Bad Feminist

by Roxane Gay

  Nearly every other movie aired on Lifetime or Lifetime Movie Network features some kind of violence against women. The violence is graphic and gratuitous while still being strangely antiseptic, where more is implied about the actual act than shown. We consume these representations of violence and do so eagerly. There is a comfort, I suppose, to consuming violence contained in ninety-minute segments, muted by commercials for household goods and communicated to us by former television stars with feathered bangs.

  While rape as entertainment fodder may have also once included an element of the didactic, such is no longer the case. Rape is good for ratings. In Season 4 of ABC’s Private Practice, Charlotte King, an iron-willed, independent, and sexually adventurous doctor, is brutally raped. This happened, of course, just as February sweeps were beginning. The depiction of the assault was as graphic as you might expect from prime-time network television. For several episodes we saw the attack and its aftermath, the narrative arc of how the once vibrant Charlotte became a shell of herself, how she became sexually frigid, how her body bore witness to the physical damage of rape. Another character on the show, Violet, bravely confesses she too had been raped. The show was widely applauded for its sensitive treatment of a difficult subject. The episode that began the arc, “Did You Hear What Happened to Charlotte King?,” was the highest-rated episode of the season.

  General Hospital, like most soap operas, incorporates a rape story line every five years or so when it needs an uptick in viewers. Emily Quartermaine was raped, and before Emily, Elizabeth Webber was raped, and long before Elizabeth, Laura of the infamous “Luke and Laura” was raped by Luke, but that rape was okay because Laura married Luke so her rape doesn’t really count. Every woman, General Hospital wanted us to believe, loves her rapist. In 2010, the rape story line on the soap offered a twist. The victim was a man, Michael Corinthos III, son of Port Charles mob boss Sonny Corinthos, himself no stranger to violence against women. While it was commendable to see the show’s producers trying to address the issue of male rape and prison rape, the subject matter was still handled carelessly, was still a source of titillation, and was still packaged neatly between commercials for cleaning products and baby diapers.

  Of course, if we are going to talk about rape and how we are inundated by representations of rape and how, perhaps, we’ve become numb to rape, we have to discuss Law & Order: SVU, which deals, primarily, in all manner of sexual assault against women, children, and, once in a great while, men. Each week the violation is more elaborate, more lurid, more unspeakable. When the show first aired, Rosie O’Donnell, I believe, objected quite vocally when one of the stars appeared on her show. O’Donnell said she didn’t understand why such a show was needed. People dismissed her objections and the incident was quickly forgotten. The series is in its fifteenth season and shows no signs of ending anytime soon. When O’Donnell objected to SVU’s premise, when she dared to suggest that perhaps a show dealing so explicitly with sexual assault was unnecessary and too much, people treated her like she was the crazy one, the prude censor. I watch SVU religiously and have seen every episode more than once. I am not sure what that says about me.

  It is rather ironic that only a couple of weeks before publishing “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town,” the Times ran an editorial about the “War on Women.” This topic matters to me. I once wrote an essay about how, as a writer who is also a woman, I increasingly feel that writing is a political act whether I intend it to be or not because we live in a culture where McKinley’s article is permissible and publishable. I am troubled by how we have allowed such intellectual distance between violence and the representation of violence. We talk about rape, but we don’t carefully talk about rape.

  We live in a strange and terrible time for women. There are days when I think it has always been a strange and terrible time to be a woman. Womanhood feels more strange and terrible now because progress has not served women as well as it has served men. We are still stymied by the issues our forbears railed against. It is nothing less than horrifying to realize we live in a culture where the “paper of record” can write an article that comes off as sympathetic to eighteen rapists while encouraging victim blaming. Have we forgotten who an eleven-year-old is? Perhaps people do not understand the trauma of gang rape. While there’s no benefit to creating a hierarchy of rape where one kind of rape is worse than another because rape is, at the end of the day, rape, there is something particularly insidious about gang rape, about the idea that a pack of men feed on one another’s frenzy and both individually and collectively believe it is their right to violate a woman’s body in such an unspeakable manner and watch the others take turns.

