March 31st, 2008
by
Naamenblog
I want to preface this by saying that rape is a very complex issue and I don’t/nor have I ever claimed to know everything about the subject. This is merely my experiences and opinions.
A recent book got me thinking about the idea of rape in SF/F. In most cases I find rape in SF/F (and in literature in general) is written to be exploitative, graphic, titillating, offensive and positioned to be pleasing to the male gaze. But what I want to talk about is that odd sub-genre (though I hesitate to name it a genre) within SF/F which are the Rape-and-Revenge stories (more prevalent in Fantasy but it’s in Sci-Fi as well). For a lot of us who were searching out female protagonists in our youth these were some of the first stories we ran across.
The basic story ran that a young woman, maybe trained as a warrior, maybe not but generally a peaceful kind of woman, was attacked by a) a group of bandits, b) a rival family, c) a religious group prejudiced against women warriors or some combination/mish-mash of the three. We either came into the story right before the rape and then it faded to black for the actual act or we came in right afterwards. Either way the woman is now completely changed (there might even be a vow of future celibacy in there somewhere) and out raring for revenge because it’s the only thing that will heal her. She goes and runs into a few obstacles, she might get a female compatriot who’s been wronged by the same group though probably not raped or alternately a male companion who ends up helping her get revenge and healing her of all her hurts and eventually tentatively starting a relationship.
Now there are multiple problems with the scenario. In this post I’m going to try and deal a little with the popularity of such stories and their repercussions. I’m only going to lightly touch on most things because really, there’s enough here for a 100 page research paper. And this is not to say that rape cannot be written about in an intelligent and non-titillating matter, this is to say that for the most part in mainstream media it’s not treated in such a way.
But I’m not going to lie there are some R&R stories that I really liked growing up including the Tarma & Kethry stories by Mercedes Lackey.
There is a place for this fiction and way to do it right, to educate and address rape and its repercussions, but I want to talk about the overwhelming popularity this type of story once had and still in some sections of the SF/F community still holds.
First why, why was this story line so prevalent when female protagonists started to become more popular? No one can really say for sure but I think it goes back to fundamental stereotypical ideas of women as homemakers, peacemakers, and caretakers with not a violent or angry bone in their body. To so many minds the idea of a woman fighting, being a warrior or a mage or a space colonel or a AI expressing itself as female-bodied was almost anathema. They simply couldn’t comprehend that women could want such a thing or would do such a thing and so they had to come up with an idea that they could fathom as for why a woman would become a fighter.
Hence, the rape.
Rape is considered, in our society, as something so horrible that we have female characters in the media telling men they love to kill them if it looks like whoever has captured them might rape her. Now I’m not saying that’s an invalid choice or that rape is anything but a heinous, heinous act that should be punishable by castration without anaesthesia but I do think that there’s something to the argument that the very terror that accompanies the idea of rape has patriarchal origins. That the treatment of rape in the world and the accompanying, fate worse than death mentality has connections to the idea of women as needed to remain pure for their future/current male companions.
Now when we have this idea of rape as the most horrendous thing that can happen to a woman and an author who cannot imagine a woman being strong unless something horrible happens to her, he sees rape as the ultimate catalyzing force, one of the only reasons a woman would fight. Used in this way rape becomes a trick in the authors arsenal a sexist tool to get a woman to become a warrior.
Because of course a man would want to fight and become a hero, and defender of the innocent but a woman, well they much prefer to stay at home unless of course something horrible happens to them. On a larger scale this story plot takes away a lot of the woman’s agency, she is not a fighter through her own independent choice. Instead her decision to fight and hunt these evil people is a reaction as opposed to an action, the action in this sequence of events is the man forcing himself upon her.
Beyond that, the whole scenario relinks the idea of rape to a loss of humanity because all too often the protagonist became something feared by men and repulsing to women (within that world) by her decision to pick up the sword. It reinforces the idea that rape is something that is so horrifying that it changes you into something no one would want to associate or deal with. It reinforces the idea that it’s best for women to be quiet about rape to bottle up their rage and anger because letting it out could very well make you a pariah.
