good clean honest fun, no "domination" established whatsoever; and yet "I got you so drunk you passed out and then I had my way with you in the alleyway before you woke up" = INTOLERABLE PERSERVE ESTABLISHMENT OF DOMINATION NO I CANNOT READ MY EYES THEY BURN NO!!!!!

If that's your personal reaction, fine, but please don't try to pretend that it makes sense!

Name_I_Can't_Read makes an interesting point regarding the outcomes. When it comes to rape, authors are going to be attacked by that certain sector of the readership whatever happens: if a character recovers from rape and seems to act as though it never happened, it is unrealistic and demeaning to women; if they become stronger because of it it is glamourising rape; if they are shattered and never recover it's just misogynistic fantasising. And yet with ordinary violence, all three reactions are legitimate.

[jurble]

We are a race of lovers, manling.

Rape occurred in real life more than it actually does in historical fiction, fantasy, and fiction in general.

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/01/26/13rd-of-women-in-us-military-raped/

http://new.vawnet.org/category/Documents.php?docid=1286

1/3 world-wide as well.

So, really, any medieval-setting book, especially given the fact that rape is probably at its lowest % in history (at least I'm hoping), if it holds back on the rape, it's being unrealistic.

[Imagica]

If that's your personal reaction, fine, but please don't try to pretend that it makes sense!

Erm, I think I've mentioned it's totally personal.

[Returned]

Fanboy: "I hate Dany!"

2nd person: "Why?"

Fanboy: "Cause she's a bitch!"

I really don't want to go off-topic but I really had to comment on this. How do you define if a character is strong or not? Just because she has a slave army in a far-away land at the moment doesn't make her an instant heroine. This is as much bandwagoning on the Dany train as I've ever seen.

On-topic: I think rape can easily cross the lines of reality in works of fiction. I personally find most of the threat of rape and the constant overexaggerated situations in books to be distasteful and bland. It looks like 90% of the time it's to add into the story an illusion of being spicy.

[Eurytus]

Huh, and no one has even got to beginning to explain (if you can) the numerous circumstances of rape in Goodkind's books...

Tairy doesn't write fantasy. He writes important human themes.

[Returned]

Tairy doesn't write fantasy. He writes important human themes.

Right, iirc he was Stalin's greatest nemesis.

[Shryke]

Rape is an Important Human Theme.

[Wastrel]

But you also gave the impression you thought it made sense. And you extended that to bewilderment and disgust at others.

Summary I meant to include in last post: poverty is slavery; slavery is rape.

Regarding Hobb:

Spoiler

The rape of Althea did have a purpose. Two purposes, I think. Firstly, it acted to further alienate Althea - not just the fact she had been raped, but the fact it was Kennit, and that nobody wanted to hear it. Secondly, it acts as the great demonstration of what an unredeemable bastard Kennit is - which a) reminds us, since by that point we're likely to be getting soft on him, and B) brings poignancy to his public perception.

The whole point of Kennit is the way that a man so unrelentingly evil can bring good, and even be perceived as a hero. Accordingly, just as he is about to become The Great Hero of the Novel, we are reminded viscerally that he is the villain. I think the only thing that would have worked as well as that rape would have been a major character murder, and that would not only have cut out a character but would also have seemed out of the blue - whereas the rape is foreshadowed well in advance on both sides (Althea repeatedly having to worry about being raped, and Kennit repeatedly expressing a desire to rape Wintrow, among others), and ties in to Kennit's origins and psychology far more symbolically.

[MinDonner]

But the fact of the matter is, in fantasy the first passage is pretty much common place. I bet a lot of people would even say "That was cool as shit," or "fun cheesiness." Throngor, depending upon his charm, could probably even still be a popular character, even it he didn't feel any regret at all for his actions. But for the second paragraph, that same audience would tear it apart with their fury. "Don't read this perverted trash," or "Anyone who enjoys this is a sick bastard." No fucking way Throngor would have a fan following.

ORLY? You've used paedophilia as your example, which is moving the goalposts somewhat, but certainly at the trashier end of the market, how often do you see Throngor and his ilk having their way with some squirming kitchen wench or haughty princess who hasn't yet realised her true passions for the hero and tries to resist his attentions? Look no further than time-travelling Vikings/Navy SEALs for more of the same.

