Why I hate rape affirming storylines
I started writing a reply to a comment about rape storylines, over on the G-W board, and I realised that the poster’s one line hit a raw nerve with me.
This post goes for a while, and it was a bit confronting for me to write. It’ll probably change some of my readers view of me, and I accept that in advance. I took this role as the Designated Sidekick to present a male view, and this is one of those times. This isn’t every man’s world view, or representative of males in general. This is my story, and my life, and my explanation. I don’t expect to be praised or rewarded for it, I just wanted to put my reasons, my experience and my rationale on the line. I don’t know what I expect to achieve, I just think it’s worth saying and moving on from there.
TRIGGER WARNING: Both the column and resultant discussion may contain trauma triggers. Please be safe.
(Hell, it’s been a bad night writing this, take care reading it)
One of the issues that I carry is from what I went through to get to the point where I’m blogging for Girl-Wonder, rather than blogging against it. Basically, somedays, it’s hard not to still think of myself as one of the bad guys. I’m from the bad guys side. If I had the internet, as it currently exists, back when I was at high school, I’d be part of 4chan and the related cesspools. This isn’t some self flagellating cry for “But DS you’re not like them” backslaps. I’m not like them now, but back then, I was one of them.
I come from the mid to upper class over privileged young white men who thought the world owed them. We felt entitled to say what we wanted, about who we wanted, and we were taught that our God endorsed right to children and wife and to be the protectors of the women for we were warrior-men. Friends of mine felt that women should fuck them just because they’re white, male and that was god’s gift to females. Back then, I’d support them either actually agreeing with them, or by shutting up and letting them take my silence as support.
Sure, I wasn’t entirely like the rest of the pack, but I had the option to join and merge with the herd open to me at any point. I was a Nice Guy (TM). I thought that just being a reasonable civil person not just meant I deserved a cookie, but full sexual favours to go with that cookie. The stuff I heard, the stuff I said, the stuff we tacitly supported because we didn’t speak up and oppose it led to my peers, my friends (and some of my enemies) thinking that woman hating was fine, so long as you fucked them while hating them. After all, the only thing most of those guys hated more than women was gay men.
That was my peer group, my high school buddies and my social circle. Welcome to my back story as a late 80s high school boy in a nice school in a nice suburb with nice boys as friends. We reinforced each other, outdid each other, and created a vicious circle of a misogyny arms race - each trying to be cooler, tougher, more fucked up than the other.
Getting out of that social sphere took a lot. It took rejection, for which I note with pride, when the white power fascist kid doesn’t want to be your friend, you’re doing something right. When he’s got one of the bigger circle of friends in the school, right isn’t always backed by might.
It took bleeding, fistfights and being a target. Because I chose not to be one of them, when the rich kid who endorsed hating those who were different to him (read, anyone not rich, straight, angry, white male and avowedly misogynistic heterosexual) turned to me expecting tactic support and didn’t receive it, I was marked as an acceptable target for in-school violence. That said, don’t mistake me for a martyr. I fought when attacked and attacked when it suited me. I perpetuated that school pecking order system every bit as much as the rest of the young men who fought me and I fought. Pointless (in retrospect) violent male behaviour was normal for me. I know what they feel, because I’ve felt it, enjoyed it, and suffered the consequences (and reaped the rewards). Leaving that social structure behind was difficult.
Rejecting the social messages also took saying things to friends who stopped being friends because you weren’t agreeing with them, and they craved peer approval (which, when you’re turning into this woman liking weirdo, you’re not providing). It took the willingness to voluntarily be a social outcast as a teenager (I fear what I’d have made of Myspace if I’d had it back then)
Above all, it took finding reinforcement from places where you retreated because you were getting shunned, beaten up or rejected. For me, I headed off into left-wing late 80s comedy. I was listening to Ben Elton espousing feminism, socialism and anti-Thatcherism when my friends were reading fantasy novels where non consensual sex was eroticised and normalised as what people did. If I’d had access to comics, I’d have been reading them, and absorbing their messages as much as I was downloading Rik Mayal, Ben Elton and Alexei Sayle into my life.
[Sidenote: One of the guys who was a friend of mine loaned me this "great fantasy novel". There were two rape scenes in it before I gave up. Note - I read the first rape scene, and kept reading the novel. The older I get, the more discomfort I have with the memory of the text of the second scene. Serves me right, I should've quit at the first warning mark. As far as I could see, the basic story was "Independent woman is turned into obedient sex drone for male through rape and violence". I remember being utterly repulsed by the whole thing, and having to look a friend in the eye as I gave the book back whilst hoping he didn't want me to approve of his choice of reading material. In the end, when I found out he had the entire series of the books (something like thirty of them, with most of those nonconsensual sex scenes marked out in highlighter pen) I had to remove another mate from my social circle. I may have gained a less noxious social sphere, but I did nothing to help him by walking away. That’s what he was downloading to his brain when I was learning that consent mattered]
So when it comes to 2007, and comics, and movies, and contemporary media, I find myself railing against the rape back story culture for a lot of reasons.
