Sexual violence and misogyny in SF/F

[Jo Zebedee]

For what it's worth, I think the sex of the character, in each case, is largely irrelevant. It's about how well we paint them, and if we have a well drawn character that the reader buys into, it should be tragic irrlevant of sex. If we don't, it might read gratuitously, again irrelevant of sex. We should be drawing the best characters we can and utilising their story arc in the best way we can - which may be to make an important point, it may be to entertain, it may be to make pathos - but the sex, to my mind, shouldn't especially matter.

 

[Colum Paget]

For what it's worth, I think the sex of the character, in each case, is largely irrelevant. It's about how well we paint them, and if we have a well drawn character that the reader buys into, it should be tragic irrlevant of sex. If we don't, it might read gratuitously, again irrelevant of sex. We should be drawing the best characters we can and utilising their story arc in the best way we can - which may be to make an important point, it may be to entertain, it may be to make pathos - but the sex, to my mind, shouldn't especially matter.

I mostly agree, but if one sex is always getting something negative happen to them, and the other isn't, then something feels not right to me. If female characters in 'Wing Commander' scenarios are very well drawn and likeable, but are always getting tragically killed in the final battle, and the main male protagonist always manages to squeak through, then I feel there's something... not right about that, not fair.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Is it the violence or the sexual suggestions that are iffy? Would it be the same if I switched the protagonist's gender? Does it make a difference that the 'entity' is possessing the body of another woman while it does all this (and is itself non-gendered). Are protagonists generally required to take a degree of physical abuse, and if so is that more problematic for female protagonists, or not?

If the violence is sexual violence that would be the part I found "iffy." Or if the violence was graphic and extended. What would decide me is not the gender of the character, but whether the violence was gratuitous. (I just finished reading a novel by ... um ... someone not unknown on this forum, and there was extended violence, including sexual violence, but because of the treatment and the importance to the story I decided it was justified). I feel that it is often used as the simplest way to create a dramatic situation, to make a story seem more important and realistic than it really is. "Dark" is somehow considered more realistic than "light" though both exist in the world, both are real, and I think that some writers get away with poor plotting and bad characterization because all the death and destruction lends a spurious appearance of "authenticity" in terms of the story's representation of the human experience.

No, I don't think that a degree of physical abuse is required for a protagonist. And I am going to draw a wide red line between pain and physical discomfort (which are indeed inescapable) and abuse by another individual.

Because of the history of violence against women, I would feel more uncomfortable reading about a female being beaten to a pulp than a man suffering the same fate. That is, I would be more likely to question whether it was a necessary part of the story, although the answer I might arrive at could still be "yes." *

If female characters in 'Wing Commander' scenarios are very well drawn and likeable, but are always getting tragically killed in the final battle, and the main male protagonist always manages to squeak through, then I feel there's something... not right about that, not fair.

This would matter to me most if it were all happening in one series, or in books from the same writer. But if there seemed to be a whole sub-genre in which the females always die, yes, I would feel there was something wrong, some unpleasant subtext at work perhaps.


_____


*It occurs to me that the gender of the writer might come into it as well. If a female writer seemed to be taking a salacious delight (that is, if they seemed to be getting or trying to produce a sexual thrill) in mistreating a male character, whether the violence itself were sexual, or a male writer doing the same with a female character, then I would feel doubly uncomfortable.

 

[Nerds_feather]

A lot of interesting points here. I'm going to weigh in with my perspective now.

Rape and Sexual Violence

I don't mind that rape occurs in stories and books. It occurs in real life. What I do mind are two things:

1. Gratuitous, pornographic depictions of rape and sexual violence, that seem to take pleasure in describing it or do so in order to attain some modicum of "shock value." This is what RH, Elizabeth Bear and others refer to pejoratively as "grimdark." While I like dark fiction, this reminds me too much of the over-the-top violence and cruelty that was in vogue in 1990s US independent cinema. I don't like it, at all.

2. Rape as a hamfisted mechanism to describe someone's motivations, either "she's angry because she was raped" (I think it was Teresa Edgerton who pointed this out in the RH thread), or "he's a dark and twisted soul because he'll rape someone without a second thought"...especially when these are combined with, respectively, "we should hate her because she's a bitch" and "we should really like him because he's badass."

The latter is part of my beef with RSB and Prince of Nothing.

So what would constitute "appropriate" depictions of rape? This is hard to say. I can't say I'll ever enjoy reading about it, but I think theoretically it can be done in such a way as not to fall into one of these two traps.

For me, I'd say having it happen off-scene would be the first thing I'd suggest, and then--and this is the most important part for me--making sure the depiction of the aftermath highlights and underscores the horror of the act in its effects. I don't really ever want to read another character who rapes but we're supposed to like him. I would, however, feel that a story of book that detailed the way an act like rape can shatter someone, and then look at their attempt to pick up the pieces, would be compelling.

