Content Warning: This post discusses rape and sexual assault, particularly against women, and spoilers for both Outlander and Games of Thrones. Approach with caution.

"Rape happens. It’s always happened, and it’s a depressing and horrific thing we should be tackling every single day. Great activists and charities are doing stellar work, often with little funding, and insightful writers are challenging perceptions in countless essays and stories. I’m not here to tell any writer what they should and shouldn’t write, but I do ask for a few moments of thought on this particular issue: If dragons are an excusable anachronism from ‘historically accurate’ tales but not raping women is political correctness gone mad, then what does that say about us all?"

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Trigger Warning: Rape, Sexual Assault

"Since I really liked Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho when I was younger, I decided to give the A&E prequel series Bates Motel a try. Despite that the cinematography was rich, the actors were quality, and the atmosphere was a great mix of foreboding while paradoxically retro and contemporary, I was roughly halfway through the first episode when I turned it off and washed my hands of it. What makes me think I can give a worthwhile review of a series that I watched for only 20-30 minutes? A rape occurs in that first episode about halfway in, and I know enough about TV formulas, characterizations, and plotlines to safely determine that this rape was gratuitous. A lot of rapes that occur on film and TV are unnecessary and unrealistic while subtly serving to punish the rape victim, to pruriently show the dehumanization of victims (most frequently women), and to trigger audience members who are survivors. A show like Bates Motel that so cavalierly uses a tired and painful device in its first episode is definitely not worth my time."

 

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A great point about why tv shows should probably have trigger warnings too.

The BEST video response to recent Youtube/DFTBA sexual abuse scandal [click here and here for details], and it's not by John Green or Hank Green, but rather a 16 year old girl, youtuber and sexual abuse survivor. 

What's really interesting is how she points out that the sexism in the Youtube/DFTBA community is systemic, specifically citing how the venue for the "Women on Youtube" panel at VidCon (run by the Green brothers) has been progressively smaller each year. Resulting in last year where the panel was held on the lawn outside of the convention center. 

The video is worth your time to watch and will leave you thinking about what community leaders owe to the members of their communities. 

1) Being creative or artistic doesn’t preclude you being an asshole or being criminal. It’s just your JOB. See: Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Terry Richardson. If any of those dudes did what was alleged while working as janitors, would it make a difference? Making art, while we want to believe it’s all lofty and beyond reproach, is just a job like any other job. And you will find assholes, predators and criminals in any occupation.

 

2) Hank Green’s video, “Sex, Consent & Culture” is way too glib to be of much help when it comes to a) consent b) sexual abuse and its complicated cultural components. If you are not an authority on the matter, Hank, that’s understandable. But there are plenty of people who are authorities and can speak about these issues without deploying jokes or abstractions. Sit still and interview one of them in a video together, please. I’m glad Hank is ‘gathering resources’ but there is no reason rushing toward a topic where you can’t speak eloquently or with any kind of nuance (missiles? kitties? wtf?) is at all productive; in fact, I’d venture to say this approach is absolutely insulting and offensive, especially to survivors of rape and sexual assault. Summing up consent and sex in three minutes is a fool’s errand. Make it a series, with people who deeply understand these topics, and let them do the majority of the talking. Then maybe you’ll ‘change the world.’

 

3) Sex and romance and consent ARE incredibly complicated. That they could remain a ‘chase’ while still involving enthusiastic consent isn’t an impossibility for me. Sex is a negotiation like all the other millions of negotiations we enter into as humans. It just happens to be very high stakes and multi-faceted. Being flippant and simplistic doesn’t assist anyone in this matter. Talking about sex and romance and consent and sexual violence by using concrete examples and sharing our own personal stories, biases and limitations is what helps, not summing up the whole situation with a handful of trite generalizations.

 

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I cannot recommend this post enough. Go Read!