Avoiding Fetish Fuel in an Assault Scene

(I'm going to do my best to not get too graphic, but this post contains descriptions of rape/sexual assault. Please keep that in mind if you know that that will make you uncomfortable)

• At one point in my work, one of the main (male) characters is raped by a woman. The female character is supposed to be seen as a Complete Monster even before this Kick the Dog. She manages to give him a Forceful Kiss and a handjob at knife point before she manages to be interupted. Double Standard Rape: Female on Male is totally averted. If I'm not able to include the emotional/pyschological repercussions that this has on the male character (due to timing constraints, etc.) it will at the very least alluded to.
• Something I'm worried about, because I was planning on the rape to happen 'on screen,' is that readers could see the scene as Fetish Fuel when it's supposed to be the exact opposite. I understand that, yes, Rule 34 exists and there's plenty of people with rape roleplay fetishes or rape fantasies that will get off on it no matter what. But considering the prevalence Double Standard Rape: Female on Male, I don't want the average reader to interpret it the wrong way. Any thoughts?

Trust me, just don't try. It's a Sisyphean task on the best of days.

I'm curious why you're using sexual assault specifically as your villain's moral event horizon. Is it so that you can address the problem of how people treat male rape survivors? That seems legit. But if you're only using it to make your bad guy look worse, there are ways you can do that without having to go down that route. I'd say this regardless of the genders involved. Using rape just to make the bad guys look bad can be kind of lazy sometimes.

There are heavy double standards involved in female on male (non-sexual) physical assault as well which could be averted to all hell in a scene where she kicks the crap out of him or tortures him - still morally reprehensible and still something that happens but is minimised due to the whole "male should be able to defend himself from a (mere) female" bullshit.

The scene doesn't have to be sexual assault to be beyond the Moral Event Horizon (especially if it's clear that it's unprovoked or seriously Disproportionate Retribution) or to have the opportunity to avert double standards.

edited 7th May '14 1:28:41 PM by Wolf1066

Just to clarify, the scene doesn't exist solely to show how terrible the female villain is. When the female villain is first introduced, she seems to be a perfectly decent person who also happens to have an unrequited attraction to the male character, which makes him a bit uncomfortable, but is intended to be seen as relatively harmless. As it is slowly revealed that she isn't the nicest person after all and is willing to go to more and more unethical measures to get what she wants. When she meets him again, she finds out that he is working with her enemies and the rape is less about desire and more about humiliation. It's intended to be more of a show of something seemingly harmless slowing turning into something twisted and bad.

• This also happens to be the climax of her villainy and she gets killed shortly afterwards though.

You think this sounds alright?

I think if you want to avoid fetish fuel, you need to look at it as a real, traumatic event, which involves looking at the emotional and psychological impact on the character. Do your research, and listen to what real life survivors of rape, male and female, have to say.

I agree; indeed, showing the victims reactions—especially emotional—seems to me to be the most reliable method of having the scene be generally perceived as horrible rather than titillating: empathy should mean that the scene being shown to be horrible for the character increases the likelihood that the scene will seem horrible to the reader.

edited 8th May '14 3:26:37 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

To be more honest than I'm comfortable with, this sounds like a terrible idea and I think you should scrap it.

I'm not saying there's no way it could work - you might be able to pull it off if you only leave what happened to the audience's imagination instead of actually describing it - but there are so many better ways to have that character cross the Moral Event Horizon.

edited 9th May '14 8:32:16 AM by Wheezy

What I was trying to accomplish was

• A. having a really nasty female villain (and try to ensure none of the audience have sympathy for her when she brutally gets killed off)
• B. Part of the male character's 'emotional arc' would show how, although he is excellent with helping people with their problems, he has trouble dealing with his own (This is the closest I've seen seen this described to be honest http://islamicbutterflies.tumblr.com/post/44492613821/i-dont-get-help-because-i-am-the-helper-im)
  • I was thinking about having a scene shortly afterwards where someone who knew what happened to him gets seriously injured and he needs to care for them and play off of their "No really, I'm fine," reactions. I don't think it'd really be the same with a torture scene, because you'd lose most of the "hiding beneath the mask pretending I'm fine." element
• Having it a 'fade to black until the cavalry arrives' wouldn't be too difficult and I was planning on another character alluding to it later. I was actually worrying about "Okay, this performs a narrative purpose, I'm going to treat this as accurately and respectfully as possible and it's going to make a good point. But I would absolutely hate to spring this on a person without warning if they were sensitive about this."

(Putting aside how much I dislike the "let's intentionally make people dislike a character so they'll be happy when the character's killed off" thing)

If she's holding him at knife point, maybe she could be holding the knife up against his penis during the act. I can't speak for women, but for most men the threat of castration or other forms of penis mutilation takes the sexy out of things pretty quick.