[Datepalm]

ORLY? You've used paedophilia as your example, which is moving the goalposts somewhat, but certainly at the trashier end of the market, how often do you see Throngor and his ilk having their way with some squirming kitchen wench or haughty princess who hasn't yet realised her true passions for the hero and tries to resist his attentions? Look no further than time-travelling Vikings/Navy SEALs for more of the same.

And while obviously Mileage Varies Lots, people can have a laugh at ridiculous sex and even rape scenes just as we can at ridiculous graphic violence. I don't think either makes for a good book though.

[Poobah]

Modern American prudery, where a nipple on TV is cause for bannination but graphic violence and torture are A-OK?

This.

Noone cares to whine about how mass slaughter, murder and even torture should be used less in fantasy, but some people get their panties in a twist about even consensual sex scenes.

[Humble Asskicker]

how often do you see Throngor and his ilk having their way with some squirming kitchen wench or haughty princess who hasn't yet realised her true passions for the hero and tries to resist his attentions? Look no further than time-travelling Vikings/Navy SEALs for more of the same.

That is a good point.

It's expressing the notion that it's not actually rape because the female just needs a strong man to give them some deep-dicking. It's sort of the James Bond machismo thing there. Which isn't as nearly accepted in Western culture as it once was (still crazy rampant in Japan though).

I was going to argue that it's not exactly the same thing, because the author doesn't think it's actually rape, ultimately, since the heroine will recover as soon as she realizes that this was all for her own good (whereas it's hard to deny that crushing a dude's skull is violence), but it's exactly the same thing. It's ignorance over how people handle violence. It's making violence titillating.

So you're right. I guess, as with everything, it depends on the audience. This thread isn't representative of every demographic's views.

[mormont]

Uh, you may want to read page one again. The reason it's "not clear" is because has nothing to do with the time period and everything to do with the situation.

This would be the 'situation' that left Cersei hurt and bruised after having Robert's attentions forced on her? That certainly has nothing to do with the time period, but it seems pretty clear just the same.

[Morrigan]

No, its not. Rape is rape. It's only illegal by our modern standards. To say nothing of the fact that Robert would get drunk and physically hurt her during sex. And Dany was too young for marriage by the eyes of her own society AND her own brother. :)

I agree that it's technically rape since all non-consensual sex is rape. But sometimes it gets complicated. We know Cersei and how she thinks, and we know she hated Robert and would never want to have sex with him if she could help it. Yet she needed to, as a queen, to produce heirs (that the "heirs" aren't Robert's after all is besides the point of course). That would mean that every single time she had sex with the king, she was raped, since she clearly didn't want it. But that seems a bit of a stretch now to call all of that rape, no? The times Robert drunkenly forced himself on her and physically hurt her are clear-cut, of course. The other times, would we say it was just an unpleasant duty as wife of the king, or actual rape? Maybe both. But it's not that clear-cut in this case.

This case applies to any sort of situation with an arranged marriage where one loathes the other, really. For instance, how about Queen Terez in Last Argument of King?

Was she raped by Jezal, by proxy of Glokta (since Jezal didn't know what was really going on so we can't really call him a rapist now can we... yet he's the one doing the act)? You could argue that, after all. She does not want to have sex with Jezal, especially since she's not even into men. She only does that under coercion by Glokta to protect her imprisoned lady-friend. The coercion does not need to be physical for it to be rape.

So, was Terez raped? And if so, by whom? Jezal (the one who has sex with her and thinks Terez is just willing all of a sudden), or Glokta (the one coercing Terez to fuck the king and produce heirs, or else)?

She does and the scene was very disturbing (Mordred, I think his name was). I actually liked Gwenhyfar very much as a character - her beliefs don't mesh well with mine at all but she was very well drawn and had a lot of depth.

I agree she was a well-written character (from what I remember). But she was so infuriating and despicable that I kind of wanted her to die. Stupid bitch. :P

Btw, I think Mordred is Morgaine's son, not Guen's rapist.

