I Want to Get Raped Again
Unless your story is specifically most sexual assault, yous should probably remove any rape, attempted rape, or even mention of rape from your story. This is considering these depictions normalize sexual set on and are oftentimes hurtful to survivors. Let's go over how rape ends up in our stories, why these patterns are hurtful, and how storytellers can achieve their goals without it.
Content Notice:This article doesn't include anything graphic, though it does have one abstract description of a rape scene.
1. Rape as a Adult female'south Nighttime Backstory
Many stories prominently featuring a heroine add rape as function of her tragic past. In the classic Red Sonja comic and its 1985 movie, Sonja'south family is killed and she is raped at the hands of mercenaries. She then becomes a warrior to exact revenge. While a goddess who demands chastity from her is involved in the original story, her by with sexual assail is also used as a plot device to make her mistrust men. This is in service to a male audience, who can so enjoy watching Conan earn Sonja's rare amore.
While this version of Red Sonja is pretty old at present, it'southward not so dissimilar from Sansa'south arc in the Game of Thrones Television show. Sansa is raped by Ramsay Bolton, driving her to exact bloody revenge against him. Like for Ruby-red Sonja, the rape is designed to disempower Sansa so she tin can grow in power and have command.
Storytellers using this trope probably think they are telling a compelling story that honors the female grapheme involved. However, a gender comparison is incredibly revealing. When male characters are disempowered at the starting time of their arc, they are almost never raped. And most of these rapes of women are written by men. The fact remains that sexual set on is not something people want for characters they identify with, even during the low points of a character's journey. It ruins the wish-fulfillment the story would otherwise offer, making these depictions exploitative at best.
How to Supplant This Trope
This i'due south unproblematic. Depictions of male person heroes offer all sorts of dark backstories that don't include sexual assault. In fact, when Gail Simone rebooted Red Sonja in 2013, she but took out the rape in the backstory and otherwise left well-nigh of the issue the same. Having your family murdered is enough reason for revenge, don't yous think?
Sansa's arc didn't need rape any more than Sonja's did. She spent much of her time at King's Landing at the mercy of her family's enemies, keeping her caput downwards and doing whatever necessary to survive. That was disempowering enough without adding sexual assault.
ii. Rape equally an Act Too Far
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer season half-dozen, the prove writers started working on a romance betwixt Buffy and the vampire Fasten. Many fans wanted these two characters to get together, only since Spike was soulless and therefore inherently evil, a healthy romance betwixt them seemed incommunicable. The writers decided to make the pair combative lovers in flavour six and and so to give Spike a soul for a more healthy human relationship in flavor seven.
But how could Spike be motivated to get himself a soul? He'd already killed endless people in his past and had no qualms about this. To push him toward redemption, the writers decided he would attempt to rape Buffy, then he would feel so remorseful about it that he would be motivated to change.*
Arcs in which a human being rapes or attempts to rape a woman and then feels sad enough that he becomes a amend person all share a serious problem: they prioritize the rapist over the victim. These events happen to develop an arc for the rapist, and then they by necessity focus on his feelings and how the rape affects him. And in many of these stories, completing this arc requires the survivor to forgive him. This means the survivor doesn't get justice; their feelings and needs are pushed bated. This blueprint is all too common in real life. We should not encourage information technology in our stories.
Since the attempted rape in Buffy season six was to redeem Fasten in preparation for a romance arc, he and so ends up in a relationship with his victim. For many alienated fans, this felt similar an endorsement of his rape attempt. Instead of strengthening the romance, the attempted rape tainted information technology. In stories, rape is an act that'due south over the moral event horizon – a graphic symbol should not be redeemed after that, because many audience members will never like them again.
How to Supersede This Trope
Motivating a happily immoral character to change his ways isn't the easiest task, but it doesn't crave sexual assault. What y'all cull may depend on what your graphic symbol's already done, but let'southward await at several probable contenders.