Overall, while this sub-genre (again I shudder to use the term genre in connection with the literary heritage of using rape as titillation but cannot think of another term that evidences the profuseness of these particular types of stories at a certain point) and those who wrote this particular type of story probably thought they were being cutting edge they were actually reinforcing the stereotypes of women and rape. They were reemphasizing that for a woman to be strong and a warrior something horrible had to happen to her, they were re-enforcing the idea that a woman who confronted rape/rapist and changed because of it would become a pariah, they were restating the loneliness & non-sexuality that these survivors were supposed to deserve.
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Filed under Criticism & Scholarship, FSF, Theory, Writers & Artists, female characters, feminism, geek sexism | Comments (37)
About the post: I’d love to see a follow-up to this addressing specific books/authors in terms of these general issues. I can only think of one book I’ve read that follows this plotline (Naomi Kritzer’s Freedom’s Gate &c.), so I feel like some of this is going over my head.
Technical issues: I’ve noticed that though post authors are indicated on the feed, and on the main blog page, the only indication of an author on an individual blog post is the icon. Could we get the post author’s name added to the individual pages?
I wonder what relationship this fiction has with the rise of awareness about rape (and about consent) in general; how much is it reacting to that? Because I doubt the R&R trend could have happened in, say, the 1950s.
I’m also wondering about the place rape, R&R (and its twin, H/C) still have in the slash community. It’s one of those things, like age, where slash seems to be going its own way because there’s an acceptance that our fictions are just that, fictions – so while the community usually responds negatively to the eroticising of rape, it’s used to create emotional excitement. It’s as if rape has a place – an uncomfortable place – in emotional fantasies. People write about sexual rape fantasies too – fantasising about the roles of both perpetrators and victims. But that’s fantasy, and it’s as if when people put these things into a print book, they’re speaking to reality.
Guh :(
As an avid sci-fi and comic fan and rape survivor who tries to avoid certain triggers it can get very frustrating. As you said here, It’s really hard to find female protagonists or superheros who don’t have some kind of rape in their origin story. I would love to see a heroine who has always been strong and didn’t need some kind of tragedy to turn her into what she is.
Oh, yes. I swear the first dozen or so sci-fi or fantasy books (with female heroes) I tried either began with rape or involved rape at some point, which discouraged me emensely. I prefer my fiction to be fun, and for the heroes to be having fun, so after my early experiences, I pretty much skipped all books with female heroes, because I was certain they wouldn’t be to my taste. In fact, I’m _still_ wary of books with female heroes.
The worst thing, though, was when I had the chance to ask an author why she had started her heroine’s story with rape. Her answer was “I wanted to get her in trouble.” I had no response to that. I still have no response to that, aside from a strong desire to swear. I simply cannot imagine an author doing the same with a male character.*
(*Not that male characters are never raped, but I doubt the author would explain it with “I wanted to get him in trouble.”)
Liz Henry has blogged about “rapability” as well: how creators frequently feel the need to establish that a female character is subject to rape. See Rapability in the FSFwiki for some other links.
I agree with the basic observation that many writers (creators) have used rape as a trigger to “explain” why the woman is a warrior etc. Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion was a bit different, and I was reflecting on it as I read this post. (SPOILERS AHEAD)
She was raped early on, but she had already decided to be a warrior. She stayed generally celibate, but that doesn’t really seem tied to the rape (maybe I misremember). My read was that rape was used as a part of the trials-and-tribulations of a paladin. Nevertheless, I was a little bothered by the gratuitousness of this and the near-to-the-end scene.
Ah I don’t have time to write more but I’ll throw this out to see if it adds to the discussion.
Ellen – I’ve been thinking about another post to gather everyone’s experiences with Rape&Revenge stories. When I spoke I was talking more of short stories than novels but as you’ve pointed out certain novels use the device as well.