I detest these storylines because they perpetuate a myth that rape is an empowering event that creates you into a stronger, better faster whatever. If that shit was remotely fictionally supportable, Batman’s origin would have a rape story. Batman parents could live as Joe Chill just needed to rape Bruce to get the story started. Krypton could continue to exist. Uncle Ben could still be alive. All through the virtue of non consensual violent power crime. This is not to say I want rape to become the feature storyline for men. I want it to stop, and I want it to stop being the motive du jour for female heros.
I am sick to death with being presented stories of empowerment through non consensual power crime as the necessary prerequisite for female competence. It’s sickening, it’s frustrating, and it’s saying to me, as a male, that women exist as impractical, hopeless, useless and powerless creatures until violently cast in these empowerful roles through non consensual violation.
I’m sick of being told that rape is something empowering that creates heroines. It says that these women cannot become something by their own choice, they must become it because of the acts of a male. I’m rejecting the message, but hell, I’m still getting the message to reject. What’s it doing to the guys not realising they’re supposed to reject this idea?
I’m sick of having the medium that’s aimed squarely at me and my gender tell me that “Hey! It’s okay if she’s raped! It’ll give her really good positive things later! Really! See? RapedinBackstoryGirl turned out okay didn’t she?”.
I hate the support it gives to the guys who are looking for justification. I hate the lies it spreads to the kids like me who are desperately looking outside their social circles for cues on how to deal with life.
I hate the way rape stories are used to sell books, sell movies and make a profit from a violent, brutal and degrading power crime.
I hate it, because I was so close to becoming a rapist myself.
I have the same coding in my head that they do. I have the same privilege blinkers, my default settings are white privilege male. My language and my world view is hetero centric, empowered and powerful. I was taught that women owed me sex because I was a man, and men are entitled to sex from women.
The rape normalising storylines are something that I resist with all the power I have, because damn me, there was a time, one moment, one point in my life where my partner said no, and I stopped when frankly, I did not want to stop.
I’ve been there, I’ve experienced that point of choice.
I stopped because there had been enough messages in my life that supported my decision to respect my partner’s choice. There was everything I’d been taught that said I was entitled to keep going and there was enough countercode to support me doing the right thing and stopping. It was me and her and what had been consensual sexual activity until she wanted to stop.
Thankfully, no meaning no, and the rest of the understanding I had at the time meant that I stopped.
My fear is simple. I don’t know if I would have stopped if I’d been exposed to all of the rape affirming social messages instead of the consent affirming messages I’d heard.
In short, that’s why I won’t fucking chill out about rape stories. I know I was that close to being the perpetrator of one of those stories, and it’s only because I’d had access to the social messages that supported consent that I stopped when I did.
If I’d had the exposure to the opposite messages, there’s a chance things would have been much much different. It’s also something that I have to deal with for my life. I was very close to being a perpetrator of a very serious abusive crime with my partner at the time, who knew me and trusted me. I’ve been that close to the edge, and now I’m doing my level best to move further and further back away from it.
That’s why I hate the normalisation process that comes with these storylines. I know how vulnerable I was, and how vulnerable I could still be to those messages.
DS
[As a footnote to this, it took until comparatively recently for me to realise that I'd been socially encoded to say yes by default to sexual consent. Discovering that when I said no, the no was enough in itself for my partner was a break through. I'd been so conditioned to accept that the socialisation baggage of male consent as disposable that I didn't realise that when I said no, it meant no, not "make a counteroffer". I knew that when my partner said no, that was enough for me, but I never saw any problem with my non-consent being rejectable (See also Karen's article dealing with how non-consensual heterosexual sex is covered in DC comic books. Suffice to say, Nightwing 93 really upsets me.) ]
A sidenote: Were those novels the Gor books? Because er. Yes.
How did you come to break away from your more misogynistic friends? I’m interested if there was some precipitating event, or what, although please feel free to make a vague statement which I shall interpret as “None of your business.”
Comment by Betty — April 28, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
Oh god. They were Gor books. I’d suppressed that bit in the “This will be used to save you, not taunt you” category.
I think there was both glacial drift and a few shatter points. On the drift side, I was finding myself listening to story after story of my pimple ridden 16 year old mates recount how they’d drunk 2 bottles of vodka and my brain was going “Wait. Given your size, weight, alcohol tolerance… you’d be stomach pumped before you hit that mark”. Adding in the fact I was also shifting way outside of the mainstream social groups for other reasons (such as food allergies which stopped me from eating what the rest of them did or drinking).
