Rape in literature (warning may be triggering)

[careyjones]

Hi there, first off I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Carey and I'm 21 and just getting into feminism and found these wonderful boards.

I'm hoping to get some feedback from some of the more seasoned feminists on here, (but any opinion is helpful!)

My friend is writing a book...and in the book he includes a section about rape. The basic premise of the book is set in a futuristic world, where people get 'scored' for how well they play by the systems rules, how attractive they are, how many girls they can get. Its supposed to be a dystopian novel and he writes it very well and its funny and intelligent. In the section that I am talking about, he is introducing a character who 'one day realised he was a rapist'.

Now, he writes in quite a surreal way, and he is clearly not painting this rapist character as a sympathetic character at all. But there is something about it that just doesnt sit right with me. And i'm not sure what it is. I have tried to talk to him about it, but I really am quite new to these topics and can't quite seem to articulate what exactly I find uncomfortable about it.

He is a feminist. His mum and his sister were both raped...so he is not some sort of rape apologist.

He said his motivation for writing the rape scene was because he wanted to delve deeper into the MIND of the rapist, as even if we see them as 'evil' people (they do indeed to evil things) they are still people. He wanted to humanise them. Not excuse what they did but understand. And also to show how messed up the society had become, that things like this could happen.

I think my main problems in the scene were

1. the absence of any female voice. I think its very important to have the voice of the rapist to understand them...but having nothing from the girl...seems oppressive and not constructive. Unless he is deliberately trying to prove this point. In which case he needs to be more obvious.

1. The idea of 'stranger rape' in an alley way....whereas actually women are raped more often than not by friends or people who know them.

But there may be more. I don't know.

I want to be able to give him constructive criticisms on it...because i think it is so so so important to deal with these issues in the best way possible. We live in a society where rape joke are rife and politicians talk ridiculously about 'good rape and bad rape' so if we have the smallest chance to make a difference through literature/art/politics I think we should do our best to take it.

I'd like to post the excerpt (my friend wont mind, he has told me I can show it to as many people as I want to discuss it...he wants to make it good) I will post it in the next post and I would love,love,love to hear peoples opinions on it.

Beware it is quite descriptive of the rape, so if you are upset by thing like this you may not want to read on.

Oooh excellent Elephants! 'Identifying patriarchy as a socially conditioned belief system masquerading as nature, Millett demonstrates in detail how its attitudes and systems penetrate literature, philosophy, psychology, and politics.' That sounds PERFECT.

Sorry, I hope nobody thought I was suggesting that any of my proposals would make him a suitable candidate to be writing about this; clearly he is very far from that. I was chiming with all those who say that he really needs an awakening, and it will require him to work, to listen to other voices, and to humble himself. Not to look for it within his own head.

I'm sorry but there is something about this that I find very disturbing. I also think you motives are questionable.

Sorry you feel this way memoo. Maybe I will delete the excerpt...I really don't want to cause offense to anyone.

How does one delete posts here? Was having a look and can't see an edit/delete button like most forums.

You click 'report', which is in the blue bar above the post, to the right-hand side.

I can see why you want to help your friend. But I do find it difficult too - you're very defensive of his literary ability, you seen keen that he should continue this project. To be honest, the more I think about this, the more I feel that really, the response he needs to hear is 'no, please stop writing this, it is offensive and ill-informed and harmful'.

You know, if he wants to help fight rape culture in his writing, he could write a book where the main characters/most of the characters are women and they are not just there as something to rape OR to have sex with.

Women are human, is the message that too often gets missed.

If your friend wants to write a near-future dystopian novel, then he could do with reading more of the canon. Margaret Atwood deals with similar subject matter in her "Flood" trilogy, and writes very intelligently and empathically.

The 'Hardboiled' style displayed in your excerpt is all a bit old hat now. Alice Sheldon was doing it in the early '70's.

That is a really good idea Elephants.

Thank you thank you thank you. All of you. I will click report on the excerpt and encourage anyone who is offended to do the same.

The only reason I am defensive of his writing is because I am very close to him and obviously this clouds my judgment. :) He does actually have a very strong female character who is not there as a sex object or a rape victim and she is very well developed. I think he could have more though.

To be honest I agree that the rape part should either be deleted immediately from the rest of the book (it really isn't vital for the plot, in fact the rapist is only mentioned once in the rest of the book so at the moment it just feel superfluous and harmful) or it should be developed on for a very long time in order to make it actually exposing something to do with rape culture as opposed to feeding it.

'People get scored... by how many girls they get'

It sounds like the entire premise of the book is pretty anti-women tbh, I appreciate your friend wants to think of himself as a feminist but it doesn't seem that he prioritises this in his writing project IMO.

The rape scene could be used really powerfully as a critique of the whole culture the protagonist is living in rather than an almost expected add-on.

I also feel that the term 'rapist' is fetishised by the way the writer places an importance on the character self-identifies as one.

And what lots of others have said about how rape is always about power, not love or desire in a sexual way. I think it comes across as a bit self-indulgent and creepy in a porny way to represent him as doing it because he is surrounded by beautiful women with whom he doesn't stand a chance. This might piss off most normal less-than-attractive men, but they don't then go around raping strangers.

Oh and also the stranger-rape thing both buys into rape myths and also serves to dehumanise the woman. She should be allowed to have a character, even if he wants for narrative purposes to keep her a stranger to him, he should give her a back story to make her more real.