As for the blog, I’m a bit of a techno-dunce but I’ll pass that note onto Laura.
Thene – You’re right about the era being a factor because while I’m sure there were stories and such written about rape before then the discussion of consent that correlated with the rise of the Women’s rights movement of the 70’s probably had a huge impact on such literature and the way it was used. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this genre exploded just as women began to struggle for equality.
Rape/Non-con & H/C in slash is a really interesting point because it’s still a huge sub-genre within slash. I think a large part of the difference is having women raped vs. having men raped in fiction. Both elicit different reactions and the fact that most slash is written by women who are then putting male characters in a situation where we rarely if ever see male protagonists put in mainstream media it takes on a whole new meaning. Not to say that men being raped is okay in fiction but it has a very different history and a different gaze pointed at it.
Angie – It’s true that it’s very difficult to find heroines that don’t have some sort of sexualized abuse in their history. That might be something to do on the femsf-wiki as a flipside to the rapability factor to create a list of female protagonists in sf/f that have no sexual assault in their history. I was thinking of opening a call for books/stories that fit the rape & revenge scenario and it’s worth it to open it up to books/stories that have no mention of rape as well.
depizan – I actually think I know which author you’re talking about (I could be wrong) and that’s a completely inadequate answer. There are serious reasons to include rape in your story and ways to do it but the simple idea of “I wanted to get her in trouble.” is insulting because it assumes that’s the only kind of conflict a woman could get into (and really a testament to the author’s narrow imagination) and also reduces what a sexualized assault is by calling it trouble. A flat tire is trouble, a ripped shirt is trouble, no money in the bank is trouble, rape is more than trouble, it’s a violent heinous attack and the fact that the author characterizes it as such says more about her than anything.
Laura Q – Thanks for the link!
I actually thought Paksnerrion was not actually raped, that it was an attempted rape that was stopped in time, but I never finished the series (I got about halfway through the second book and all the thinly veiled allegories to Xnity kind of freaked me out, though friends have told me to keep reading) so it’s totally possible I’m wrong. But you’re right the attack came after her initial decision to become a warrior which puts it in a different but still problematic light.
Your hinting at some gratuitous scene near the end has me backing away from finishing the series though because rape is one of the things that’s really really hard for me to read and will in fact turn me off an author/series unless handled with extreme care and respect.
Lots of different angles here:
-men in slash fandom have been known to do it too; as a writing trend, it stretches beyond the female gender
-some women (and men) in fandom are dealing with SA themselves. As would be some of these R&R print authors we’re talking about. Does that make a difference?
-that slash is about a different gaze doesn’t mean it has a whole new meaning, only that the new gaze is just a cool variation on the old gaze. Bad, gratuitous writing about rape can exist within both gazes.
-do ‘both elicit different reactions’? I’m not sure they do; the writer is most likely female (and if not, then is part of a writing culture built almost entirely by women), the audience is most likely female, and female fears and emotional reactions are what the story is exploring. Men are the objects of the writing, but the communication between writer and readers assumes female homosociality.
-given that, the sheer volume of H/C and R&R in slash is worth querying. It’s women talking about rape, exploring it together, in their thousands.
-and why is it so much squickier as soon as it hits print? I think it’s because female homosociality can no longer be presumed; print is back in the world where women are usually objects.
Great post. I have discussed this with friends who read stories like this, which I cannot because of events in my own life. It’s just how I react to stories where there HAS to be some sort of violence in a woman’s life…as if violence is the only thing motivating her to be a warrior, or be independent, etc. I would love to see this topic explored some more, especially with regrads to certain stories, characters, and authors who choose to write these sorts of things. I think a lot does have to do with the male gaze and how it has shaped our perception of strong women and rape as a way of “beating them down”…or even a way to tame their sexuality before it can be realized.
Have any of you noticed any great change since women, at least in the U.S., can now serve in the military, and in Iraq are in combat situation all the time, since that is how it is, no matter whether you’re supposed to be a combat troop or not?
