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.

Thunderbolts...I'm not sure why you wrote that as it had nothing to do with the thread.

I thought it was a fair comment actually - it does kind of matter that your mate doesn't think this is a great moneyspinner and end up selling out women in the hope of writing something 'edgy' and getting some cash.

Frankly it was a kinder comment than might have been made, as it did to be honest occur to me that I hoped he maybe wouldn't have means to support himself while writing - it'd I think be better if he were in a less isolated job so he could maybe get more real-life experience of women.

he doesn't need to write "more 'strong female characters'". he needs to write female characters who are interesting, complex, believable human beings. the 'strong female character' is an unhelpful and essentially sexist cliche, no better than portraying all female characters as weak and/or sexual objects.

I wrote it because he's getting you to act as his female cheerleader and also as his literary support (it's not your job to stop him writing a misogynist book, it's his responsbility not to do something like that) so I'm hoping he's not exploiting you in more material ways too.

You know if you have to stop him writing misogyny, then maybe you should examine the fact that your flatmate is a misogynist.

Is he attempting to 'humanize' lynch mobs who terrorise black people, in this novel too? Or people who beat up homosexuals?

Ask him if he thinks Nabokov's 'Lolita' ia a literary classic, or a piece of misogynistic crap - if he answers the former he is not ready to write about rape in a way that will not be offensive and misogynistic.

There are very very few male writers who seem to be able to write about rape without being crass, offensive and misogynistic - so he is in 'stellar' company.

Has your mate read Irvine Welsh's 'Maribou Stork Nightmares', carey?

Listen. I asked a question. it was answered. I am not acting like a female cheerleader. I DONT need your advice in regards to anything other than I asked. Especially when it isn't really advice, it's just thinly veiled bitchery.

I am deleting my account and again, sorry if I offended any of you but there is really no need to go jumping down my neck/insulting my flatmate, insinuating that he is some sort of low life misogynist that is exploiting me.

We are just people. As I already stated I DON'T KNOW THAT MUCH ABOUT FEMINISM. And NEITHER DOES HE.

I was ASKING for help. He is not an evil person - he wrote about something that he had no right to be writing about, yes. He understands that now.

I dont appreciate his character being attacked. He is one of my best friends and I love him very much.

Lets drop it now.

I'm Sorry you feel you have to delete your account carey, have you had some nasty pm's too?

I've read some of the nasty comments some were worse than others, the most disgusting was insinuatiing that the poster was befriending someone who wants to glorify rapists, there are other gems in there.

And I've seen this gang mentality all too often, its interesting how as a group who stands for respect and tolerance seem to poach out and antagonise , twist the words of anyone who is different to them to the point where it mirrors an abusive predatory partner, I'm sure the sheep are going to explode at that ,
but I've noticed this before and so have other posters.

You can lose your temper Carey but the fact is that this guy was promoting rape myths and you posted them here. Rape isn't some abstract thing, it actually happens - men do it to women. And men who promote rape myths are supporting rapists. We don't have to be tactful around men who do things like this, they need calling out and challenging. What he did does actually reveal something about his character and attitudes, whether you like it or not.

Why are you doing all this work for him, to try and make him into a better person and his writing better? I think the fact that you've gone on the defensive here, is because you don't want to look at the dynamic of this situation. Whatever you've heard, feminism isn't about making men better people, it's about stopping male harm to women. Promoting rape myths is part of male harm to women. If you really are interested in feminism you'll ask yourself why your flatmate was doing that.

If your flatmate was writing race hate and calling it literature would you get upset if we pointed out he was a racist?

The OP asked for feedback on the excerpt from her friend's book ideas on how to explain why it perpetuated dangerous stereotypes and rape myths. She got the feedback and by the looks of it, she took it on board, talked with the friend, he recognised the passage was deeply wrong and why and it also sounds like the feedback helped both to shift their understanding of the issue. That seems like a positive outcome.

To be fair though, she didn't solicit opinions on her domestic arrangements, financial set up or friendship with the guy, so I can understand why she found comments in that vein unhelpful and even hurtful.

However difficultimes, I don't get why you seem to be milking this. A couple of people straying over the mark does not constitute a gang mentality. It sounds like you're bringing a grudge from elsewhere onto this thread which frankly, isn't going to help the OP or anyone else.

There's a deeper dynamic at work here and it would be wrong not to point it out.

It isn't women's job to make misogynistic men their project and make them better people, although men historically have always demanded that of women.

Not only is Carey trying to stop her flatmate being a misogynist, she's expecting the feminists here to help her with that work. Where's his responsiblity in all this?

Black people don't generally get all offended on behalf of their racist white friend, so why do some women get offended on behalf of the misogynistic men in their lives?

But the thing is The Feminists aren't some sort of public service/sounding board/think tank/opinion poll who are sitting here for people to come along and get things from.

If you come here and post you will get people's reactions as separate individuals who comment as real people with real life reactions.

You did make your request politely and you posted trigger warnings which was good. I'm afraid from then on you can't control the way a thread is going to go - or the reactions you are going to get.

You say that neither you or your mate know much about feminism - that is fair enough and I can see why the reaction you got here may seem a bit rough to you. I would venture that that is because you are maybe not used to spaces in which feminists hang out - you bumped into the Overton Window because it wasn't where you are used to it being.