Hobb: I may have missed it because the second half of any Hobb novel is so full of filler that I'm generally skimming by that point, but I don't recall Althea's rape serving any purpose in the story. Also Hobb seemed confused about what she wanted to do with Kennit, as in the end he comes off as this tragic figure, and I guess we're just supposed to forget about his tendency to rape people.

I strongly disagree (and Hobb rules :P), but others have explained the purpose of the scene and the point behind Kennit's character better than I could so I better leave it at that.

This would be the 'situation' that left Cersei hurt and bruised after having Robert's attentions forced on her? That certainly has nothing to do with the time period, but it seems pretty clear just the same.

As said above, this is clearly rape, no argument there. But that's not the "situation" we were talking about. See above.

[Liadin]

I don't think rape is overused in fiction. After all, in real life it happens a lot more than murder, yet murder is more common in fiction. If anything, murder is overused.

Have to disagree with the people who think torture is considered "okay" though. Serious torture scenes tend to wind up burned into my brain and I consider them far more intense/disturbing than rape scenes. Though that may be just because there are a lot of different ways you can torture people, whereas rape is rape.... once you've read a few rape scenes, you'll rarely come across physical acts you haven't seen in rape scenes before. Whereas every other "gritty" author these days seems to come up with a new and horrible way to torture people.

My only issue with rape in fiction is when the psychological effects are done poorly, particularly by a male author (in the case that the victim is female, which usually is the case). When an author has a female virgin raped, then almost immediately receptive to the sexual advances of a "heroic" male character, I want to throw the book across the room. And my blood pressure probably couldn't handle a Rape Is Love bodice-ripper.

[Wastrel]

(I think that what you've noticed there is simply the grammatical conflict between "having non-consentual sex" and "rape". They have, officially, the same meaning, but the latter is transitive and the former is not. If we insist on translating the former to the latter, we are sometimes left with confusing situations where the grammar does not appear to work - where we want to say that somebody was raped, but can't find a rapist, because "rapist" tends to be a negative term implying some failure of character.

An example of this is the stupid husband paradox: a wife is terrified of her husband, because she believes (either from paranoia or with good evidence) that he will become extremely violent, to the point of murder, if she ever displeases him; as a result, she not only agrees to have sex with him when he suggests it, but even acts so enthusiastically as to propose sex on many occasions - because she believes that if she appears recalcitrant or reluctant, he will harm her, and her only chance is to convince him that she loves him and that she is entirely consenting; she believes this sex to be entirely unconsenting and only occurring under extreme duress, and eventually the case comes to court; but the husband believes she was consenting all along, has never realised that she has been frightend of him, and truthfully protests that he has never been violent to her or to anybody else. Is this rape? She believes herself to have not consented, and in terms of the psychological harm to her it is the same as if she truly has not; and yet what exactly has the man done wrong? Normally, 'rape' is the crime of having sex without obtaining consent, but 'consent' cannot only be the symbols of consent, which can be exacted without full knowledge or under duress; hence, we demand that he not only obtain symbolic consent, but must also take reasonable steps to make sure that this consent is real and informed. However, in this paradox, his duty to make sure the consent is real is directly opposed by her (perceived or actual) need to convince him that consent is real - at which point, any amount of effort on his part may be defeated by a sufficiently skilled actress. So it's hard to say what he's done that's as terrible as rape, while equally hard to deny the damage done to her, or the reality (and sometimes reasonableness) of her perception of events.

The paradox arises because we commonly assume several things about consent:

1. There is a difference between real and apparent consent

2. An (adult, sane) individual knows whether their own consent is real or only apparent

3. Rape is a crime/sin/moral error, and as such is the result of malice and/or negligence

4. It is always possible to avoid being negligent, and a reasonable person is not negligent - that is, to say that somebody is willfully or incompetantly negligent, we must believe that they have failed to live up to a reasonable and obtainable standard

5. Consentingly having sex with a non-consenting partner, without having made reasonable attempts to determine whether they are consenting or not, is rape

---

The paradox demonstrates that these five assumptions about rape are not all compatible. We must therefore choose to say that:

1. Consent is consent. Any woman saying "yes" is consenting, even with a gun to her head. (A horrifically callous and legalistic account!)