Previously in Gulf one, women already were fighter pilots, and those women have been through various shot-down-and-captured scenarios. Things worked differently in Gulf one. Men have objected to their position and status ever since.
This time around the narratives we are get are:
First: poor helpless Jessica Lynch who needed rescue by white knights from her hell of rape and abuse (all of it manufactured).
Second: women taking the fall for Abu Ghraib.
Third: women subject to extraordinarily high levels of rape, abuse and other gender specific, sexual harrassment.
This guy, back in the 90’s, wrote this and surely, he’s not alone in his thinking not even eleven years later, that women don’t belong in the military, and thus rape is what they get.
In other words, as usual, women are damned if they do — work in the military, participate in combat — and damned if they don’t — women have no right to make decisions about their nation because they don’t face death fighting for it. While, of course, women who aren’t carrying arms, are raped in huge numbers during war always. It’s the reward for having arms.
Which is probably why men still keep twisting their underwear about women in the military. Pretty hard dealing with women as prey when the woman carrying the arms next to you is a companion predator, so to speak. So it doesn’t matter whether you do or don’t, in the minds of a certain percentage of men. Women’s rightful position is prey.
Love, C.
“Women’s rightful position is prey.”
This ties into why I’m more accepting of fiction that portrays both men and women as at risk for rape. By degendering rape, so to speak, it stops seeming like a punishment meted out to women for daring to be adventurers, military officers, or whatnot and becomes simply a danger of opposing bad people. Since I prefer fun fiction, I still am not thrilled at finding rape in my escapism, but I won’t throw the book against the wall and quit reading that author when it’s a non-gendered threat. (This would be why I _do_ read Lackey and Bujold, but won’t read a whole lot of other authors…whose names have mostly been purged from my memory banks.) I don’t want my fiction playing into the idea of women as prey, period.
And, yes, I know both men and women are at risk for rape in the real world, though not, generally at the same degree of risk. But damn, those authors I can’t stand sure don’t treat rape like it’s an equal-opportunity risk. No…it’s a punishment or a catalyst (because no woman would decide to go be a hero/adventurer for any other reason) or merely normal life for women. Yech.
Since I can’t edit my post, let me clarify that when I say “simply a danger,” I mean that in the same way that death is “simply a danger.” It isn’t a danger _because_ of who they are, and it stops carrying some of the baggage it has when it’s directed only at women.
(Must think more carefully before hitting submit, or I sound like that godawful author I complained about.)
Thene –
You bring up a lot of good points.
- Men in slash fandom have been known to do it true but male authorship in general in slash is very much a minority and as you said in this female homosocial world it is mostly women writing for women.
- It definitely makes a difference if the writer is an SA survivor at least in my experience. As I said rape is a complex issue and I can’t say why SA survivors write rape but I will say in my experience avowed SA survivors actually seem to focus at least partially on the recover as well as the act itself. They’re also less likely to have a storyline where the rape survivor is miraculously over it in a couple days or immediately forgives/falls in love with their attacker. Again this is in my experience and I haven’t read Rape/NC fic in over seven years and try to avoid it in printed fiction as well, though it’s harder there cause there are no warnings.
- The next two points I want to address together because even if the gaze is only a variation of the old it is still a gaze that is conditioned by our society to see female characters sexually molested/assaulted in a number of ways that are never addressed, for that gaze to see a male character treated in the same way does elicit different reactions, at least to my mind. Also while the males may be objects in the stories written between women, the same can be said for much early (or current) sf/f ‘for men by men’ where the female characters are objects. This makes them similar in some respects but the power deferential is still present in the creation of the story and the privilege is still present no matter what. It’s not a simple comparison by any means because the extra-diagetical knowledge of male and female hierarchy is always present and therefore creates a different environment and feeling when a woman is raped as opposed to when a man is raped, IMO. I’m not saying that one is better than the other but simply that for most people I think they have a different reactions when a man is raped.
