Recently, comic writer Mark Millar said something ignorant and disgusting regarding the rationale for writing a female character being raped. He justifies it as "the same as, like, a decapitation. It’s just a horrible act to show that somebody’s a bad guy." This line of thinking is wrong and disturbing for a number of reasons that people smarter than me have already addressed. (Mainly that women don't live in fear of decapitation, 1 in 3 women won't be decapitated in their life, and that no one has ever blamed a decapitation victim for their own headlessness.) However, there's a massive angle to this which I don't think is receiving enough consideration, an angle which should be considered whenever anyone thinks about writing a rape scene in fiction. When you write this, you are taking power away from your fictional victim, and giving it TO your fictional aggressor. I realize that this is obviously the idea, but by portraying this in media, most (male) authors aren't considering what this is saying about their characters, or their attitudes.