An example. We once had a bloke come on here and nicely and politely ask that we helped him understand why porn was a bad thing so that he could stop using it (I am not comparing your friend to a porn user BTW). Well, he pretty much got a roasting (natch). There were lots of posters who didn't see why though. They thought the nasty feminists were being most unhelpful and doing themselves and 'their cause' no good by not doing what was asked of them.

There were various reasons put forward for why feminist posters didn't want to do what was asked of them - one of them being that it isn't our 'job' or 'duty' to educate this person and that if he really wanted to do something it would be much more effective and honest for him to stop asking the laydeez to pick up and launder his socks for him and do it himself (novel idea eh!).

Questions like this, and the task set by your mate, come across as acting a bit entitled. Feminists are quite good at spotting entitled behaviour and they tend to call people on it - which can come as a nasty surprise to the person who is acting entitled because they, well, they think they are entitled. And in the rest of the world AKA as patriarchy, they are. And they are used to this.

IMO your friend (who is no doubt very nice) is acting entitled. To make matters worse it would appear that he added 'injury to insult' by having written not very well about rape/male violence - a subject that feminists are tired of seeing treated/dealt with poorly by people (and it doesn't really matter how nice the person is).

I use race analogies quite a lot in feminist discussion - indeed the race analogy came up on the porn thread.

Would it be considered crass for a white person of privilege to ask a black friend to go on a forum where (predominately) black people discussed racial issues, and ask them to provide a critique of a not very sensitively written narrative that was all about a violent racist person's self-discovery and exploration of how their racial violence made them feel?

Especially if the writing was inadvertently racist and full of stereotype and cliché and racial myths (the sort of stereotype, cliché and that the people on the forum spent time and energy challenging and had seen about a million times in books by white people)?

I say yes. What say you?

Your mate should have come and got roasted himself . (I'm guessing you two thought it would be more appropriate to get a woman to do it though and that you meant well).

Ah I see I have Xposted with a few others!

I will now go and read. I wonder if our reactions are similar? And I wonder if that is because we are unthinking sheep or because we are women who try to think outside the patriarchal box?

Carey also has had the offending piece of work deleted.

I'd agree with everything you said there Beachcomber, but I would dispute that this piece was merely insensitvely written. It was pure rape myth promotion.

Perhaps - I didn't read it (thankfully, I lost years of my life reading misogynistic books when I did Eng Lit at uni.)

I think pretty well everyone agrees that the passage (now deleted) was awful and the way it was written most definitely perpetuated rape myths. That's one of the problems with rape myths though. They are so ingrained in popular culture that folks often don't even see them as odd, let alone dangerous. I think there are many people who perpetuate them almost without even thinking, but the aim has got to be to get them to think, like seriously think. That's what I believe most of the feedback did.

I also got the sense that the OP wasn't just coming here to do the "dirty work" for her mate. I got the sense that she felt instinctively that something was wrong about the passage, but couldn't quite articulate where that feeling was coming from or what it was that was wrong. She stated that she was pretty new to feminism, so that piecing bits together is often part of that phase. So if she took away some different perspectives to mull over that well move her along a path of understanding, that's got to be a win. If her friend took the stuff on board and is re-examining his presumptions or at least filling in the blanks in his ignorance, that's a bonus as well surely.

Men aren't ignorant about rape. Men who promote rape myths aren't ignorant about rape.

It's a comforting thought that "he didn't really mean it" but that doesn't make it true. If this guy has managed to disguise his misogyny to write another day that isn't actually a bonus for women.

Rape and it's mythologising isn't caused by ignorance, it's caused by men believing they have a right to do it, or that other men have the right to do it.

Also in a discussion about rape the only person who Carey has named as a victim is her flatmate:

"he is a victim of misinformation about rape from the society we live in"

As we're doing literary and feminist analysis here, that is a little worrying.

Thinly veiled bitchery?

I'm so sorry. That was never my intention. I was going for blunt, open attack on the revolting piece of poorly written rape fantasy your friend wrote.

That is the only response to what he wrote. I am sorry you can't see it. I'm sorry you have been sucked into this horrible situation where you feel he is a 'victim', not the women whose suffering he is exploiting. I really, really hope that some of what we are saying will sink, if not now then in the future.

The reason I'm not keen to go softly-softly and offer your mate nice advice on how to write better rape fantasy is that it is repellent and offensive and damaging. There are sometimes reasons for us to post gently and kindly, but this is not one of them.

However difficultimes, I don't get why you seem to be milking this. A couple of people straying over the mark does not constitute a gang mentality. It sounds like you're bringing a grudge from elsewhere onto this thread which frankly, isn't going to help the OP or anyone else.

When I see bullying behaviour I call people on it, its not milking its presenting things as they are. She obviously had some concerns or she wouldn't have posted here. Some posts are being very attacking to her , which is not on at all.
The problem is it isnt a 'few posters' I've only read a few coherant posts. So yes, by definition the majority being unkind to one person is a gang mentality.

No. Gang mentality is going along with peers even if you dont agree with what they are saying/doing to ensure that you continue to benefit from being 'in the gang'.

It does not apply to people having similar opinions

Maybe not, but several people behaving in an aggressive manner towards one person is.