This makes me think of Irving Welsh's novel Maribou Stork Nightmares, which is borderline spec-fic. I read it a good 15 years ago, so forgive me if my memory has faded, but if I remember correctly, a rape plays a central role in the story, and WElsh makes it very clear how destructive an act it is.

 

[J-WO]

How much darkness do people think is appropriate? What constitutes 'dark'? I generally write stuff that I think contains a lot of psychological darkness, but any sex is consensual. What crosses the line? What non-sexual stuff would be over the line?

Personally, I think darkness in fiction should work like darkness in Rembrandt paintings. It's there to bring focus to the light and make it stand out.

 

[Brian G Turner]

So what would constitute "appropriate" depictions of rape? This is hard to say. I can't say I'll ever enjoy reading about it, but I think theoretically it can be done in such a way as not to fall into one of these two traps.

Have just started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today. I vaguely know that violence against women will play some key part in this story. Not comfortable in knowing that's coming, but does not appear from accounts of friends who have read it to be gratuitous. Just hope that's borne out.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Have just started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today. I vaguely know that violence against women will play some key part in this story. Not comfortable in knowing that's coming, but does not appear from accounts of friends who have read it to be gratuitous. Just hope that's borne out.

a warning: it's very graphic at times...but written in the context of a book whose primary theme is how messed up violence by men against women is. actually the book's title in Swedish is Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women).

 

[Anne Lyle]

Are protagonists generally required to take a degree of physical abuse, and if so is that more problematic for female protagonists, or not?

No, I don't think protagonists are required to take physical abuse - that would depend very much on the kind of story you are writing. Sure, if you're writing a warrior character (of either sex) and/or a story with a lot of combat, physical abuse is inevitable, but that's far from the only kind of story there is.

Secondly, I have no problem with female protagonists being on the receiving end of violence that they chose to engage in. If a heroine goes into situations all guns blazing, sure, I'm going to expect her to get the **** kicked out of her once in a while. It's female=victim that I have a problem with.

One of the things that bugs me about the whole "rapey fantasy" trope is that sexual assault is so often the principal, even the only, danger for the female characters. It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction by some (mainly male) writers that if they want to put their female character in peril, their go-to scenario is rape. It's like they can only conceptualise their female characters in the context of sex.

The other thing, and this is mainly from reading ASOIAF, is when rape is mentioned with wearying regularity, in just enough detail to be unpleasant but with callous disregard for the victims. I've basically given up reading ASOIAF because of this recurrent "look, aren't my characters all despicable, they've gang-raped another virgin" trope.

ETA: I didn't know Chrons had a bad language filter. I swear I didn't type those asterisks!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Personally, I think darkness in fiction should work like darkness in Rembrandt paintings. It's there to bring focus to the light and make it stand out.

"Great deeds shine brighter in a dark world." (Or something to that effect.)

But I think there has to be light as well as dark in the story for that to work. I don't believe that it brings focus to the light outside.

It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction by some (mainly male) writers that if they want to put their female character in peril, their go-to scenario is rape. It's like they can only conceptualise their female characters in the context of sex.

Good point!

I didn't know Chrons had a bad language filter.

Sometimes it works to unintentionally hilarious effect. Like finding the dirty word in the middle of a perfectly innocent one.

In this case, it makes it look like you used a naughtier word than you probably did.

 

[Kylara]

The Night's Dawn Trilogy covers the whole issue of drakness and violence rather well imo. It happens to everyone, that comes up against the "bad guys" and gives background on the one whose PoV you see from as you progress, so you see where he is coming from too - still a nasty character, but you can understand him...there are also variations in there on how to get the soul in (trying to avoid spoilers here...) and the rebellions of the possessed. It doesn't just go with male on female rape either, there is all sorts of diabolical stuff happening, but understanding of here and why they happen are also given...with a rather horrible twist that the body is better afterwards (again spoiler avoiding). It can get very dark, but it is mirrorred by a lighter set of "heroes". You get pretty much every side's viewpoint and reasoning and I do think that Hamilton manages very well with it, making the reader just uncomfortable enough every so often, yet creating a very believable reasoning behind it and bringing in some wonderful moral issues, alongside the poverty, darkness, sexual exploitation et al...well worth a look.

 

[J-WO]

(Slight derail that plays back to thread this thread came from- Had Twitter chat with Requires Hate. I had a go at identifying her and she (nervously?) laughed it off.

Tellingly, she re-tweeted everything I tweeted except the one where I suggested she could be funnier.