- The volume of Rape/NC fic out there is large true but I don’t always think that it’s about discussing rape, as you said bad gratuitous writing about rape exists in slash as well. I said in my essay that some writing about rape can be done very well and I think the same applies for fan fiction that some of the writing on rape is attempting to open a dialogue and discuss issues, some is simply gratuitous and titillating.
- Personally I find it squicky in both cases and will not read a story that contains it without massive recommendations from people I trust and even then I skip over the actual act of rape. But you’re right many people find it more objectionable when it’s in print as opposed to online and you make a good point. I think that a lot of it does have to do with the female homosociality of the whole thing and the idea that it is women writing for women (with some exceptions) when it’s in print I think it takes on a more codified and universal form and the idea/world of female homosociality no longer exists.
I hope I’ve addressed the points you brought up and I don’t disagree with your points about female homosociality at all but I also think that people raised in Western society are far less likely to encounter the idea of males being sexually assaulted and I think that’s a factor in the difference between slash and fiction.
Daomadan -
I have been thinking about at the very list making a post to allow commenters to share books that use this trope and books that don’t, just to have that list available. I don’t know if I’d write it personally just because it would require me reading those stories/books and that’s something I try to avoid.
I completele agree and that actually might be an addendum I’ll write to this post because rape is constantly used to “put women in their place” and rob them of their sexuality and I think there is definitely an element of that in Rape & Revenge stories.
okay, i started a couple of pages in the fsfwiki — i too had difficulty coming up with examples for Female protagonists who did not experience sexual assault, by the way. The other link is Rape and revenge in SF. In both I just tossed out a few examples and related titles, but the pages could do with some more explanation, as well as annotation of titles, as well as more titles and examples.
There a post up right now on The Angry Black Woman about rape and the military, which should be of interest.
You can find it here.
It was really interesting post Gulf one listening to one of the women who had been shot down and held prisoner for a while. She was asked about sexual abuse. She said, as best I recall, something like this: Initially, immediately upon being taken prisoner, there were some remarks and threatening body language, and I was mentally preparing myself for what could happen. But I was prepared and it wouldn’t have ruined my life. This is assault no different than any other soldier who is captured might experience, like beating, denied food, whatever. This is a very different situation than being raped by someone you know and from who you aren’t expecting it.”
Contrast this with what that self-identified veteran says about what happened to her in that piece I linked to in the previous post. I don’t know if he was lying about her being raped, of if she was instructed and the government back then covered up. Maybe it doesn’t matter. What maybe matters is what she said in interviews back in 1993 on public radio?
Love, C.
Thanks for this interesting discussion, Naamon.
I suspect (speaking from my own experience) that writers have multiple reasons for using rape in a plot.
There’s a fascinating discussion of Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell over on The Neth Space in which one commentator says:
There’s the typical (for epic fantasy) rape of the main female that is cause for everyone to learn and grow (because that’s how we all learn and grow, when women are raped)
As it happens, McDonnell joins in on the conversation, which is often a mistake on the part of an author but in this case wasn’t at all, as she had some darned interesting things to say including these two snippets about the “typical epic fantasy rape” comment:
The rape was placed in the story because on a totally personal ethnic level, I wanted to depict the rape of dark women. I also wanted to flip the Hagar/Sarah script. I wanted a Christian fantasy to deal with the issue of American Christian racism, American Christian imperialism, minority unity..and the religious journeys Christians have had to make as they strived to coincide their Christian religion with the American Christian racism.
The only way to do it would be to make readers identify with the dark woman as a victim, not just a minor character who is a token slave tossed into a book by a white Christian writer.
AND
1) re: typicality: While rape may be typical for epic fantasy, it’s a part of the American black slavery history that still needs to be explored in literature. . . . So if it’s old hat to readers of epic fantasy, should writers of another genre not write it? Should readers of another genre not read it and learn something and widen their mind a bit?
And I can’t type today. Cuz I know it’s Naamen with an e.
