Words On Writing Rape Scenes, or: "Just Don't."

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.



First off, let me open this by observing that no one should ever care what Mark Millar thinks, ever.  Millar has a history of saying whatever controversial thing he can think of, in order to make people pay attention to his incessant need for attention. The man named his own comic-book magazine after a word you try not to write in comics out of good taste. He's like a child telling dead baby jokes, reveling in his forced-edginess. It should also be noted that Millar hates his audience, writing much of Kick-Ass satirically to make fun of the people who loved the main character in Wanted. He used to write nerd-fantasies "ironically", now he does it intentionally. We become who we pretend to be. 

My feelings about Millar aside, there are typically three justifications for rape scenes that hack writers give:
1: It makes the female character learn to grow stronger in response. (The "Enough"method)
2: It makes the Male Lead angry and causes him to act in revenge. (The "Women In Refrigerators" method.) 
3: It shows how bad the bad guy is. (The Millar method.)

 Let's start by addressing the first one. Of these three, I find this to be the most irritating, because it hides itself in the guise of pseudo-feminism. It reared its head in the gaming world recently when Tomb Raider was rebooted, and it was hinted at during early trailers that sexual assault may be part of Lara Croft's origin story. The issue with the "Enough" method is that by making rape the catalyst for a woman's new-found identity, you are making that character defined by rape.  And by using this trope again and again, you are creating a world of media in which all women are definedby sexual assault. Sometimes it is literally their only defining characteristic, such as in revenge-films like I Spit on Your Grave. And when you take this concept and apply it to characters like Lara Croft, or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo's Lisbeth Salander, you are essentially saying that sexual assault in the only reason these women are strong. As though there is no other possible way that women can be strong characters otherwise. In doing this, you are granting extended power to their fictional assailants, you are saying that the rapist essentially "created" the character, that the rape gave person to the woman we know. It is essentially stripping the female character of any organic motivations, and detracting from her humanity.

This is the problem with methods two and three.  By using sexual assault to prove a point regarding another character, you are using a female character as a plot device, not as a character. You're stripping them of their agency entirely, and not even for their own stories. Their assault is no longer even theirs, it's just a catalyst for other people. Again, this wouldn't be as big a deal if this wasn't something that happened to women in real life every single day. A woman being raped is very different from Gene Hackman killing Morgan Freeman and angering Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, and if you can't see the difference between these two situations, maybe you shouldn't be writing rape scenes.

The problem with fictional rape scenes in media is very similar to the problem with the way we respond to rape cases in real life: There's a complete and utter lack of regard or respect for the victim. If Mark Millar doesn't even care about the impact of sexual assault on the fictional woman he created, how are we supposed to believe he has empathy towards real-life rape victims? The problem here is that rape, or the fear of it, doesn't have to be in your face for you to be empathetic towards it. You can also show your empathy at the voting booth, or simple conduct in public places. The issue here is that Millar and other writers are writing rape as "just a thing that happens", thereby demeaning it. This matters because it affects the level of empathy that his readers have, readers that Millar knows damn well don't always exercise critical thinking. These portrayals matter, and by pretending that they don't (or flat-out saying "I don’t really think it matters," as Millar did), we are adding to the problem. No one, man or woman, should have to live in a world where rape is just "something that happens", like chicken pox or mosquito bites, and by pretending we live in this world, we are complacent in its continuation.