Rape, Consent and Race in Marvel's #JessicaJones

Marvel's Jessica Jones is the latest, best example of white feminist fiction: excellent on sexism, terrible on racism. There are a lot of great things about this series that speak directly to the ills that women face on a daily basis. Kilgrave, the central villain, is chillingly terrifying, specifically because the only difference between him and your garden variety abuser is his total power to enact his will. The examination of male entitlement in ways both large and small (by contrasting Kilgrave and Simpson for example) are excellent and poignant. But as I watched the 13 episode first season, I was struck by how callously black people's lives were treated on the show, rendered into convenient plot devices in service of the white female protagonist's character development. As a black woman viewing the show, it was easy to see that the active pursuit of liberation from abuse was not a struggle that this show believes includes me (an ongoing struggle for Marvel). Ironically, the best parts of the show are its treatment with its villain, while the worst are its treatments with its female anti-heroine.

While I do have several critiques of the show, there were a number of things that I thought were handled exceptionally well. Firstly, this is a show driven by women about the fears and terrors that women must navigate in the world shrunk down to a micro-level, enabling us an intimate look at the various levels of abuse women routinely endure. The contrast between Kilgrave and Simpson is genius, as it helps demonstrate the full scale of abuse that men knowingly and unknowingly enact on the women around them. The two men are flip-sides of the same coin. While Kilgrave simply takes what he feels he is entitled to by means of his powers of enhanced persuasion, Simpson intially takes a less forceful but no less sinister approach, exemplified in his treatment of Trish after he realizes that Kilgrave has compelled him to murder her. As Stephanie Yang writes in a Bitch Magazine review:

The warning signs are there early on. Under Kilgrave's control, Simpson assaults Trish inside her own apartment. Once Kilgrave's control wears off, he's wracked with guilt and comes back to apologize. The problem is that Trish doesn't want Simpson's apology; she wants him to just leave. Trish doesn't want to be reminded that she was attacked in her own home, or feel trapped by her own high-end security system while her attacker lingers outside. But Simpson is insistent, sitting in her hallway and talking to her through the intercom. Simpson makes his apology about his needs and his absolution, not about Trish's needs, safety or mental health. It's entirely understandable, but it's still wrong. 

Simpson and Kilgrave certainly have different motivation for their destructive actions. But as Jessica points out, intent doesn't matter. Their actions and consequences are what matter. That's an important distinction that needs to be made at a time when courts and media alike dismiss many real-life cases of abuse because the abuser "couldn't know" what they were doing was wrong. Violence is a symptom of a culture that indulges bad behavior as being inherently and unavoidably part of masculinity, or even a romantic expression of desire and protectiveness.

I would go a step further and name Simpson's insistent apologies to Trish as outright abusive on their face, specifically because they prioritize his need for absolution over her need to heal. Trish is the victim in the situation, and yet Simpson manages to find a way to center himself in the story of this trauma. As with Kilgrave and Jessica, Simpson's abuse is rooted not in a cartoonish hatred of women as we are often led to believe, but rather in prioritizing his own will and desires over Trish's.

I'm Sick To Death Of Talking About Rape Tropes In Fiction

Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) and Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) in Game of Thrones S5 E6: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

I'm sick of talking about rape.

Forcible rape, date rape, grey rape, acquaintance rape, spousal rape, statutory rape and now fictional rape. I'm sick to death of explaining why the callous rape of women and girls in media is a very bad thing for our culture and why we should cut it out. *wags finger*

This Game of Thrones storyline is just the latest in a long line of excuses and equivocations for why the depiction of brutal and gendered violence against women is a storytelling necessity. People are sticking their heels in on both sides but to me the moral position is clear: there is nothing to be gained from lazy representations of rape in a media landscape that already devalues women and reduces them to objects and property.

Now I've read the arguments in favour of the narrative value of Sansa's rape. That it showed that Ramsay was a sadist. That it would help Theon come back to himself and help Sansa escape. That it would motivate Sansa to seek vengeance. But it's all bullshit.

What did that scene add that we didn't already know? Did the writers think that cutting Theon's penis off was too subtle to indicate Ramsay's sadism? Did they think the brutal murder of her mother and brother were not strong enough motivators for Sansa to want revenge against the Boltons? Could they not conceive of a single other way in which Theon might be able to mentally recenter himself? What about this particular rape scene added such probative narrative value that it had to be transposed from one character to another even as the original victim is excised from the story? All it was is more rape on a show already replete with rape, for the sake of having rape. None of this is new information.

And it's not that rape should never be represented in fiction. Rape is everywhere. It's unfortunately an all too real danger of the world we live in. But it's not as though there is some dearth of rape representation in media. Using rape as a narrative tool is lazy, and especially so when it's invoked this many times in the same show. We are now at three female characters (all of whom are considered major point of view characters in the novels) who have been raped in the series, two of whom weren't raped in the source material. It's just rapes on rapes on rapes up in this bitch...

On The "Rape As Backstory" Trope

A few weeks ago, after I'd (finally) gotten around to finishing season one of Top Of The Lake, I posted some thoughts about the rape as backstory trope, and my distaste for it. I figured that while it could be an instance of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon gone awry, there seemed to be far too many fictional women who'd been raped or sexually assaulted in some way.

So I have this conflict: I truly, viscerally, despise the "rape as backstory" trope.
— NinjaCate (@BattyMamzelle) March 23, 2015

It's so reductive to imply that every woman's problems can be distilled down to some past sexual trauma.
— NinjaCate (@BattyMamzelle) March 23, 2015

On #Reign, Rape And Sexual Assault As Plot Device

Trigger Warning: This post contains discussion of rape and sexual assault.

