The subject I was most interested in was realism in depiction of violence against oppressed/underprivileged. Because it is really difficult to prove sometimes that an author is exploiting and delighting in depiction of such violence, and not (only) tries to arouse a noble anger in his readers. I think that the argument in the post are applicable not only to rape, but to a wide spectrum of violence, e.g. such widespread depictions of abuse of children or cruel murders of animals. Such scenes are common in Dostoyevsky’s prose, for instance.

The trouble with these scenes lies in the declared goal “to induce aversion to such atrocious behaviour”. This goal presupposes its target audience, and it consists of those who by default do not associate themselves (and are not associated by others) with the survivor or victim of the violent act. That usually means a privileged person. The plan is that reading such a scene would let them understand a bit more of the vulnerability of the underprivileged to violence. (It must be said that this will not necessarily be the actual outcome. The readers may enjoy the show and do not feel it as being contradictory to authorial intent.) So the potential readers who are already associating themselves with the victim, because they are also vulnerable, are not seen – are in a blind spot. It is no discovery for them that the victim of such violence is a person with feelings; and the detailed depiction of the violent act, by its design excluding them from the audience, is re-traumatizing, because it makes them re-live or recollect similar acts of violence against them or other members of the underprivileged group with whom they associate themselves.

I remember an incident from my vegan past. On the anti-animal abuse forums vegans discussed pro-animal clips and movies, using such phrases “you have to watch it, I cried for 4 days”. When I asked why do I have to cry for days, they accused me of insensitivity and callousness. The movie, planned to nudge non-vegan audience towards becoming vegans, was inflicted by vegans on each other, so that they could escape an imaginary insensibility to animal suffering; in reality it created neuroses. It was an example of self-stigmatization, which happens when people ignore their own existence as a group sensitive to a particular kind of violence.

I’m not sure at all that authors have such intent (to teach compassion to their readers), but no doubt some readers read that way.

It also ties into a lot of the assumptions this post examines, that rape only happens to women, and is thus a way of putting a man in a woman’s place, making him laughable and pathetic. Hence my conclusion — if you can’t consider writing a male rape victim without regurgitating those kind of assumptions, you shouldn’t be writing rape of women either.

The Severine plot was just awful and pointless, yes. Jesus, Bond, could you at least fucking knock? It didn’tcolour my view of what happens between Bond and Silva much, personally, partly because I took it as just another instance of how easy the forms of rape culture are to slip into and partly because well, nothing about Bond’s actions there could exert any influence over Silva’s — that Bond is, shall we euphemistically say a “dominant” sort of fellow, but that this doesn’t make him immune to this kind of threat, is even quite an interesting point. The writer of Skyfall is gay himself, apparently, so I don’t think the intention was homophobic although obviously parsing intent is tricky and problematic.

Interestingly, Daniel Craig played both movie versions of Blomqvist and Bond who were almost raped. I don’t know if that says anything or Craig chose that purposefully after he read the scripts or if it’s interesting beyond being coincidence… but they’re the only two instances I can recall in my own movie-going, television-viewing experience of seeing a man as a victim of sexual assault. I know there are others out there. I just haven’t seen them. Although “Hunchback of Notre Dame” (Disney version)… chill OUT Frollo. Jeez.

I remember watching the scene in “Skyfall” in the theaters and wondering what the writers were trying to accomplish with the scene (well, after the “And then a MILLION fanfics were born” thought, once I realized what was going on). Is this character exploration of Bond and/or Silva? Is Silva concerned and just very touchy-feely when he’s concerned (because it reminded me a bit of the possessiveness The Joker feels towards Batman sometimes)? Is this one of those “People who sleep with same-sex people are evil” things? Is this “the writers got bored and thought to give something new a try and see how it went” things? Is this an improv session? Is this a “we really wrote this for the fanfiction writers” thing? I didn’t mind it being there, and I actually found the possible implication of reboot Bond a) being bi, b) at least having experience with same-sex partners, c) possibly going through this experience in some sort of prison or with trainees or something, like you elaborated, or with one or more of the villains he’s faced, since he’s lived an interesting life and faced some really screwed-up people interesting.

Although I’m still confused about the author’s purpose. I at least partially blame the earlier sex scene with the grown-up child prostitute-abused-throughout-my-life-constantly-under-guard-still-not-in-control-of-my-life where Bond had no relationship with her beyond one conversation where, honestly, nothing happened – no, he’s not that “good” – and just walked into the shower with her and had sex with her. Great job there, screenwriters. Great job. Yeah, it’s Bond and it gets gratuitous sex, but really? He basically took advantage of a random sex worker he met who’s been abused all her life. Not a good way to lead into an odd story technique (insomuch as it was a guy as the victim of the rape/almost rape – I’m not saying rape is a new “story technique”). At least in the other movies, it’s implied that he’s very good at convincing these women to have sex with him off camera. On the other hand, we see their ENTIRE relationship and just no. No, that’s not how it works. Even if that was, THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING.

I’d just like to make a few points about male rape. It is far rarer than that of females, and the fact that female rape has become somehow institutionally acceptable in places like universities where many women are raped and do not bother reporting it due to lack of action is disgusting, yet following on from one of the previous posters I’d like refer to some of my experiences of living in South Africa for over fifteen years before moving back to the UK.

In prisons there, male rape is expected, overlooked, ignored. Documentaries have been shown about male prisoners forced into becoming women and repeatedly raped on a daily basis and by multiple people(exactly like what happens in the tv series Oz) yet nothing is done. The government actually broadcast an anti-drunk driving advert that made a thinly veiled threat that if you were arrested and sent to prison you would be raped. That’s a government using male rape as a policing tool, which should have seen far more outcry and international condemnation than it did.

I heard anecdotal evidence of men who had been jailed in communal holding cells for only a few hours being raped because they were sharing cells with far more dangerous men despite not having been convicted as well as not being in the same ‘class’ of crime as the other prisoners. Male rape was not something that happened far away, it was happening all around as was female rape. And still no one did anything.

Anyway, I digress. In order for SF/F to give greater agency to female characters, men have to have some of their impenetrability (forgive the pun) taken away. Men and women are equally weak or strong. As GRRM (i’m not a fan by the way) did say well about writing women – just write people (I’m paraphrasing). Which seems ironic considering the topic being discussed in this article.

One last mention – I remember watching Moon-44 when I was young (definitely too young for that film) and a young prisoner gets raped in the shower. And I don’t know why, but that particular scene still disturbs me more than any other similar scene I’ve seen since. He does get his revenge though, which is where I’d like to bring it back around to female rape.

Rape is the complete perversion of something that is inherently consensual, a complete negation of a person’s agency and autonomy. And this is where depictions of female rape need to change the most. They’re not going to disappear, but give the victim the agency to avenge herself, or choose not to. Having someone else swoop in and rescue her, or go on a rampage on her behalf is not empowering, but just another way of leaving her powerless. Write characters who are people, not cut-outs who are ‘men’ or ‘women’.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents and I’m late to this particular discussion so I hope someone’s still reading these.