disappointedThere are a lot of ways to reach me; I try to be accessible and responsive whenever possible. Sometimes, this leads to my being asked questions I would never dream of asking an author who wasn't a) a personal friend, and b) in the process of getting drunk with me. I try to answer them nicely, for the most part, assuming I can answer them at all (I can't, always; some questions simply can't be answered).
Last night, I was asked—in so many words—when either Toby or one of the Price girls was finally going to be raped.
Not "if." Not "do you think." But "when," and "finally." Because it is a foregone conclusion, you see, that all women must be raped, especially when they have the gall to run around being protagonists all the damn time. I responded with confusion. The questioner provided a list of scenarios wherein these characters were "more than likely" to encounter sexual violence. These included Verity forgetting to change out of her tango uniform before going on patrol, Toby being cocky, and Sarah walking home from class alone. Yes, even the ambush predator telepath with a "don't notice me" field is inevitably getting raped.
When. Finally. Inevitably.
My response: "None of my protagonists are getting raped. I do not want to write that."
Their response: "I thought you had respect for your work. That's just unrealistic."
Verity is the bastard daughter of Dazzler and Batman. Toby is what happens when Tinker Bell embraces her inner bitch and starts wearing pants. Velveteen brings toys to life and uses them to fight the powers of darkness. Sarah is a hot mathematician who looks like Zooey Deschanel but is actually a hyper-evolved parasitic wasp. The unrealistic part about all these characters? Is that they haven't been raped.
Needless to say, I was a little bit annoyed, and I still am.
Statistically speaking, one in six women will be raped in her lifetime. This is just the statistic we know; it doesn't account for the fact that right now, reporting rape is a minefield all of its own, and many women choose not to subject themselves to that process. I do not know how many of my friends have been raped. I know that five of them are safe because of me, if you trust statistics. So you know. There's that.
Rape in fiction can be a powerful and important thing. It can be used to make important statements, it can be used to drive important stories. I love Robin McKinley's Deerskin as much because of the discomfort it causes me as for the beauty it contains. There are authors I will always trust, or try to trust, and it's important to show uncomfortable things through fiction. I am not saying that no one should write about rape, ever.
But rape in fiction can also be a problematic and belittling thing, used to put cocky heroines in their places. When Janet goes to Caughterha despite being told not to, her punishment is rape by the eponymous Tam Lin. When a superheroine needs a deeper, edgier backstory, there's always some previously third-tier villain with a de-powering ray and an agenda waiting in the wings. I read a lot of horror, a lot of comics, and a lot of urban fantasy, and the one thing these three things have in common is rape. Lots and lots and lots of rape.
And I don't wanna write that.
I do not understand—I will not understand, I refuse to understand—why rape has to be on the table for every story with a female protagonist, or even a strong female supporting cast. Why it's so assumed that I'm being "unrealistic" when I say that none of my female characters are going to be raped. Why this "takes the tension out of the story." There is plenty of tension without me having to write about something that upsets both me and many of my readers, thanks.
Toby will not be getting raped. Verity, Alice, Sarah, Antimony, and the rest of the InCryptid girls will not be getting raped. Velveteen will not be getting raped. Rose will not be getting raped. If this makes my work unrealistic, then fine. There's a reason I write science fiction and fantasy.
But I do not write rape. And the fact that this somehow makes me "unrealistic," rather than making me an author who makes choices about what she wants to write...that's the part I find upsetting.
You know. In addition to everything else.
September 30 2012, 19:22:53 UTC 4 years ago
The statistics range from one in six to one in three, which leaves 2/3 to 5/6 of women who do not get raped (in reality; the prevalence of rape may be different in the worlds and cultures Seanan writes); then there's the limited timescale of the books---the odds that a character will be raped during the series of events for which there is a narrative drops further. One might add in the entire time the character has been living, because some authors give their characters a rapey backstory, but still, that's with luck less than a third of their life, and does not require reporting, so to speak, because it might not be relevant to the character or the story---experience of rape is not universal and not everybody who's been raped has their psyche and identity so shaped by that experience that it's relevant to mention while they go around saving the world.
Which brings us to the grouping of them, and the suggestion that it's an unrealistic coincidence that all of Seanan's characters are people who will not be raped, but . . . nothing really ties them together except for the fact that Seanan is their author. They are different people; they live in different universes. There doesn't seem anything unrealistic about sifting through multitudes of women and coming up with six that aren't raped during a certain few years of their lives, when the odds of their being raped are only [(that fraction of their lives) of (1/6 to 1/3)].
I find that perfectly realistic. As for the authorial anti-rape shield, well, I find that slightly more realistic than the tactic some other authors take of using their first-person-limited or third-person-omniscient knowledge of the character's actions to consider where best to place a rapist, which is beyond the dreams of even the most dedicated stalkers in any universe unless it's one that features a telepathic rapist.
October 2 2012, 18:26:24 UTC 4 years ago