Constance –
I personally haven’t noticed a lot of fluctuation but that could be because for the last ten years I’ve done my best to stay away from text that does any kind of titillation around rape. That being said when I came up and was reading a lot of this SF/F was in the mid to late nineties, in my teens, during and after the Gulf War. I wouldn’t doubt that there is a correlation between women gaining power or advancement and the profuseness of rape as a literary device to “put women in their place”.
And thanks for the second link it was a very interesting read, I kind of couldn’t bring myself to read the first link. All of that anger and hate that is directed at female soldiers so obviously comes from fear of losing their male privilege.
Kate –
Thanks for bringing up that discussion because I do think that when rape is used to actually say something, to bring light to inadequacies and is treated with respect in regards to portrayal that it can be a very powerful thing. My problem (and I didn’t even realize this until right now) is that so often it’s used as a shortcut for characterization.
Instead of actually explaining why a character wants to be a hero, rape is used to cut through that by saying “Well, she’s been raped of course this, this and this.” which not only strips sexual assault and its survivors of individuality in the way they react to their experiences but seeks to, in a way, normalize this horrible act.
But when the author actually has thought about it and is trying to say something (like what Carole McDonnell has to say) it lets me know that the author has actually thought the use of rape through, the ramifications and the reasons, which makes a huge difference. The book that actually triggered this whole essay did it in a way that yes disturbed me because rape will always disturb and upset me but also had a point and was not gratuitous at all and actually dealt with the aftermath.
So yeah I think it can be done right and that it should be discussed, we should by no means try and erase rape from our fiction any more than we should erase sexism, racism, classism, ablism or oppression in general. These are things that occur in everyday life and should be interrogated I just mourn when that’s not what they are using it for.
P.S. I wasn’t worried about the name thing I knew it was just a typo. :-)
I am in 100% agreement with you about disliking rape as a shortcut for characterization. And I think your and others’ observations about some writers not being able to see women has having or wanting agency unless they are catalyzed (by rape) is spot on. Not to mention the entire issue of putting women in their place. And don’t get me started with rape as titillation (which I’ve seen in a few books that are kinda purporting to be making it out to be a bad thing while the writing is telling a different story).
which not only strips sexual assault and its survivors of individuality in the way they react to their experiences but seeks to, in a way, normalize this horrible act.
Yeah, well said. It’s like hearing a (male) writer say he didn’t have many female characters in his epic fantasy, and those all related to sex work, because there aren’t women in those worlds and stories–but the “normalization” (or the erasure of women’s lives) is something we do by the choices we make in writing or the choices we make in ignoring what is being neglected and ignored.
I’ve got to read the McDonnell book now.
-that slash is about a different gaze doesn’t mean it has a whole new meaning, only that the new gaze is just a cool variation on the old gaze. Bad, gratuitous writing about rape can exist within both gazes.
-do ‘both elicit different reactions’? I’m not sure they do; the writer is most likely female (and if not, then is part of a writing culture built almost entirely by women), the audience is most likely female, and female fears and emotional reactions are what the story is exploring. Men are the objects of the writing, but the communication between writer and readers assumes female homosociality.
Well, I always thought it does elicit a different reaction. Because rape is a power crime, and women are the ones always subjected to sexual submission in mainstream media (and rape is considered a ‘gender specific’ crime, you know, for a mainstream public), a man being written in that position in a female-dominated community it probably has some connotations of power there.
Or, it elicits the same reaction that it does to men writing about women being raped in mainstream-media. That mixture between making the characters vulnerable by the rape, and… objectify them. So it does change because a man being vulnerable isn’t a Good Thing in main-stream, while a vulnerable woman is it almost to the point of fetish. Maybe the inverse occurs in slash because of that.
I wish I could find the blog that was having a brilliant discussion surrounding Battlestar and the rapes of the female characters and how it is used in the storyline. Anyone know what I’m talking about?
Lazy. Cheap, lazy, pat.