- Hurting the people he cares virtually in other ways. Since Spike at least loved Buffy, doing something that was hurtful to Buffy was a good choice; it only shouldn't have been sexual assault. Instead, he could have done something immoral that unintentionally had negative consequences for her. For example, in the episode As You Were he was caught dealing in dangerous demon eggs. Those eggs could take hatched and led to her becoming severely injured.
- Existence uncomfortably defenseless between good and evil. Instead of hurting loved ones on Team Skillful, a grapheme tin likewise reform considering he realizes he doesn't fit in with Team Evil anymore. Finding out that he's already changed tin can cause an identity crisis that makes him realize he'd exist better off if he reforms the remainder of the style. Alternately, all of his evil dreams could come true, only for him to realize they don't make him happy. This is the method used for Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- Losing control and doing more damage than intended. Depending on where his previous boundaries were, losing command and directly injuring or killing someone could be motivating enough. To proceed this behavior away from the moral event horizon, the killing can be an accident caused by his recklessness, or he can get overly enthusiastic when fighting someone who deserved a bad time, just maybe non that bad.
3. Rape as a Threat in a Gritty World
Dissimilar the other rape tropes, which stalk from decisions virtually the characters, this i is rooted in how storytellers approach settings. Many storytellers aim for a gritty atmosphere for their stories – one that is filled with real world issues. This is a common choice in settings that are post-apocalyptic, historical, or other-world fantasy.
Even when storytellers are creating a completely fictional world, they often insist that they must include sexual assault because it somehow makes their piece of work historically accurate. Every bit one instance, George RR Martin has stated he included rape in The Song of Ice and Fire books because he wanted his books to be "strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was similar." Similarly, storytellers who include rape threats in post-apocalyptic settings are aiming to pull no punches in showing the breakdown of human society.
But the truth is that historical accurateness does not exist in fiction, nor can we know what the future would be like subsequently a cataclysm. Everything in a fictional story has been manufactured by the storyteller, and accurateness is never a storyteller's highest priority. How often do heroes throw the contents of their chamber pots out onto the street? How oftentimes do we brand our pretty actors look like they have rotting teeth? When a graphic symbol is ill, how oftentimes does the hero summon a doctor to bleed them?
We don't come across those things because the actual goal of storytellers is to create the impression that their story is realistic or historical while creating an enjoyable experience. Accordingly, historical settings are always sanitized for a modern audience, and futuristic settings are always designed to be compelling to people today. A storyteller that defends the sexual violence in their setting with the existent-world fallacy is trying to hibernate that they used rape to build temper.
This defence tells us but how harmful the practice is. Putting rape in a story to make the earth gritty, and defending that practice as the just realistic pick, communicates that rape is an inevitable part of human existence, non a specific choice made past a person who could have chosen otherwise. Real people use this idea to argue confronting belongings rapists accountable for their actions. With the responsibility for rape taken abroad from the perpetrator, instead victims are held responsible for declining to prevent information technology.
How to Supplant This Trope
If you want a gritty setting, you have many realistic-feeling issues to choose from. Drugs. Violence. Poverty. Disease. If your heroes are struggling to gather enough food for the winter, fighting with their neighbors over which lands vest to whom, tending to a sick family fellow member with the plague, and are drowning their sorrows in laudanum, information technology'll be gritty enough. Anyone who complains that there isn't sexual violence as icing on the block is non someone you want to cater to.
Is it possible for omitting sexual assail to experience similar erasure of the crimes in history? It's possible, just only for specific historical events, not fictional scenarios. If you are depicting existent historical events with real groups of people where sexual assault occurred, consult with the people closest to the survivors well-nigh your depiction.
4. Rape as a Comparison Between Mr. Wrong and Mr. Right
In the Outlander TV series, Claire is a World War II nurse suddenly transported dorsum to 18th-century Scotland. At that place, she is kidnapped past a bunch of Scotsmen, including her Scottish honey interest, Jamie. But the Scotsmen keeping her prisoner and treating her terribly are supposed to exist sympathetic skillful guys, so to make them wait that way, they accept an enemy designed to be even worse. They are fighting oppressive English language troops led past Captain Randall, who rapes everyone he can get his hands on. Randall is actually the ancestor of Claire's husband in the World State of war Two era, and he looks exactly like him. In this mode, the story sets up a straight comparison betwixt Randall and Jamie.