I mostly think that he's missed an opportunity to use the scene to really dig deep into the culture of the narrative though, and it would work better if she was a known character - perhaps as a woman who becomes successful and therefore a threat to him? It needs to be a strong part of the narrative the effect on her, otherwise by default it makes both the act of rape and her relatively unimportant.

Yeah - more than one female character. My real point though is that most writers/scriptwriters make characters male by default. Characters are only made female if they need to be so that some bloke can put his cock in her. So plenty of female characters (who have names, and speak to each other about things other than a man) who don't have sex at all in the course of the story. Maybe their connection with the plot is through their work? Maybe they drink in the same bar? Maybe their personal development is part of the plot. You know, like the way male characters are treated.

"People get scored... by how many girls they get' "

People meaning men. Because "girls" aren't people.

I would suggest he reads this book

Among others, one of the probs I have with it, is that rapists on the whole, don't consider themselves rapists.

Not only that, their victims don't consider them rapists. They tie themselves in knots trying to pretend that because they didn't say No, because they didn't fight, because they didn't act like WonderWoman, it couldn't have been rape and actually if only they'd been a bit clearer about their unwillingness to have sex, the man wouldn't have penetrated them when they didn't want him to.

Rapists think all men are rapists and other men are just being politically correct by pretending not to be.

Here's another couple of sites that might give him some insight:

What men can do

the rapist checklist

The myth of no

Hope some of that helps.

Why does he want to humanise rapists?

Why do you want to be friends with a man who wants to humanise rapists?

Apart from that if I was going to pick out one thing that's incredibly problematic in this piece of writing it's that he sees rape as something that happens to men - "fate" or "he woke up to the face and body of a rapist". Well, no. Raping women is a choice some men make. They think they have a right to. They think they are entitled to do so.

I think you should tell him his writing isn't very good and he should give it up. The world really doesn't need one more misogynistic male writer.

Also this:

"One dark, horny day"

Snoopy was a better writer.

Hugo Goatee summarises some of the key points from up thread, stuff that bothered me about the passage and your preamble to it. Why does a "rape scene" have to be added at all? Does he think it's expected, a short cut to commercial success? If a major premise of the story is that success of characters (male) is determined by how many women they "possess," then the whole story would seem to be built on misogynist foundations.

There was something else in the narrative you posted that didn't ring true even of really crap descriptions of rape. It actually describes rape as rape, throughout. Most men who rape don't see what they do as raping. Men rarely use the word rape when discussing rape with other men, especially when they are talking about their own actions or those of the men they are talking to. Unless in this futuristic world the word "rape" has a totally different connotation, it wouldn't be being used by men discussing rape.

While rape mythology tells us that rapists are evil, deviant monsters, most men who rape don't look, think, talk or behave substantially different than alot of men who most folks would consider to be "pretty normal men." If by trying to "humanise" the rapist, the author wanted to demonstrate this fact, I could see the point, but I'm not getting the sense that's what he meant.

Yes the lack of choice that is implied in the rapist's actions, is very misguided.

Also apart from anything else, he didn't humanise the rapist for me because I didn't believe him. I just didn't buy his thought processes. Rapists do not feel "driven" to rape their victims, they don't feel unhappy about having to go through with it, they don't wish it was more romantic. The very fact that the woman doesn't want them there, is what turns them on- if she was positive or enthusiastic, they'd be horrified, that's not what rapists want, they want that feeling of power of being able to control a woman to the extent of entering her body when she doesn't want them to. It's purely the power. Similar to men who visit prostitutes, or lapdancers and describe the handing over money at the end, as the real buzz - that counting it out and lording it for services rendered. It's not about sex, it's about power.

Yes rapists feel good about what they've done. It gives them confidence.

...As an update of the situation, saw him this evening (he's my flatemate) and pretty much told him everything on this thread over dinner.

It wasn't easy for him to hear I think, but he really appreciated it and it really made him think, and he has agreed to take the rape scene out.

He was quite disturbed by everything I said and he is thinking about writing more strong female characters. He fully took everything on board, wrote all the points down and said he was very thankful that I had taken the time to look into it, research and tell him what I/we thought.

I read him the rape culture 101 post and we had a really good long discussion about it, I think it was a very healthy thing for us both to read, and we talked a lot about peoples attitudes to rape, and male attitudes to rape victims.

Honestly this is only a first draft. I do actually think he does have a good talent for the project he is taking on, and this excerpt I posted really does NOT best exemplify his style. And yes the whole idea of the 'point scoring for the amount of women you get with' system is inherently misogynistic but that is made very very very obvious. The whole story is based on some people trying desperately to escape the misogynistic dystopian system they are in.

Thank you so so so much to everyone who helped me with this. I am so grateful to everyone who posted their opinion and who posted the awesome links, and I'm so happy that I actually got to have an awesome conversation about it with my flatmate.

And you know...if he ever does make this book into something awesome and it gets published then we will have the satisfaction of knowing we stopped it from being just another rape apologist, misogynistic piece of poo. :)

Thank you all.

i meant to post this last night, thought I had done, v useful meet the predators

I hope he's able to pay the rent whilst he's writing his novel.

Thanks eleanor thats great :)

Thank you, Eleanor -- that was really interesting