By way of preface, I joined a book club a while back to try and get myself reading more outside of genre. Ironically, the first book was a mediocre piece of sf called “Hominid.” there was a quick rape scene early on that was supposed to give the female character a reason to distrust males, which she would overcome later in the novel. I thought it was cheap and unnecesary, and more annoying than anything else; like solving a movie love triangle by giving someone cancer. However, several of the women disagreed with me, saying ‘that’s when I got interested. that’s when I felt sympathy with the character.’ Point being, I guess, that lazy or not, it’s a powerful emotional hook, and it works.
Two others come immediately to mind:
The Honor Harrington Books, where an attempted rape establishes an antogonist, and later in the series where she stand down and defeats attempted rape while held helpless in prison, as a way of showing her strength.
The Thomas Covenant Series, where the protaganist rapes the first woman he comes across, presumably to establish he is an unlikable character. It worked on me. I found him thouroghly dislikable. I never made it past the first book, which took me 3 tries to read.(the first ending at the rape scene)
“there was a quick rape scene early on that was supposed to give the female character a reason to distrust males, which she would overcome later in the novel.”
And what boggles my mind is that there are so many ways to write about how a woman might be distrustful of males in a culture and it does not only need to be shown through the threat of rape. Perhaps it is because some writers don’t operate under the knowledge that we live in a patriarchal culture where women are socialized differently and where many of us learn early on that if we don’t have the car keys out before we’re to our car we are going to be robbed/assaulted/raped/etc and it’ll be our fault for not having been “more aware”. I have some distrust of males because I was in an abusive relationship for many years and because I was almost raped, but I also feel that I learned more about the “threat from men” through the media and movies and my culture, than I did through some of my own experiences. My experiences just solidified what I’d already been told about my chances of being assaulted, etc. If that makes sense.
N.B.: Hominids is by Robert J Sawyer; the Honor Harrington books are by David Weber, and the Thomas Covenant series is by Stephen R. Donaldson. All men.
Daomadan: you can use the search function to find past references to BSG on this blog, if this is the blog you’re thinking of. (Here’s a comment that I posted on the topic back in 2006.) The Angry Black Woman followed that thread with a discussion about rape as a plot device on her own blog, here.
Somewhere, either in my LJ or on DeepGenre I complained about the rape episode of Boomer. My complaint is that under these circumstances of gender equality that are set up in the series — mixed sex barracks and showers, etc. — why then, when you see the horrified faces in close-up of Boomer’s sister mates, who are armed just like the men, and are very good at using their arms, just like the men, who know how to fight hand-to-hand, just like the men — why the frack then, is it the boys doing teh White Knight run to rescue her, and not a single woman goes along or even thinks to?
I cannot believe the reason for this is anything other than that the creators of the show, for all their blather about how feminist they are, just never thought about it. They went with the o-so-pleasing to themselves knee jerk of the guys to the rescue of the hapless maiden.
It was with this episode I began to believe this show was not as brilliant as we might have thought previously. Subsequent episode confirmed this, and I haven’t watched the last seaons.
If the women had gone on Boomer’s rescue, there would have opened automatically all kinds of interesting paths, but they chose the cliché of masculine heroism and rescue in a world that was supposedly far more equal than that.
The gruesome voyeurism of one of the Sixes’ incarceraton and rape, on a craft commanded by a woman, also seemed never to have been examined for character or story. Thus, they boxed themselves ever more strongly into ‘the box,’ while loudly touting how ‘out of the box’ they are.
If this had been handled even a bit differently, with more of the subtance of thinking about women in an equal gendered world, the show would have been better, and not then so trapped in the intellectual, story and metaphysical muddle they made for themselves.
Love, C.
“Robert J Sawyer; David Weber, Stephen R. Donaldson.
All men.”
Well yes, but is the usage limited to male authors? I recall an Ursala LeGuin short story using rape (inter-species) to demonize colonial forces.