Of course, it helped as well that my two main circles of friends at school were the roleplaying groups (hello nerd cred. Seriously, I wasn’t cool enough to hang with geeks back at school), and the second group was the school’s small but not remotely vibrant gay student group (led by an incredibly talent bi-sexual young man who was by any means damn hot. You don’t captain the swimming team and theatre troupe without having body and brains).
So I was running with the outsiders from the start it seemed. Hitting senior / going to university was the final massive fracture point. I started in an arts degree, and suddenly *boom* there was this massively interesting world of people and ideas who didn’t care how many women I claimed I’d slept with over the weekend.
For individual fracture points - I can recall one of the high school football home games where I was sitting in the school grandstand, and there was parade after parade of young school girls being walked across the front of the grandstand - in earlier years, I just enjoyed the view. Then I noticed that the girls were paraded past by their parents to attract an appropriate rich college student to be the boyfriend. Apparently I have a decent streak in me, because I was sickened by the realization that these people were being treated like showroom objects by their parents.
It also helped that around the late high school period, my brother and sister were bringing home copies of NME, Well Red (the newsletter of Red Wedge - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Wedge) and I was starting to get seriously into left wing socialist music (whilst being a right wing political activist. I believe in the same goals, back then, they were different paths).
I think I can point to nature, nuture, inherent self belief and self confidence meeting the juncture point of being part of the mass, part of mob, or going with the newly discovered idea that women could be equal.
Comment by Stephen Dann — April 28, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
If that shit was remotely fictionally supportable, Batman’s origin would have a rape story.
An excellent point, and a great one-liner response for the next time that excuse for rape storylines gets trotted out.
Thanks for sharing your story. You’re right; this isn’t something you should get praised for writing, because ideally *every* man ought to express his firm opposition to rape. But the attitude of sexual entitlement is so pervasive and normalized. The way you acknowledge that normalization, even within yourself, is honest and intelligent, and would be extremely useful for anyone to read.
Comment by Dora — April 29, 2007 @ 4:38 pm
I’m sick of being told that rape is something empowering that creates heroines. It says that these women cannot become something by their own choice, they must become it because of the acts of a male.
The sad thing is, this isn’t just being pushed by the rape-as-empowering trope, it’s pushed when DiDio says what he did about Steph not counting because she became Robin by her own resort.
Also, have I mentioned how glad I am that you realised you saying ‘no’ was enough? Because I am.
Comment by arielladrake — April 30, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
:O
*hugs*
That was a good post, but it must have been hard for you to write too :(
But it’s SO true! And it also made me think, as a person who’s suffered from serious depression, suicide attempts, who was raised by a single parent, who’s father was abusive to her mother… and.. other stuff…
How much tragedy in the past is glorified in fiction! Not just added, but GLORIFIED. Like it’s GOOD for us. >:\
Like, hey, suffering in your past, abuse, violence, depression, THIS stuff makes heroes! >:| It’s creating a culture where our children grow up almost thinking they need something bad to happen to them and making stuff up, or getting themselves into trouble for it. >.>;;
Like… you’re never gonna be a good person, or a tough person, or a strong person, without some sort of rly horrible thing happening to you in the past. :\
And we’re also encouraging ppl to turn their misery into vengance and anger. >:|
It actually took me most of my adolescence and early 20s to realize that brooding around and being dark and angry and dwelling on my pain WASN’T going to lead to some miracle turnaround where I find some purpose in life thru some random happenstance or chance meeting with the person who changes my life. :(
But pain and dwelling on it is so glorified in our fiction :( From the angry, jaded cops to the superheroic raped women to Batman. >:|
I think the problem is that male authors see rape as the quick and dirty way to inject tragedy in a female characters life :\ Batman doesn’t have it b/c male rape is kinda scary to male XD But female rape? It’s like… sure! >:|
No character development is needed! No real explanations for what’s going on in her mind. Just rape BLAM! hero! >:|
Comment by Ami Angelwings — April 30, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
Thanks for writing this. It explains better than most things I’ve read just how a dominant way of behaving can combine with cultural signposts like comics (or movies, or music) to make a man feel that it’s acceptable to see women in that way. So much of what I’ve read on this subject has been from women like me who are angry; I think this is the first time I’ve seen the view expressed by an angry man who has intimate experience of just what a powerful cultural force we’re up against.
Comment by Ang — May 1, 2007 @ 2:25 am
I second Ami’s hugs.
You may not be asking for back-patting, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve some. This is a really powerful post about some really damn important stuff. Developing the set of ethics you have about consent and gender–without having grown up immersed in them, as some of us lucky second-and-third-gen feminists did–takes a lot of guts, particularly when the position you’re coming from is one of priviledge. Thanks for putting in those hours and for continuing to fight.