This is not an uncommon pattern in heterosexual romances. Information technology might feature a male person hero who saves a love interest from being raped and receives her gratitude, or it might exist about a woman being pursued past multiple men – one of whom tries to rape her. Regardless of whether the story was written for men or women, including rape serves the aforementioned purpose: making Mr. Correct look virtuous by comparing him to a rapist.
Sometimes this is done without fifty-fifty introducing a rapist into the story. Instead, a woman offers sexual practice while she is under the influence of magic and therefore unable to consent, and a male protagonist shows his virtue past choosing not to rape her. This happened for Venkman in the original Ghost Busters and for Xander in season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Regardless of how it's washed, this trope sets the bar way likewise depression! Information technology should be taken for granted that a male hero won't rape someone; they don't deserve kudos for refusing to do information technology. Using rape as the line betwixt bad and practiced behavior non but normalizes rape, simply completely excuses discrimination, intimidation, and sexual harassment – like, for instance, the sexual harassment that both Venkman and Xander engage in.
How to Replace This Trope
Since the result with this trope is that standards for men are set too low, the key to replacing information technology is to heighten them higher. Mr. Wrong shouldn't be a rapist, merely he can engage in other bad behavior that sets him apart from Mr. Correct.
If subversive commentary is to your sense of taste, you can use some of the inappropriate male person behaviors that are currently played directly in many dear stories today:
- Mr. Wrong tin can attempt to control the heroine. He tin tell her what to do and make choices for her life that he insists are in her best interest.
- Mr. Wrong can be a persistent suitor, continually request the heroine on a date subsequently she's turned him down, perhaps fifty-fifty harassing her at her workplace.
- Mr. Incorrect can give her a surprise kiss.
If y'all're up for a deeper look at graphic symbol motivations, consider comparisons between men that honey the heroine selfishly or selflessly. Is he trying to go her to exercise whatsoever makes him happy, or is he is concerned about her happiness?
5. Rape as Relationship Drama
In the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series, many of the cylons expect human. However, in that location are about twelve models of man-looking cylons, then that means many of them appear identical. This gives the writers an opportunity to have an antagonistic cylon named Boomer sub in for her await-alike, Athena. Boomer ties Athena upwardly and puts her in the closet, and and so out of spite, she has sexual activity with Athena's married man where Athena tin can scout through the cracks in the doors. Afterwards, instead of recognizing that her married man was raped, Athena gets mad at him because he didn't magically know the identical impostor wasn't her.
Consent requires being informed. If someone just consents because they were lied to or tricked, it's rape. Fortunately, we've come up a long fashion since the infamous glorified rape scene in Revenge of the Nerds. These days, big budget studios seem to get that when a man puts on a mask and has sex with a adult female pretending to be her partner, it's rape. Merely equally shortly as information technology's a adult female pretending to be a man'due south partner, they're suddenly dislocated. Similar rapes to the i in Battlestar happen in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Orphan Black. Orphan Black even has the hero of the story do the raping.
The Orville uses a similar device for relationship drama in its first flavor. The victim this time is a woman, Grayson. Instead of a switcheroo, an alien slips her a hormonal date-rape drug. Neither she nor her married man know a listen-altering substance was used on her, so she is blamed for adulterous and they get a divorce. This all happens prior to the starting time of the evidence, and a large portion of The Orville's first season is spent shaming her for the incident. When the true nature of the come across is revealed, she and her ex have a whole conversation about how the sexual practice "wasn't her fault" while simultaneously refusing to recognize that she was raped.
The rapes in Battlestar Galactica and The Orville seem pretty different, but the storytelling reasons for them are the same.
- The show writers wanted to create drama in an existing human relationship.
- They wanted both people to ultimately be blameless for the drama.