It’s WAY OFF TOPIC, but I thik Weber deserves some credit. He created a very strong female character in a gender neutral universe: women and men both equally cast as heros and villians, strong and weak. Then he explored interaction/contrast with both an exploitive radical religious patriarchy and a culture that socially had cast different roles for women but was capable of evolving. I’d be interested in the opinions of anyone else who has read them.
Thanks Ide Cyan! Still a new face around here so I have missed a few things. I’ll check the archives for more discussion. :)
Then when the Chief and Helo are incarcerated on the Pegasus, they are beaten up–but not raped. If they had received the same “punishment” as the two women, it would have gone a long way to suggest that the surface presentation of gender equality meant something in terms of the “culture” of that particular ship and the nature of command and what the command allowed, but like Constance I have to think that the writers weren’t thinking about these questions as deeply as they could have and ended up with default reactions. It made me think, though.
Additionally, if the BS-G universe really were a gender-neutral universe, would rape be the default for men re prisoners who are female?
I’ve wondered about that a lot. Rape has traditionally been the reward for putting your life on the line for your — country, your people, your hero, whatever. Rape as accepted part of pillage, pillage which also saves the bother of actually victualing and paying the troops. Yes, I do believe that is why rape and pillage happen post a battle, a war, not because that’s what men do and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s what some persons will do because there always twisted, ugly folks, and the military is a place where their behaviors are accepted. But if a commander doesn’t condone the behavior, it doesn’t happen. But rape and pillage are two more weapons in the arsenal — as what happens every day in places like Darfur.
If we take these motivations into account in writing our stories of our principals’ rapes, we also have more interesting as well as deeper and ‘truer’ stories, methinks. (I do have a lot of opinions, I know!)
But really, from the beginning it was clear the BS-G is anything but an equal, gender neutral universe. Could they have had the interesting arc about a woman as President, otherwise? Creating interesting, compelling stories is never easy. Doing so while disgarding all our standbys, the archtypes upon which our stories have always been built, is far far far more difficult, if maybe, still, at this time, for mass media, impossible. But then, one shouldn’t claim that one has done so, when one hasn’t.
I’ve been wondering for a long time what our stories will be when / if reproductive technology and human development changes so much that tales of lost virginity, infertility, inability to produce the MALE heir or any heir, inappropriate marriage partner — since much of marriage is still about handling the transmission of property — no longer are part of our daily lives.
We’ve already seen here in a few places that the typical lost virginity, born a bastard trope has fallen by the wayside in fiction. However, alas, in much of the rest of the world these aren’t merely issues, but still matters of life and life.
Love, C.
Additionally, if the BS-G universe really were a gender-neutral universe, would rape be the default for men re prisoners who are female?
Exactly. That’s the elephant in the living room. I was just jumping over that to wonder that IF the writers had some compelling reason to introduce rape as a story element, then had they been thinking in the larger gender equity set they would have . . . oh, you know. So right about the “woman president” business (although I liked that she was a kindergarten teacher, even if that in itself totally hits our cultural triggers in so many ways).
[...] First up, Naamen (who I’ve got a bit of a brain crush on lately) kickstarted a really interesting discussion over at Feminist SF – The Blog! about “The Fantasy of Rape: The Use of Rape as a Catalyst on Female Protagonists in SF/F:” [...]
I’m hoping some folks are still following this thread. I have a few thoughts that I wanted to pursue …
one was following up on whether it was more or less acceptable to write rape/SA scenes if one is a survivor of SA. it was tuoched upon but lost in the BSG commentary i think.
Another was to point out that about 1/3 of women and something like 1/20 men experience SA as children or adults. Obviously a life experience this common is going to crop up in fiction, so its interesting that so many people would prefer it wasn’t there. thoughts?
And the third was more of an open call for queries into how a rape revenge story would be written “correctly” or, more saliently, what is necessary for a story to have both a character who experiences SA and a “woman warrior” character be the same without have the one be the reason for the other?
(…as a footnote, I’d like to say both seriously and with a sense of humour, that yeah I’m a guy and no its none of your business whether I’ve experienced SA, and that’s part of the trouble with my first question …)