Warning: The spoilered part is gross. I mean that.

It seems like you're trying to use your work to address The Issues™. I do the same thing, and I actually think webfic can be a better place for it than traditional media [because it gives regular people who might have had a firsthand experience with the subject matter a place to write about it without being censored or subjected to Executive Meddling.

But how you're going about it is extremely anvilicious. I know on reading the first post that you were writing this just to prove women can be Complete Monsters too, and you’re obviously using an assault as a shortcut to that. And using rape as a shortcut to anything is never a good idea.

And even worse, I think you're just blindly trying to rally against Double Standard Rape: Female on Male without fully understanding why it exists.

Don't misunderstand me: That trope is wrong, and it's overdue for a good, well-thought-out deconstruction. Molestation or forced sex by a woman is still psychologically damaging and a violation of your right to say no.

But most of the reason for it is because male rape is penetrative, and forced penetration fucking hurts and can cause tearing, bleeding, and permanent damage. And even when it doesn't, there's a ton of context behind it: since the beginning of humanity, it's been used as an expression of total contempt, or even hate, that forces the victim into a form of subservience. To get a vague idea, just imagine someone tying you down and taking a shit on you.

None of that - the pain or the historical context - is there with a handjob. In fact, the entire point of one is to arouse the recipient while offering no sexual stimulation to the “giver.”

So, what I'm saying is that if you're trying to portray a character as truly horrible and have the audience get it, that's probably not the way to do it. It's better to go for a less gratuitously lurid route and have her manipulate him to self harm - or just straight-up physically injure him in some way, since she's already got a knife.

But I still find the idea of writing a strawman Complete Monster character solely to make a point, then killing him/her off as soon as you're done, to be pretty bad in general.

edited 10th May '14 5:58:56 PM by Wheezy

The reason why she was created was not to 'make a point' about this issue. Throughout the work she works with the Big Bad and does a variety of other things (emotionally and psychically abusing her staff, harming/killing children by inaction, contributing money to an Evil Empire) which are focused upon much more and could arguably cause her to cross the Moral Event Horizon long before the scene would take place.

The whole 'is also a rapist' thing and 'at least I can make Draco in Leather Pants less likely' where more afterthoughts than things central to the character.

I was thinking that the handjob thing could make sense it context because A. as mentioned on some places on this wiki, male arousal can easily come from things as mundane as friction against the inside of a pair of paints. An erection does not indicate consent in the slightest. This is one of the reasons why Double Standard Rape: Female on Male exists because "He had a boner and/or climaxed, that means he must have wanted it." This character could easily interpret climaxing as meaning he 'wanted it' in some way. He also has a wife who he would never be cheat on consensually, which he would be guilty about.

Then again, I could be going about this the wrong way. I hadn't thought about having her manipulate him into self harming in any fashion, but exactly how would she accomplish that? (Do you mean as a "If you don't hurt yourself, I'm going to kill someone you love" kind of thing?)

In that case (her having more to do with the story than just that), good.

And I know that male arousal can come from those things, and merely getting an erection - or even climaxing - doesn't indicate consent. But it would still be very difficult to convince the audience that a kiss and a handjob would be anywhere near as traumatic and painful as a forced penetration. I was thinking more along the lines of continued harassment over a long period until he's psychologically damaged to the point of self harm, like kids who bully each other to suicide. Of course, threatening a loved one (or actually harming them) would be just as effective and would cause him even more psychological pain if it was done in a way that would make him feel guilty for failing to prevent it.

There's nothing wrong with something being interpreted as fetish fuel, is all I'm going to say.

If this was any other topic, I'd agree with you.

But in this case, there is. The cultural trivialization of rape and molestation (both by disrespectful, uncaring non-survivors and social justice fanatics crying wolf, FTR) is one of the biggest hurdles to preventing it. I'd assume the OP doesn't want to contribute to that.

Plus, it would ruin the drama he's trying to create, Draco in Leather Pants the villain, and contribute to both Misaimed Fandom and Misaimed Hatedom.

edited 11th May '14 9:28:13 AM by Wheezy

No, Wheezy, just NO.

Insisting that every work of fiction must also be a socio-political tract is nonsense. Insisting on judging every work of fiction by some politically correct/comfortable/"socially responsible" metric is also nonsense.

Saying that using a rape scene cheapens a work, or "trivializes the rape culture" without having seen the work in question, with no idea how the scene is written or what effect it has on the story as a whole is the height of arrogance.

Blaming the author for what any given reader chooses to take from a particular part of the story is naive in the extreme. The author can certainly influence how the audience members react to a scene, but they cannot, I repeat, cannot, because it's a very important word, cannot control it completely.

