Thank you!

[erastes]

Thank you for everyone who pitched in and commented on my Rape Post. Normally I'll shy away from subjects which have the possibility to be so very incendiary, but the answers were all very interesting. I would be interested to hear what men thought, too. I don't think I have any straight men on my flist (strange, that) but that's a view I'd like to hear--but I'd love to hear from the gay men too, very much.

Angel series 4 began well, and I enjoyed getting past the six year cliffhanger at last! Not very impressed with what happened to Cordy but will be interesting to see how that resolves.

Comments

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

hmm. I believe that sexual orientation is far far more complex than straight/bi/gay and that people can move between them sexually and emotionally, but within that framework Im a straight man in that to date I have never fallen for another guy, don't tend to find most men attractive and have only had sex with women. So I guess Im straight but open minded?

I had a quick read of the rape post and comments. To me the issue is one of context. Rape fantasies are popular, but by definition if you 'want' to be raped you are not actually being raped (it would be more of a sub/dom game I guess). What that does mean is that many people would find some 'rape' scenes erotic and put them in a different category to actual rape in real life. That of course becomes hugely problematic-where does one blur into the other? When does the idea that people could 'like it' translate into justification for something people would NOT want to happen? At what point to authors/artists/etc have a responsibility to portray painful and traumatic events as just that, and is there a point where even if they do this some readers may still find it erotic anyway?

Its a complex subject and I dont think there are any easy answers. I would think that creatively if a rape happens in a story it should be because it is narratively important or making a point-it shouldn't be there for its own sake in isolation. Having said that, some authors could probably create very thought provoking rape scenes that are just thrown at you and then almost ignored and have great impact that way. Stories examining casual violence, oppression, war, etc that avoid rape may be more harmful than one that deals with it. Is the A team 'better' or 'worse' in its impact regarding violence than Saving Private Ryan because nobody ever gets hurt even though there are all those bullets flying?

[vinnie-tesla.livejournal.com]

Paste in Hybridartifacts' first paragraph to apply to me.

My feelings about rape--in particular, eroticized rape--in fiction are not simple.

I have nonconsensual sex fantasies. I've had numerous female lovers who have nonconsensual sex fantasies. I've done play-rape scenes that were extremely mutually satisfying.

I've wrung my hands a lot about how to integrate these issues into my short fiction.

I think it gets even harder to do thoughtfully in a novel, because novels are (perhaps even necessarily) about the moral and pragmatic consequences of actions, so the kind of suspended reality necessary to make nonconsensual sex entertainment rather than trauma becomes that much harder to sustain.

None of this makes it wrong to try or impossible to accomplish, it's just very hard to do well. After all, it's common-place to have novels wherein beating and killing people nonsexually is treated as good, jolly fun (for James Bond, it appears to be foreplay, for example). Tone is hugely important here. Also you have to be girded for the fact that there will never be perfect consensus on whether an author succeeded with this sort of nuance. One reader will say yea, and another equally smart and perceptive reader will say nay--that's how the game works.