Anyway, carry on...)

 

[Colum Paget]

Perhaps in saying 'is the protagonist required to take abuse' I'm overstating it, but they do say that you should make life as difficult for your protagonist.

I have noticed a tendency to violence between women in my fiction, but then I tend to mostly use female characters, so the one thing is likely to grow from the other. In "Imaginary Enemies" (over at Daily Science Fiction) the story concerned two people living in one body, and the fact that this was viewed as a 'treatable' disease by society, and so one of the two was scheduled to be 'erased'. I wanted someone to make the case for the reality of the 'other' person (who cannot appear in the story themselves, because of the viewpoint) and didn't feel that words alone were enough. In "Invocation of the Lurker" the violence is there to push the protag to make a certain choice: You've already paid the price, you might as well go all the way. 'Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings' is a piece set during the "Warring Moons Period" when young women are used as "coffin dodgers" (a form of fighter pilot) because of their better brain/mass ratio for space combat (it's pretty grim, but only in the sense of "All quiet on the western front", I think). 'Love in a time of Bio-mal' features some violence towards a female character who has an eye removed (though it happens offstage, and it's later put back in), but on the other hand it features extended and quite graphic violence by the same female character on the male lead.

The one story I have with robot prot/ant-agonists (Interview with a Robot Hereisarch) features an extended and graphic fight between the two. So it could just be that protagonists in my fiction are often going to get into physical situations.

On the other hand, someone reading one of these stories might feel that violent conflict involving females in it was problematic, where they wouldn't feel that for male characters (or robots) and they might not read any more of my fiction. In this regard, it might be the smart move for the author to generally keep female characters in... well, 'traditional' roles where they're out of harm's way?

I'm changing the question a bit here, I'm not asking about what we *should* do, because everyone would say that we should break female characters out of their traditional roles, I'm asking what is it *tactically smart* for a writer to do, as regards their readership?

We as writers might all agree that we should see female characters in less 'stay-at-home' roles, but if this means exposing them to violence (and I think in many styles of story it will) and the readership reacts badly to that, is the smart move for the writer to stick to male characters (or robots) in stories containing violent conflict?

 

[Colum Paget]

(Slight derail that plays back to thread this thread came from- Had Twitter chat with Requires Hate. I had a go at identifying her and she (nervously?) laughed it off.

Tellingly, she re-tweeted everything I tweeted except the one where I suggested she could be funnier.

Anyway, carry on...)

These days I have some suspicions about who it is, but I don't think it's actually useful to know any more. I kinda don't want to know the answer. I would feel very betrayed and upset if someone I knew had attacked me as they did (I don't think it's someone I've personally met, but I'd rather not know one way or the others).

 

[Colum Paget]

The Night's Dawn Trilogy covers the whole issue of drakness and violence rather well imo.

Drakness is a whole other kettle of snakes! Don't get me started on drakness!

 

[Colum Paget]

If the violence is sexual violence that would be the part I found "iffy." Or if the violence was graphic and extended. What would decide me is not the gender of the character, but whether the violence was gratuitous. (I just finished reading a novel by ... um ... someone not unknown on this forum, and there was extended violence, including sexual violence, but because of the treatment and the importance to the story I decided it was justified). I feel that it is often used as the simplest way to create a dramatic situation, to make a story seem more important and realistic than it really is. "Dark" is somehow considered more realistic than "light" though both exist in the world, both are real, and I think that some writers get away with poor plotting and bad characterization because all the death and destruction lends a spurious appearance of "authenticity" in terms of the story's representation of the human experience.

No, I don't think that a degree of physical abuse is required for a protagonist. And I am going to draw a wide red line between pain and physical discomfort (which are indeed inescapable) and abuse by another individual.

Because of the history of violence against women, I would feel more uncomfortable reading about a female being beaten to a pulp than a man suffering the same fate. That is, I would be more likely to question whether it was a necessary part of the story, although the answer I might arrive at could still be "yes." *



This would matter to me most if it were all happening in one series, or in books from the same writer. But if there seemed to be a whole sub-genre in which the females always die, yes, I would feel there was something wrong, some unpleasant subtext at work perhaps.


_____


*It occurs to me that the gender of the writer might come into it as well. If a female writer seemed to be taking a salacious delight (that is, if they seemed to be getting or trying to produce a sexual thrill) in mistreating a male character, whether the violence itself were sexual, or a male writer doing the same with a female character, then I would feel doubly uncomfortable.

When is violence gratuitous? I'm going to take a stab (no pun intended) at this myself, as just asking questions isn't helpfull: I think that it's gratuitous if it's unimportant to the story, if it serves no real purpose. In the cases of my stories that I've outlined above, I felt it did serve a purpose, but how do I tell if I'm right or wrong in that regard? How should be approach violence in our fiction (not just violence to women, all violence?)