Comment by Rachel Edidin — May 1, 2007 @ 4:10 am
A powerful post. Yeah, the Gor books are quite possibly the most horrific books I’ve ever seen, made all the worse when you consider that there are both men AND women who wish to live the “Gorean lifestyle,” embracing an openly misogynistic, inhuman viewpoint.
I’m happy you got out when you did. I’d say the empowerment doesn’t come from the rape itself, but from the recovery from it - being able to move past a tragedy and recover from it. However, what it doesn’t do is justify the horrible act to begin with. I think you and the other posters are right - we too often see tragedy as a motivating factor for a hero to begin their journey because it’s a fairly easy enough motivation. To paraphrase the Joker: “I think it’s better for there to be some defining element of tragedy in a hero’s story, wouldn’t you say?”
We need more heroes who want to do it just because it’s the right thing to do.
Comment by Lewis — May 1, 2007 @ 5:27 am
Wow, I was asked to do some art for some Gor related game a few years ago. I had never heard of it, and they sent some pages of text. Aparently, I would be doing artwork featuring lots of stuff that seemed like implied non-consensual bondage…it all creeped me out. I did some random sketched and decided I was not comfortable with the stuff they were asking for. This was back in the day when I saw little problem with stuff like Maxim. But man, the collection of Gor texts the company gave me? Turned me off to the books.
Comment by Thom — May 2, 2007 @ 5:00 am
Thank you for writing this and making it public.
Comment by Lisa Jonté — May 2, 2007 @ 8:13 am
I’ll try to say this as nicely as possible:
That, sir, was one of the most hypocritical things I’ve ever read.
You say you do not like rape being used as a motivator. Fine. If you had just left it at that, I would have called it a noble pursuit.
However, you go on to compare it to famous superhero origins, and that’s where you lost me, because that’s where you say that certain crimes are ok to be used as motivators and certain crimes aren’t ok.
So I think you should either decry all crimes as being unfit for backstory consumption, in which case everyone will have to have a Flash-like origin, or you should allow all things up for grabs, as long as both the subject matter and the characters are treated with respect.
You might want to look to season 1 of Veronica Mars for what I would consider a good example. Of course, you’d probably think differently.
Comment by Chad — September 10, 2007 @ 10:24 am
@Chad.
Why do I have to hold a single hive scrotum position on all back story origins? I’m curious, do explain why I can’t hold separate opinions on death of mentors, loss of parents, encounter with chemicals, activating ancient artifact etc?
Comment by Designated Sidekick — September 10, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
I just don’t see why you classify some violent crimes (such as the robbery and subsequent murder of loved ones, as evidenced in both Batman and Spider-Man) as ok, but you classify other violent crimes, such as rape (I’ve never personally read a comic book with rape as a backstory that I’m aware, so I can’t exemplify) as being not ok.
Either all crimes are ok, or no crimes are ok.
Personally, I think murder is the worse of two evils. If someone’s raped they can eventually overcome that traumatic experience, if someone’s dead, they can’t come back.
Comment by Chad — September 10, 2007 @ 11:54 pm
Where did Steven say that ANY violent crime is ‘ok’?
“If someone’s raped they can eventually overcome that traumatic experience, if someone’s dead, they can’t come back.”
And if someone’s dead, they don’t have to live a lifetime constantly battling the physical, pschyological and emotional scars from your own body becoming a site of trauma. Depends on your viewpoint here, Chaddie. And FYI, not everybody eventually ‘overcomes’ the experience of being raped.
Comment by Dev — September 12, 2007 @ 12:14 pm
@Chad: I think murder is the worse of two evils. If someone’s raped they can eventually overcome that traumatic experience, if someone’s dead, they can’t come back.
Err. Do you read comics? Death isn’t exactly a career ending move for a lot of comic book characters. If you’re talking real world, being dead is fatal, and that’s it for your life.
Also, I am going to disagree with your assessment death is worse than rape. Rape has an ongoing impact, ongoing physical and mental trauma, including the traumatic experiences if you report the rape, prosecute, stand on trial, and have your entire life called into question as evidence of why it was your fault you were violated in a violent crime. It also tends have triggers which bring about flashbacks, more damage and more trauma. That’s why there’s a trigger warning on the post.
I don’t see rape as the great empowering device. Watch Red Eye, and see how it’s used in that story. Apparently, the only reason that someone would have to fight a psycho is if they’ve been previously subjected to traumatic violation. Why do I suspect that John McClane doesn’t have ass-kicking skills because he was raped in broad daylight in a carpark?
Comment by Stephen Dann — September 12, 2007 @ 4:47 pm