Tweet of the Day: Video Games And Violence: The Connection
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Want to add a bit of drama to a female character (it is almost always female) background?
Just add rape.
<INSERT EYE ROLL HERE>
The problem with this trope is that it emphasizes the image of women as perennial victims. This trope does not apply to stories about sexual abuse/assault, but to characters who have rape as part of their background for the only purpose of adding “drama” to the story. Even the most common subversion of the trope, the averted rape posits that the character was either lucky, stronger or faster than the attacker making them stand out among women who usually can not fight off the attack(s) in question. At its worst the trope implies that rape is a woman’s lot in life, as the weaker sex.
Which brings me to a phrase that has gone memetic of late: Don’t teach your daughters to avoid rape, teach your sons not to rape.
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I see this too much in the workshops I take part in…
A sign of how much this trope has penetrated our collective consciousness.