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Overtaker40 t1_j2akwkl wrote

Reply to comment by cpt_tusktooth in Does Don Winslow introduce endless female characters just to write explicitly about their bodies and sex lives? by hammnbubbly

It's not that bad. I mean yeah it's got some wierd moments across the series but women are not written as objects they just live in a shit world.

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LuthienByNight t1_j2apdzg wrote

That's such a lazy excuse for gritty fantasy writers, though. There are so many ways to portray a world in which the darker aspects of human nature hold sway beyond describing your attractive female characters get sexually assaulted. It's the shallowest and lowest effort way of interpreting "gritty".

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NeoSeth t1_j2aqam8 wrote

I absolutely agree. Women being victims of sexual violence in a "gritty" world may be "realistic" (Have I used enough air quotes to show my disdain?) but that doesn't mean I want to read about it. Even if it is a theme you want to touch on, you can just reference it or imply it. I don't need to watch it play out. I am convinced in many male-authored fantasy stories involving rape and SA, it reflects the author's inability to separate women as people from the author's perception of them as sexual objects. "I need something bad to happen to this woman. Women make me think of sex. I know! She'll be sexually assaulted!" Give me a break.

I am well aware not every gritty story is like this. But it is too common imo.

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LuthienByNight t1_j2axy8w wrote

Not to mention that the genre in which this is so often a problem is fantasy. As in "you created this entire culture and people out of your own fertile imagination and you get to decide what their culture is like". Since when did fantasy have to remain faithful to specific aspects of certain historical cultures? You can draw inspiration from medieval Europe, but your fantasy place is still entirely your own to invent.

I think that part of this boils down to the idea that the weight we place on consent is a more modern concept and that if a society is earlier in development, then there's bound to be a lot of rape. Well, the Code of Ur-Nammu from over four thousand years ago punished rape against a woman with execution. It all varies from place to place. There are a million reasons that an otherwise gritty fantasy culture wouldn't have a lot of rape, and the exercise of figuring out what those are could provide for better depth and world building around the society itself.

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Not-your-lawyer- t1_j2cuhxz wrote

It's also (often) not internally consistent. If you've got a sword & sorcery story where everyone has some sort of power, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for your female characters to be vulnerable damsels.

I know ASOIAF isn't really the best example as a whole, but the bits with the free folk beyond the wall hit the contradiction pretty well, since the women are warriors as well. There's a bit from Tormund, I think, saying that someone "can own a knife or a woman but not both." And fantasy forgets that all the time. Your characters have fucking superpowers, dude. An armed society might not always be a polite society, but the "impolite" people are gonna be short lived.

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lunatics_and_poets t1_j2bbuj7 wrote

Any time they claim historical accuracy I roll my eyes and ask them if they're willing to describe women with actually body hair (and not just arm pits).

You want to claim historical accuracy for your r*pe fantasies then you gotta claim the fact that hairless women were not historically accurate either.

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NeoSeth t1_j2bovva wrote

I think about that a lot, actually. This is close to another soapbox of mine, but I'll be brief and just say I believe people make a lot of excuses to justify fulfilling their sexual fantasies in their art.

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TehScaryWolf t1_j2bliyl wrote

This just made me reimagine a lot of history scenes as various versions of Cousin It playing everyone.

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Born-Anybody3244 t1_j2b3no6 wrote

Had this super annoying conversation with my mum over Christmas where she was arguing that the depiction of insest & rape of minors in the game of thrones tv series was "essential" to the plot and wouldn't be realistic without it. I don't watch the series but my cousin said there was a sex/rape scene in the new spinoff featuring actress who is only 16 or 17. My mum for the life of her could not understand why I would be against depicting sexual violence in TV shows for the sake of making the story more "realistic".

Like...we get it, and you can allude to these things without focussing on them.

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Papaofmonsters t1_j2b6ucp wrote

>Had this super annoying conversation with my mum over Christmas where she was arguing that the depiction of insest & rape of minors in the game of thrones tv series was "essential" to the plot and wouldn't be realistic without it

Incest is kind of essential to the plot when it revolves around a family that has wed brother to sister for centuries.

>I don't watch the series but my cousin said there was a sex/rape scene in the new spinoff featuring actress who is only 16 or 17.

If it's Milly Alcock, she's 22.

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Electronic_Basis7726 t1_j2cmrqk wrote

The actress was 22.

And honestly, Incest was essential to the plot of Game of Thrones, it is the incident that lead to the whole thing. Bran, and so the audience, had to see who were fucking, so that Jaime can push Bran from the window. If I remember correctly, it was clothed sex at well. Realistic? I mean, some noble families had interbreeding, humanity is weird.

In HotD the plot revolvs around a family that marries their close family, traditionally. I think realism is a bad argument here, but it also isn't a moral failing on part of show writers.

Can 16 y old (character) consent to an adult man? I mean, not really. The show isnt endorsing it by showing it though, and the adult man is a shady character so it isn't a case of "but the good guy is doing it". The scene was pretty artfully shot, it focused more on what the character's were feeling than straight up porn.

There absolutely is unnecessary sexual assault and nudity in GoT. I think you chose poor examples of it.

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Overtaker40 t1_j2c5zkf wrote

Find different content. Not everything has to be too your taste.

I mean fuck you don't even watch it. You shouldn't even give a shit.

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Born-Anybody3244 t1_j2cqamf wrote

So your taste is rape? Is that what you mean, cause...yikes

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SerBronn7 t1_j2fd434 wrote

Why is it worse for HBO to depict a rape scene than one where someone is flayed or eaten alive by dogs or burnt at the stake?

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Born-Anybody3244 t1_j2fofns wrote

How many people do you know who have been flayed alive?

Okay now how many people do you personally know who have been raped or sexually assaulted? I promise you it's a non-zero number even if they haven't trusted you enough to tell you about it.

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MelbaTotes t1_j2d33yh wrote

This is why I'm so glad I picked up Steven Brust's Dragaera series when I was a kid. No explicit sex scenes, women are respected, and the one scene where a threat of sexual violence is very lightly implied, everyone else is disgusted by it. The world building misses nothing from not having breasts described in great detail.

Brust is getting near the end of the series now (began in the 80s and the early books still hold up) and the next book is coming out in April.

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Overtaker40 t1_j2c5sgm wrote

The trope is a problem only if it's overused and traditionally it has been. I'm not trying to defend it only the witcher books.

The witcher books are artfully written and yes there are many times where they are very dark including themes of sexual assault. They are however not exploitative or used for the gratification of the author or reader.

No, they are not for everyone but in this case they suit the dichotomy of the world and show the journeys that Geralt, Yen and Ciri went through to become a family.

Don't project your personal dislike of something across an entire genre, that's pretentious.

The writing world is changing and Authors like Brandon sanderson can imply sexual assault exists without actually talking about it, this is becoming more common as are world's that it doesn't happen at all. I like this but nor do I think SA should disappear from the genre entirely.

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LittleRadishes t1_j2bmmnc wrote

Using sexual assault against women to show a fantasy world is shitty kind of feels like the equivalent of being like "the villain was so bad, he was a really bad guy, he was so bad he was like Hitler!" It's just lazy writing.

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