  Gang rape is a difficult experience to survive physically and emotionally. There is the exposure to unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, vaginal and anal tearing, fistulae and vaginal scar tissue. The reproductive system is often irreparably damaged. Victims of gang rape, in particular, have a higher chance of miscarrying a pregnancy. Psychologically, there are any number of effects, including PTSD, anxiety, fear, coping with the social stigma and coping with shame, and on and on. The aftermath can be far-reaching and more devastating than the rape itself. We rarely discuss these things, though. Instead, we are careless. We delude ourselves that rape can be washed away as neatly as it is on TV and in the movies, where the trajectory of victimhood is neatly defined.

  I cannot speak universally, but given what I know about gang rape, the experience is wholly consuming. There is little point in pretending otherwise. Perhaps McKinley is, like so many people today, anesthetized or somehow willfully distanced from such brutal realities. Despite this inundation of rape imagery, where we are immersed in a rape culture—one that is overly permissive toward all manner of sexual violence—not enough victims of gang rape speak out about the toll the experience exacts. The right stories are not being told, or we’re not writing enough about the topic of rape in the right ways. Perhaps we too casually use the term “rape culture” to address the very specific problems that rise from a culture mired in sexual violence. Should we, instead, focus on “rapist culture” because decades of addressing “rape culture” has accomplished so little?

  In her essay “Your Friends and Rapists,” Sarah Nicole Prickett writes, “Yes, I am tired of rape stories. I think rape stories are boring. I am sick of rape stories on CNN and sicker of rape stories on Jezebel. I would like instead to see national, televised debates and full episodes of morning radio shows and several long-form podcasts and a portion of the next State of the Union address dedicated to determining whether men should be allowed to keep their dicks.” The weariness and rage of this statement is palpable, but it is also important. Prickett is suggesting that we reframe the conversation about rape. It is a call to address “dick culture,” which Prickett refers to as “the inordinate pride men feel in owning and wielding their dicks.”

  I am approaching this topic somewhat selfishly. I am concerned about rape culture and how we perpetuate it, intentionally or not, but I also write about sexual violence in my fiction. The why of this writerly obsession doesn’t matter, but I return to the same stories. Writing is cheaper than therapy or drugs. When I read articles such as McKinley’s, I consider my responsibility as a writer and what writers can do to critique rape culture intelligently and illuminate the realities of sexual violence without exploiting the subject.

  In Margaret Atwood’s short story “Rape Fantasies,” a woman, Estelle, shares her rape fantasies—ones where she gets away from a would-be rapist instead of being ravished. Atwood exposes the glossy treatment of rape in women’s magazines, the casual, flitty way in which rape fantasies might be talked about over lunch with friends. The story explicitly addresses the sense of the inevitable fostered by rape culture—a question of when a woman will be raped, rather than if—and uses dark humor brilliantly. Atwood offers an intriguing way of upholding a writer’s responsibility without compromising her artistic integrity. “Rape Fantasies” was first pub
lished in 1977, but the story’s commentary would be just as timely were it published today. Rape culture, it seems, doesn’t really change.

  This responsibility of the writer was always on my mind as I wrote my debut novel, An Untamed State. It’s the story of a brutal kidnapping in Haiti, and part of the story involves gang rape. Writing that kind of story requires going to a dark place. At times, I nauseated myself in the writing and by what I am capable of writing and imagining, my ability to go there.