2. Sometimes we don't know whether we are consenting or not. In this case, the woman THINKS that she is in one situation when she is actually in another, and therefore she thinks she is not consenting but actually she is. (Which rather threatens our whole assumptions about the mind, and about free will)

3. Rape is not a crime, sin or moral error; or, even severe moral error can occur entirely without any personal failing - doing evil is a trick of the fates, not the result of a personal flaw (which rather undermines a lot of our language of moral judgement - it might appeal to the ancient greeks, but a lot of modern readers no longer believe that Oedipus must be damned for his unwitting incest, for instance)

4. Even the most conscientious person can be negligent; indeed, perhaps we are all negligent, all condemnable, all the time (which undermines our notions of responsibility and blame)

5. Rape is not the same as consentingly having sex with a non-consenting partner without having made reasonable attemts to determine whether or not they are consenting (which goes against our ordinary use of languge - after all, if that's not what 'rape' is, what IS rape? And does whether it's technically 'rape' really matter, if this isn't what rape means? Can't this paradox just be rephrased using "consentingly having sex with a non-consenting partner without having made reasonable attemts to determine whether or not they are consenting"?)

All five of these options have been tried (well, I've never actually seen number 2, but I'm sure it's been used by somebody), but none are happy, and it's not clear which is best. I don't think 5 is viable, because of the last point I made there, and all of the other four have big bricks attached.

------

Err... anyway. Sorry about that, didn't mean to hijack the thread THAT much, it's just an interesting question).

[Liadin]

That's interesting, Wastrel, although the sort of situation you posit is almost never seen in fiction. Rape in fantasy is almost always straightforward, violent, and with no question that the woman wants no part of it. I don't think I've ever come across an example of a woman initiating sex although she doesn't want it, then later claiming it was rape.

As far as Cersei, I don't know that we can say whether her sex with Robert was always non-consensual, given that we don't see much of it. She's said she didn't enjoy it (except for the first time, until he said the wrong name), but I suspect she was willing sometimes, if for no other reason than that even Robert would be suspicious if she started having kids without having any sex with him.

[sithren]

I'd still add Deeds of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon to the list - it's very, very creepy, maybe the creepiest rape I've ever encountered, and almost made me throw up. Probably because the author somehow presented it as a " moral victory" of the protagonist or something (don't ask).

Here is Elizabeth Moon's take on that scene:

http://www.paksworld.com/blog/?p=477

I thought it was pretty interesting.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

And truth be told, it disturbs me that both kinds of violence aren't handled with the same respect, that there's even a "fun violence" at all.

So the message I get from this is not that a violation is bad - because most violence is that, yet it is accepted within fantasy - but rather sex itself is bad, and therefore if the violation is sexual then it's all the worse.

This is a good point, but I think it may be incomplete. I would guess that in the West, the proportion of the audience that will have some real life experience with sexual violence (including friends/family/acquaintances who have been victims) is larger than the proportion of the audience that will have some real life experience with nonsexual life-threatening violence (including friends/family/acquaintances who have been victims). See the stats Wastrel was producing re: women in the UK's armed forces. That's way more women being assaulted than seeing combat.

I could be wrong, of course.

[Lady Blackfish]

I don't think rape should be banned from fiction, even modern fiction. It still happens a lot, and those stories are worth being told IMO.

But what I hate is when the trauma of the rape ends up mattering more to, say, the rape victim's boyfriend or something, it's fuel for his vengeance or angst and the victim's own feelings are relatively immaterial. Bleh.

I also hate this pattern I vaguely get in fiction that women (who are more often fictional rape victims than men are) have to suffer first before they can be agent and intense, physically and emotionally. It's not just going on adventures like Eloisa said, it's also being angry. It's just a squicky implication of patterns that only in really awful circumstances, once you're broken, are you allowed to have a valid subrange of human emotions, otherwise it's unwomanly. Bleh.

And I really can't do glamorized or fetishized rape. Anything that carries sincere implications of "Victimization is okay/beautiful", also a bleh. I also have problems with the "Beautiful Damaged Girl" type trope.