As regards a salacious delight in mistreating characters (which I suspect you might almost require to be an author!), do you have any feeling for what would tip you off that you were seeing salacious delight? Does it have any common aspects that one can point to?

 

[Kylara]

If the violence adds nothing to the part you are writing, then it is gratuitous...eg someone gets beaten up, you show a couple of blows, a bloody nose, falling on the floor curled up in a ball...all fine, but when you start to avidly describe every moment of this, taking special care to give all the details of the violence it becomes gratuitous, I know what happens when someone is beaten up, you don't have to give an incredibly detailed account, unless it actually helps the story...it's all in the language - "fist connected with their nose, and a sharp cry of pain followed, blood started dripping from the now broken nose", compared with "fist connected with a sickening crunch, hot wet blood, sloshed weakly from the cartilage hanging limply from the swollen, bruised, shattered remains of the once whole nose; an impassioned cry of intense pain, smothered by the blood clogging their throat burst from them" the first is fine, the second (apologies for that) is just gratuitous and unneccessary, unless this is an important point for the story...

 

[Anne Lyle]

We as writers might all agree that we should see female characters in less 'stay-at-home' roles, but if this means exposing them to violence (and I think in many styles of story it will) and the readership reacts badly to that, is the smart move for the writer to stick to male characters (or robots) in stories containing violent conflict?

No, absolutely not. It's not about the violence per se, but about how it's handled. Are the women always victims, and the men always the dominant inflicters of violence? Is the violence gratuitous, as discussed above, or sexualised/objectifying? If the answer to these is no, you're probably OK.

Sounds to me like RH has got you so rattled, you're trying to avoid the subject altogether. I recommend you get yourself some female beta-readers who are a bit less thin-skinned (and a lot less aggressive!) than her but still sensitive to misogynist undertones

@Kylara - gratuitousness isn't just about the detail. It's about whether the event really adds to the story at all. A lot of GRRM's rape scenes and other examples of abuse aren't described in graphic detail - it's the frequency, and the callousness of those reporting them, that's sickening.

 

[Kylara]

Hmm I suppose, however I think callousness comes with its own commentary on the subject...I agree gratuitousness isn't all in the details, but it was the best example I could come up with that was short and kind of showed my point...if there is no need for person X to even get beaten up, then why bother putting it in at all?

I was aiming for how language itself can be gratuitous...unconscious things maybe seen in a first draft: your character is crying - you say snivelling - negative assumption based on the word, same sort of action, - or weeping - almost certainly a female or a feminine man, comes with great emotional attachment, still technically crying. Some ways of using language can be gratuitous, which is what I was trying to get across; the second example didn't need to have that much detail unless it was specifically needed for plot/motive etc, but then again, if the violence isn't really need at all for the plot, it is just somehting that happens to happen in the scene that has no impact on anything else then it is definitely gratuitous.

 

[The Judge]

I have noticed a tendency to violence between women in my fiction, but then I tend to mostly use female characters, so the one thing is likely to grow from the other.

Then perhaps you ought to be asking yourself why you are inflicting violence on anyone, and why you are deliberately writing women into these stories. While each story may in itself be unobjectionable, taken cumulatively they may be saying something that is best addressed.

In this regard, it might be the smart move for the author to generally keep female characters in... well, 'traditional' roles where they're out of harm's way?

Not unless you really want to come over as a sexist jerk...

I'm asking what is it *tactically smart* for a writer to do, as regards their readership?

Cut down on the violence against anyone, perhaps -- unless you are catering for a demographic that likes to read about violence, in which case ask yourself why you're doing that. If you're writing about women in the military or other occupations where violence is inevitable, you should be wary of women-only situations just as much as you should beware of men-only.


While I'm here, incidentally, you might not have realised that it isn't necessary to quote an entire post if you want to respond to someone, and we'd usually prefer you didn't. It's enough to quote the snippet that's important, or to refer to the poster by name when replying. We also prefer that members don't post consecutively -- if you want to reply to different posters, it's perfectly acceptable to do so in one long post (another reason not to quote the posts in full) using the multi-quote option if necessary.

 

[Ursa major]

As regards a salacious delight in mistreating characters (which I suspect you might almost require to be an author!), do you have any feeling for what would tip you off that you were seeing salacious delight? Does it have any common aspects that one can point to?

I'm not sure about the author's position on the matter (no pun intended), but I've noted a couple of Iain Banks novels where alien species seem to take delight in mistreating their offspring.

(Don't quote me on this, but I think the species are the Affront, in Excession, and the Dwellers, in The Algebraist.)