How is using a female on male rape scene that written as traumatic and double-plus-ungood, going to "ruin the drama"? How is it going to Draco the villain? How is underlining the traumatic aspect cheapening and disrespecting to the reality?

edited 11th May '14 10:05:55 AM by Madrugada

That's a pretty big exaggeration of what I said.

The OP hasn't written this scene yet, so no one could blame him for anything. But he's asking for advice specifically on how not to make it appealing to the readers, so I'm trying to advise him on that.

In fact, I have no problem with rape in fiction, or even rape-themed erotica, as long as it's honest about what it is and the author's not encouraging it IRL. It's when people try to shoehorn it into their stories as an easy way to build drama that it becomes stupid.

Edit, responding to your edit: I'm not addressing the OP with that part, I'm responding to the danna45. In other words, writing a traumatic female rape scene wouldn't do those things, but if it was accidentally written in a way that a lot of the readers found it sexy instead of disturbing, it would.

edited 11th May '14 11:09:19 AM by Wheezy

Ok, I didn't realize you switched who you were addressing. My error.

I wouldn't care if it becomes Fetish Fuel. remember Rule34: If it exists, there's porn of it. so as a corollary, if it exist, it's someone's fetish.

So yeah, even if you made your female villain make the guy eat her shit.

It wouldn't make a difference, it will be someone's Fetish Fuel no matter how you do it. So it's not something you should waste energy on.

Just my two cents, though. Just for the record, I'm a little turned on by the situation you're bringing forth. I like my Yandere crazy.

As for "the average viewer", given YMMV. I think making the guy clearly suffer and lose arousal as the villain does him will do the job. Remember Share the Male Pain. Make the audience wince for the guy. Do the guy hard and do him bad. Storytelling is about getting people to react, to care. In order to test your writeup have someone you consider "normal" to check it out and gauge his/her reaction.

EDIT: Wiki Word typo.

edited 11th May '14 11:57:21 AM by ShanghaiSlave

Actually, that whole post was addressed at danna.

I should've used an up arrow.

I understand that at least ONE person would be turned on by this (I’ve been on kinkmemes multiple times) I just don’t want to write it in such a way that the average reader’s reaction to this is “He got free sex, lucky duck. Wait. Why the hell is he so upset about it?”

Not that this work is intended to be an optimistic bucket full of hope and smiles, in fact there’s a few scenes I have planned that are pretty brutal (gore, depictions of PTSD and other mental illnesses, graphic death, etc.) The series would at least be on the slightly more optimistic side of Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, which makes these instances more of a contrast. To invoke the whole Share the Male Pain work so that it would get the knee-jerk horrified reaction that is intended, It would need to be fairly graphic.

If I decided that I’d rather go the Fade to Black route, afterwards I could instead mention him being bruised/cut up/etc. but in a fairly visceral manner, which might be a bit ineffective.

This takes place rather far into the story, and I’m wondering: Let’s say you start reading a series and rather far into it, it gets dark at some points, but it is relatively optimistic, then suddenly (well there would be some sort of ‘dark lead up’ to this) there is a graphic and horrifying rape scene. Would your immediate reaction be to stop reading? Skip the scene? Need to take a break?

I'd react as if it were a Wham Line EDIT: or Wham Episode, Wham Shot, Wham Ever. Though at worst, it'd end up a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.

also, the Fade to Black idea defeats the point. also strays into violating Show, Don't Tell.

edited 11th May '14 1:36:25 PM by ShanghaiSlave

There's a difference between making the scene generally arousing and making it Fetish Fuel for some. What you don't want to do, is people to misinterpret it as something the character should enjoy. What you cannot control is people finding it personally arousing precisely because of the cruel violation it is.

Even cuts and bruises are some form of fuel for some fetishes. Personally, I'd recommend them over a rape scene.

If her only goal is to humiliate him, maybe scarring his chest/forehead with the Big-Bad's symbol would be effective? Basically a way to say, "I own you. There is nothing you can do about it, either." Binds, as well, but non traditional. A scene from Saw comes to mind, where Chester Bennington cameo'd as a White Supremacist, with his back glued to the seat of a car in a way that'd rip his skin off.

There are binds like this, (Don't necessarily need the car part, just "Freedom requires a price" sort of predicament.) that next to nobody would find fetishistic. It'd highlight your female lead's insanity, while also being a truly traumatising experience.

Heck, the cavalry could arrive before he loses what he needs for freedom, and let him go with glue solvent. That'd still leave that mental damage of helplessness, violation, and cruelty without giving an experience like rape that would cause survivors to be outraged.

Only my suggestion, of course. But as I know a few people who have gone through this trauma, it likely isn't best to remind them of it.