  As I write any of these stories, I wonder if I am being gratuitous. I want to get it right. But how do you get this sort of thing right? How do you write violence authentically without making it exploitative? I worry I am contributing to the cultural numbness that would allow an article like the one in the Times to be written and published, that allows rape to be such rich fodder for popular culture and entertainment. We cannot separate violence in fiction from violence in the world no matter how hard we try. As Laura Tanner notes in her book Intimate Violence, “the act of reading a representation of violence is defined by the reader’s suspension between the semiotic and the real, between a representation and the material dynamics of violence which it evokes, reflects, or transforms.” She also goes on to say that “the distance and detachment of a reader who must leave his or her body behind in order to enter imaginatively into the scene of violence make it possible for representations of violence to obscure the material dynamics of bodily violation, erasing not only the victim’s body but his or her pain.” The way we currently represent rape, in books, in newspapers, on television, on the silver screen, often allows us to ignore the material realities of rape, the impact of rape, the meaning of rape.

  While I have these concerns, I also feel committed to telling the truth. These violences happen even if bearing such witness contributes to a spectacle of sexual violence. When we’re talking about race or religion or politics, it is often said we need to speak carefully. These are difficult topics where we need to be vigilant not only in what we say but also in how we express ourselves. That same care must extend to how we write about violence and sexual violence in particular.

  In the Times article, the phrase “sexual assault” is used, as is the phrase “the girl had been forced to have sex with several men.” The word “rape” is used only twice and not really in connection with the victim. That is not a careful use of language. Language in this instance, and far more often than makes sense, is used to buffer our sensibilities from the brutality of rape, from the extraordinary nature of such a crime. Feminist scholars have long called for a rereading of rape. Higgins and Silver note that “the act of rereading rape involves more than listening to silences; it requires restoring rape to the literal, to the body: restoring, that is, the violence—the physical, sexual violation.” We need to find new ways, whether in fiction or creative nonfiction or journalism, for rewriting rape, ways of rewriting that restore the actual violence to these crimes and make it impossible for men to be excused for committing atrocities and make it impossible for articles like McKinley’s to be written, to be published, to be considered acceptable.

  An eleven-year-old girl was raped by eighteen men. The suspects ranged in age from middle schoolers to a twenty-seven-year-old. There are pictures and videos. Her life will never be the same. The New York Times, however, would like you to worry about those boys, who will have to live with this for the rest of their lives, and the poor, poor town. That is not simply the careless language of sexual violence. It is the criminal language of sexual violence.

  What We Hunger For

  All too often, representations of a woman’s strength overlook the cost of that strength, where it rises from, and how it is called upon when needed most.

  The Hunger Games, released in 2008, is the first book in a trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Catching Fire and Mockingjay, the next two books, were released in 2009 and 2010. The franchise was an instant success. More than 2.9 million copies of the books are in print. There are more than twenty foreign editions. The Hunger Games was on the New York Times bestseller list for one hundred weeks. There are special editions. There is merchandise, including a Katniss Barbie, which Katniss would absolutely hate. In March 2012, the movie was released and earned nearly $460 million worldwide.

  The series tells the story about a young woman, Katniss Everdeen, who doesn’t know her own strength until she is confronted by her need for that strength. She is a tough young woman who is forced to become even stronger in circumstances that might otherwise break her. She is a young woman who has no choice but to fight for survival—for herself, her family, her people.

  I have found myself inexplicably drawn to these books, the complex world Collins has created, and the people she has placed in that world.

  I am not the kind of person who becomes so invested in a book or movie or television show that my interest becomes a hobby or intense obsession, one where I start to declare allegiances or otherwise demonstrate a serious level of commitment to something fictional I had no hand in creating.

  Or, I didn’t used to be that kind of person.

  Let me be clear: Team Peeta. I cannot fathom how one could be on any other team. Gale? I can barely acknowledge him. Peeta, on the other hand, is everything. He frosts things and bakes bread and is unconditional and unwavering in his love, and also he is very, very strong. He can throw a sack of flour, is what I am saying. Peeta is a place of solace and hope, and he is a good kisser.