Let me start by saying that Reign is a great show. I started watching during the break between seasons one and two and haven't turned back since. In a lot of ways, Reign is typical CW fare: pretty people's pretty problems, but in others, it's a very progressive and feminist look (even if wildly historically inaccurate) at the life of one of history's most notorious and fascinating women.

One of the show's biggest strengths is that Reign deals quite openly with the struggles that women faced at the time; from their inability to own property to their inability to guide the very direction of their lives. The show expertly demonstrates how the show's female characters find ways to move through a world that refuses them power or autonomy. Because of this, I'm very surprised and disappointed that the show chose to have its title character violently raped as a way to advance the plot.

I am not as plugged into this show's online fandom as I am with other shows that I watch, so I was not aware that the details of this particular plot had leaked online a few months ago, and consequently did not see it coming. I will admit that even as it happened, I thought Mary might escape. After all, this would hardly be the first time that Mary has been under threat of rape in the show. Additionally, Reign had previously tackled rape (poorly) when Catherine de Medici, Mary's mother-in-law, admitted that she had been gang-raped as a child in a season one episode. A petition started back in October to persuade the showrunners not to go through with the storyline nicely sums up many of my issues with this episode:

Many of us have come to love this show for its portrayal of strong female characters and the unflinchingly feminine light it shines on the dynamics and pitfalls of power in a world that is dominated by men. Much of the series has focused on Mary's womanhood and how she has learned to utilize it, manipulate and weaponize it, even as the outside world has looked upon it as her greatest weakness. After persevering through so much adversity and triumphing over those who have fought so hard to silence her, to have her suffer through this violent assault sends the message that the world will only punish--crushingly and humiliatingly--those women who dare to assert their places within it. It is a message jarringly out of tune with everything we have come to admire about this series, and it has no place in a show geared toward young women who dream of a future in which they may rise without fear of retribution at the hands of men.

As with the HBO drama Game of Thrones the argument can certainly be made that the threat of rape is a historically accurate concern for women of the time. But Reign makes no pretense at accuracy and never has; this rape is a fictional concoction inserted into the story solely to create controversy and advance the plot. They cannot even hide behind the defense that they simply bungled the retelling of a true story.

"In The Commons" Is Not The Same As "In Public"

A thing happened on twitter last night. It was a powerful thing. Prompted by a discussion she was having with a few of her followers, twitter user @steenfox opened up the conversation and asked women to share with her what they were wearing when they were assaulted. She explicitly asked that they indicate if it was okay to retweet them, and even followed new people so that they could privately message their stories to her directly. Knowing that the topic was sensitive and triggering, she made as many provisions as she could (within the boundaries of twitter) to make the women who were engaging with her feel safe to speak out about their trauma. She spent the night retweeting replies and discussing her initial point: that there is no way to dress to avoid assault. It happens whether you're on the way to the gym in a tank top and shorts or on the way home from work in a business suit. Too many women recalled night gowns, childhood PJs and multiple assaults.

As this moment of intense cathartic solidarity was happening, Buzzfeed ran a post aggregating some of the tweets. The author* claims to have gotten permission to embed the tweets, but some of the women involved claim otherwise. @steenfox was not contacted until after the post went up.  The author, seeing the conversation happening in full swing, published too quickly and did not handle the subject with sensitivity. While they blurred some of the handles and avatars of the tweets involved, later portions of the piece directed the reader to these same accounts. This was while the conversation was still happening and before any of the women involved were allowed to process the emotions of discussing their (often multiple) assaults. The piece was not constructed with any sensitivity or care for the well being of the women involved.

The Root, who published today and actually inerviewed @steenfox, managed to get it right. Allowing the time to properly report on a story will do that.

Here's the rub: "In the commons" is not the same as "public." Twitter is not public. Twitter is publicly accessible. There is a difference.  

On Sexual Assault, Rape Culture, And Navigating "Not Rape"

This is a really strange post to start the year off with, but please, bear with me. I really struggled with whether or not to publish this. Even now, I'm not sure I'm making the right decision and I'm purposely publishing in the middle of the night in the hopes that by morning it will be buried under the weight of people's constantly updating social media feeds. But I've experience a confluence of events of sorts that has made this topic startlingly relevant in my life again, and even though I don't think I'm comfortable talking about this, I feel compelled to get the words down.

Last night I read a number of pieces on the topic of rape culture. On street harassment, the use of the word creepy to describe predatory men, and the "spidey-sense" that women have developed to detect them.

But before that, I had an old acquaintance (and intermittent hook-up) come over last week under the guise of "catching up", who then proceeded to flat out request a blow job. I turned him down.

"Was I sure I didn't even want to lick the tip? Not even a little?" he asked. I gave him a minor talking to about not being a call girl and joked that he couldn't afford me even if I were. Lightening the mood you see.

He asked my price.

I spent the rest of his visit visibly pissed; staunchly shrugging off his hugs and offers to massage me, hoping that he'd take the hint and leave. He did. And then I realized that this wasn't the first time he'd tried to coerce me into sexual activity.

But it was the first time I'd outright and unequivocally refused him.

And it was then I'd realized that even though I'd initially been upset with myself for "training him" to expect sex from me by hooking up with him sporadically in the past, it was he who had taught me to confuse his boundary pushing with flattery; his quick gropes and stolen kisses as compliments.