- They didn't want to do the work to find an outcome that two people would reasonably disagree about.
- They clearly idea either the titillation of the scene or the crude jokes that could exist made nearly it later were a bonus.
Of course, what'south ironic is that if the writers weren't willing to think upwardly a genuine disagreement, they were definitely not set up to handle the implications of rape in their story. That was probably a contributing factor in their choice to pretend rape didn't happen.
Regardless, these stories spread false ideas well-nigh consent and, in doing so, only brand rape in the existent world more likely.
How to Replace This Trope
For a source of disharmonize betwixt a couple, a dip into the real world reveals plenty of choices. However, many storytellers will want something more fun than stressing over the family finances. Ideally, the disagreement will also be something that connects to the external conflict of the story. Try these:
- Arguments over risky behavior. One of them wants to get on a dangerous mission, and the other is not okay with that.
- Divided loyalties. They're on different sides of a political conflict.
- Incompatible ways of resolving issues. Ane of them wants to shoot first, whereas the other insists on trying affairs.
The impersonation examples I listed were too used to let ane adult female get revenge on another. But if she tin impersonate her enemy that thoroughly, at that place are a ridiculous number of other ways she could practise damage. What nigh committing crimes as the other person? Selling her stuff? Getting fired at her chore? Instead of raping her partner, what most breaking up with him?
Then, of form, these storytellers are just looking for a way to add a raunchy scene to an interpersonal conflict. I'm non even going to propose a replacement for that. Titillating scenes are not an essential office of near stories, and rape should definitely non be used for titillation.
half-dozen. Rape every bit an Caption for an Unusual Bloodline
In the novel Mistborn, Vin is a part of an oppressed group chosen the skaa. Nonetheless, she has superpowers that only nobles are supposed to have. That'due south considering to prevent the skaa from getting powers, nobles are forbidden from interbreeding with them. Instead of leaving it at that place, author Brandon Sanderson establishes that noblemen regularly rape skaa women and and then kill them afterward to prevent babies. Even the love interest, a noble, patently engaged in this practice in one case. Since he was immature and his father arranged it, the dearest interest didn't realize his victim would be killed. However, she wouldn't have consented to sex with a noble for obvious reasons. Thankfully, the book skips over that role.
Welcome to the most pointless rape trope of all – wherein storytellers use rape to explain something that doesn't demand explaining. Nobles beingness forbidden by the Emperor is sufficient caption for why Vin is one of only a few skaa with powers, the rape murder is excessive. Sanderson could as well take established that nobles utilise some kind of contraceptive or hire infertile sex workers. You'd think some nobles would want to see a favorite prostitute more one time.
Similarly, rape is often used as the groundwork for rare interbreeding, equally though that requires an caption. In the novel Spinning Silvery, the character Irina tin practice magic with fairy silver considering a fairy raped her great-grandmother. In the Narnia books, CS Lewis explains that beingness of Telmarines in Narnia past saying they're descended from a bunch of pirates who "stole" native women earlier accidentally crossing into some other world. I wish today'southward writers all understood women are not possessions, but alas.
How to Replace This Trope
In these instances, mentions of rape tin can normally be removed without a replacement. It isn't necessary to explain why an unusual pair of people shook the bed only once. If yous think consensual sex seems unlikely in a particular example, just don't mention how it happened.
In Mistborn, the explanation was why in that location aren't morebabies. In that attempt, lots of rape was counterproductive. I'thou guessing Sanderson idea he needed something shocking to testify why the oppression of skaa was bad. He did non.
Even if your story is nigh rape, you might still go out sexual set on out. The movie Maleficent uses the theft of the protagonist's wings equally an analogy for rape, and it works beautifully. In Mad Max: Fury Road, the protagonists are helping victims escape their rapist as office of the movie'south fundamental message: people are not possessions. However, sexual assault is never shown on screen or directly discussed. That's because part of taking this issue seriously is being respectful to survivors.
Source: https://mythcreants.com/blog/six-rape-tropes-and-how-to-replace-them/