AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGH!

[blamebrampton]

Two HP questions, one polite, one ranty.

To begin with the polite:
Do HP werewolves keep their clothes when they transform, as animagi do? I can't for the life of me recall and the bookshelves are all mid-shift, with PoA under a stack of YA fiction.

To move onto the ranty:
What the HELL are some writers thinking when they write sexual assault as a consequence-free piece of erotic interaction? I can't read this shit. Because I sit there wanting to slap the author.

Note that this is not the same as saying I can't read stories that contain sexual violence. I can, and have, both novels and fic, and some have been excellent. But there is a cost for sexual violence. Hell, even Margaret Mitchell has Rhett Butler consumed with guilt in Gone With the Wind after he drags Scarlett upstairs for a right good rogering while she punches him. There is always a cost.

Why do I rant thusly? Because I have been listening to Shiv and reading the odd spot of het. But, idiotically, not Shiv's own witty and urbane stories. Here's a tip, kids. Have one more Hermione being 'put in her place' with someone's penis and it's very likely you'll find me on your doorstep holding the shattered remains of your letterbox and using them to wedge the door open while I lecture you on why this is not now and never will be a valid authorial gambit.

I am trying to work out some way of addressing this with the writer that doesn't begin with: FEMINISM, it's not just a course at university! HUMAN RIGHTS, not just a T-shirt!

I'm going to stay safely here in the happy little slightly angsty but with authorial acknowledgement that there are prices to be paid gay part of fandom, thanks. Because I will probably be arrested otherwise.

ETA: I should clarify that I am not talking about BD/SM stories, which I am actually fine with. I can even kind of live with the rape fantasy stories where she wants to be dominated (while secretly whispering "It's okay to want to have sex! And it's also okay if you want to be tied up!" at the screen). I am talking about stories where characters are intentionally sexually degraded for no narrative purpose other some alleged titilation.

Comments

[pingrid.livejournal.com]

Thank you for formulating so well part of what I've been struggling with! The thing though, is this: it kind of appalls me that I think that, because I don't, on principle, think it's right to interpret an action towards an individual as representative as an action towards a larger group, like a whole gender. I also instinctively feel that m/m rape is personal and m/f rape tends to be stereotypical - but why? It's horribly prejudiced of me to feel that way, and I feel like I'm doing both my own sex and the male sex a disservice by defaulting to that. I don't want to accept that we're only seen as a gender and not as individuals, and I don't want to assume that they do. And yet this is an issue that comes up again and again in various forms and contexts.

It's partly our cultural and social baggage, of course - and there are certainly both men and women who stereotype their own and the opposite sex. But I think it's partly us being oversensitive too. Very broadly speaking: if I read a slash fic where a man is "put in his place", I'll automatically assume that the place in question is beneath the man doing the putting, as an individual. In a het fic, I'll automatically assume the woman's "place" is beneath his gender. That's a perception on my part, and it's unneccesarily negative. I don't want it, and I don't want other intelligent women and men to just assume that either.

I guess it boils down to the fact that het powerplay, D/s, dub-con and rape has so much working against it that it has to be about ten times better written than its slash equivalent to avoid coming off as horrible misogyny. Which is a bit of a feeble conclusion to an incoherent argument, sorry about that. :)

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

But factually het and male rape are experienced differently by the victims. It's not just a theoretical difference. A female victim is more likely to blame herself, and to think that she should have behaved differently. A male victim escapes that kind of pressure and guilt, though he has different pressures.

In the end, society treats the two differently, so their meanings in a wider context are also different.

Plus, not only does het have to be better written, it's read differently as well.

I wrote a story a couple of days ago in which Hermione clearly tricks Severus into losing a bet (and therefore having sex). Several reviewers insisted that Snapey clearly knew what was going on and was playing along with her. Look, mate, I fucking wrote it, I know what happened, and you're reading it wrong!

You see a lot of that. A het audience with so much internalised misogyny that they just can't read something as is but have to interpolate meanings that restore the balance to woman = weak.

[pingrid.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's no question that there's a difference in how the sexes are treated by society, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. The point I was trying to make, and obviously failing at, is exactly what you say about the different perceptions. I hate that people read female characters not as individuals but as representatives of a twisted stereotype of their gender - Hermione can't really have the upper hand because she's a girl (= weak), if Hermione is raped she won't really mind because she's just being put in her place (= subservient to men). It's horrifying, and I would like everyone to take a look at their default responses and try to change them if they're hopeless.

I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here; it's midnight and the brain appears to have gone to sleep. If this is gibberish I apologise and promise to try and think again tomorrow. :)

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

No, it's true, a man is just a man, but a woman is representative of a gender.