  In December 2011, I didn’t know much about The Hunger Games. Given my abiding interest in pop culture, I’m not sure how I missed the books. Then a friend suggested that The Hunger Games would be a great book to teach in my novel-writing class, so I decided to check it out.

  I do most of my leisure reading at the gym. I hate exercise. Yes, it’s good for you and weight loss and whatever, but normally, I work out and want to die. I knew I was in love with The Hunger Games when I did not want to get off the treadmill. The book captivated me. I wanted to stay in the world Collins created. More than that, The Hunger Games moved me. There was so much at stake, so much drama, and it was all so intriguing, so hypnotizing, so intense and dark. I particularly appreciated what the book got right about strength and endurance, suffering and survival. I found myself gasping and hissing and even bursting into tears, more than once. I looked insane but I did not care. I was completely without shame.

  After finishing The Hunger Games, I quickly read the next two books in the trilogy—my obsession, at this point, was raging and white hot. I was so invested I couldn’t stop talking about the books. I daydreamed about Katniss, Peeta, and, I suppose, sometimes Gale, as well as the other compelling characters—Cinna, Rue, Thresh, Haymitch, Finnick, Annie. I wanted the best for these characters even when all seemed hopeless, was hopeless.

  This obsession intensified well before I realized the first movie would be released. That development took things to a whole new level.

  I started counting down to the movie well before opening day. I could hardly contain myself. I attended the midnight showing even though I had to teach the next (same) morning. I warned my gentleman friend that he couldn’t mock me for how I reacted during the movie because I knew I was going to get close to the rapture and didn’t want to be judged. I live in a small town, so I expected that there wouldn’t be many people attending the midnight opening, but AMC screened The Hunger Games on all ten screens and every screening was sold out. My friends and I joked that we were probably some of the oldest people in the auditorium. It was no small relief when we saw some silver-haired folk among us.

  As we waited, the teenagers and tweens chattered energetically about the books and the casting and whatever else young people talk about these days. Nearly all of them were staring at electronic devices. I thought, Don’t they have school tomorrow? The movie began, and I held my breath. I had so many expectations, and I didn’t want those expectations, those hopes, destroyed by Hollywood, a known killer of dreams.

  I was not disappointed. I had feelings
throughout the movie, true, mad, deep feelings. Had I been alone, I would have embarrassed myself with vulgar displays of enthusiasm. At times I wanted to spontaneously break into applause to celebrate the thrill of seeing the book I’ve read so many times playing out twenty feet high. There was just so much to look at—the set design, the costumes, the glittery cast. The movie was almost cerebral and meticulously faithful to the book when it needed to be. The production values were impeccable with only a few missteps (whatever the hell was going on with Katniss’s flaming outfits, for example). The actors acquitted themselves well. I became even more fervently a member of Team Peeta. I left the movie thrilled with the overall experience of the movie.

  As a critic, I recognize the significant flaws, I do, but The Hunger Games is not a movie I am able to watch as a critic. The story means too much to me.

  The Hunger Games books are not perfect. While the writing is engaging and well paced, the quality of the prose weakens with each successive book. Many of the secondary characters aren’t well developed, and at times the plot strains credulity. The third book is rather rushed, and some of Collins’s choices feel almost gratuitous, particularly with regard to the characters she chose to kill off. The complete erasure of sexuality is problematic. Intimacy is conveyed through a great deal of kissing to the point that it becomes laughable. It is disturbing that within the world of the Hunger Games, it is perfectly acceptable for teenagers to kill one another and die or otherwise suffer in really violent ways, but it is not at all acceptable for them to explore their sexuality.

  I was struck, consistently, by the sheer brutality, and yet the undeniable heart of the story, of the characters, of my dearest Peeta and his devotion for Katniss, and how toward the end, even when it seemed hopeless, they found their way to each other. The books’ imperfections are easily forgiven because the best parts of the books are the truest—that sometimes, the one you love best is the one who has always been right by your side, even when you didn’t notice.