Should I avoid having sexual abuse or rape involved?

You seem to be asking opposite questions—why people get upset about fictional rape, and why they don’t.

 

I can't help but see a big rough cockney saying, "I don't discrimate, I'll do anything to anyone. Gotta move with the times see, and I, I am an equal opportunties torturer"

Ok, I'll go with the toes, kneecaps, and the full waterboarding with electrodes please.

 

Kind of like in this scene where Carl was being attacked in TWD.

I don't think this scene was done to give rape fetish fans something to look forward to but just part of the story that shows how crazy and out of control people can get, especially those who are really bad and how crazy things like this can happen to someone in a messed up society and I don't think this scene was considered being too explicit to the point of causing rape victim riots. And the bad guy is tempting to do the rape, which in turn he gets what's coming.

 

Mostly, the only rapes we hear about happening to men are happening in prison... which are often seen as justified. For men it’s immasculating, dehumanizing, and just doesn’t happen in society unless your a child rapist prisoner, right? So men keep their mouths shut about that sort of trauma.

My mom was a NYC sexual assualt nurse examiner - of all her stories she’s shared with me - she has hundreds- there were only a few cases of male rape. The few men she saw were raped and left for dead. The surviving men never wanted to out their rapists or talk about what happened, even being at the hospital was like a major burden to them. One man actually did die from internal injuries caused by the various objects used to rape them, like a broom.

So basically, if you are a man who’s been raped (and not because you’ve been to jail), you take your rape to the grave with you unless you are litterally found naked, lifeless, and bleeding out of your ***... and then you may still deny that you were raped! Ughh!

I think it’s important for male rape to be written about and shown in the media. The way people react to hearing about male rape is the reason men won’t come foward and put their rapists behind bars.

I have read about the rape scene from the movie deliverence and feel you should seek that out maybe. It’s a strong depiction of men using rape to show their power. Another movie that comes to mind is sleepers which is based off a book and it’s about boys who are sent to a juvenile detention facility and are sexually abused by their gaurds. It’s so sick, I cried myself to sleep and had nightmares for days!! (I’m so sensitive, I’m already crying!!)

 

Examining societal issues is a cheap way for novice writers to say that their story is "deep". Wow, rape is bad. I never thought of that before.

 

Then you’re not the target audience.

Should Uncle Tom’s Cabin or To Kill a Mockingbird have not been written because there were people who knew that racism is wrong?

 

Not according to Abraham Lincoln: “So you’re the little lady who started this big war.”

 

I think my post came out wrong. People can write about those issues, and they can make great stories around them. What I meant is that some people include those themes in their story in an attempt to make it seem more mature, or deep, when in reality it comes across as childish.

 

People can be influenced for the better, rare as it may be.

I knew of a guy who was very racist, but changed after seeing “American History X.”

“I didn’t know what an asshole I was being.”

That movie was kinda special in its ability to get under the skin of its targets.

 

I firmly disagree. Did To Kill a Mockingbird or Uncle Tom's Cabin turn entrenched, dedicated racists? Probably not. Did it turn a huge population of blandly unaware people into aware people who cared about the issue? Probably.

The Jungle changed food safety. Diary of a Young Girl made the horrors of the Nazis real. Dickens influenced the way people saw poverty. And so on an so on and so on.

 

No. Lincoln wasn't talking about Lincoln. He was talking about the increase in abolition sentiment, stirred up by the book, among the American public.

Of course she didn't. You seem to think that a book only has influence if it causes a complete 180 degree turnaround in the people with the strongest opinions. You're ignoring the people who are dragged out of their apathy to take action.

I very much doubt that Silent Spring changed the minds of any executives at DuPont. But that doesn't change the fact that it led to the ban of DDT and the formation of the EPA.

I very much doubt that the owners of slaughterhouses were persuaded by The Jungle. But that doesn't change the fact that it led to the formation of the bureau that became the FDA.

I very much doubt that the owners of the Yorkshire Schools were persuaded by Nicholas Nickleby. But the schools were shut down anyway.

We're not blank slates. We get our opinions from somewhere. Why would you assume that none of them come from literature?

 

I'm returning to edit my post a lot.

This only makes sense if you assume that most people will only read a book that agrees with their current opinions in every way--that they'll vet books to eliminate the ones that have anything that doesn't perfectly match their opinions, all of their opinions.

But I don't think it works that way. Generally, I think that a person will only vet books to eliminate opinions that they're very strongly opposed to.

So a person who is deeply opposed to the idea of a woman ever doing anything other than becoming a wife and mother will avoid a book about a a woman who has a job.

But a person who simply grew up with the passive assumption that all women will be, or aspire to be, wives and mothers doesn't have that defensiveness. They'll read a book that includes a woman who has a career. And they may identify with that woman, or sympathize with her, or at least understand her. And thus their view of the world has been changed.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was an immense, mind-boggling best-seller. Imagine that everybody you knew was reading and talking about this book. Imagine that you really had no particular opinions about slavery or abolition of slavery, so you weren't defensive on the subject, you just didn't care. It seems not that unlikely that you might read the book.

And once you've read the book, you've read the book. And there's a chance that your don't-care attitude about slavery might now be changed.

People get their opinions from all sorts of things. It makes no sense to assume that they are somehow immune from being influenced by literature--that literature, of all forms of human communication, is guaranteed not to affect human beliefs. I don't see any backing for that assumption and I don't see any common sense argument behind that assumption.

 

FYI, I rewrote the post you responded to before I realized you responded. I assumed that at this hour you'd probably gone to bed. Of course, I have no idea what hour this hour is for you.

To summarize that rewritten post: There's no reason to assume that people will vet books to ensure that every book they read agrees with them in every way. People are only likely to do that vetting about opinions that are already strongly held. I see zero reason to assume that most people who picked up the everybody's-talking-about-it Uncle Tom's Cabin were already ardent abolitionists. If they weren't already an ardent ANTI abolitionist, they would really have no reason to flee from the book.

The fact that The Help may not have been effective in stirring thought doesn't mean that literature can't stir thought. It just means that that book didn't succeed.

 

Again I return, but this time I'll post a new post instead of editing the old one:

But the abolitionists came from somewhere. It's not as if three or four abolitionists came together and started a war. And it's not as if Lincoln was an abolitionist; he was opposed to slavery, but that's not the same thing.

(There's his famous quote in the letter to Horace Greely:

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
(snip)
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.")​

The broadening of public opinion in favor of abolition, and thus the threat to slavery that caused secession, came from somewhere. I don't see why we should assume that Uncle Tom's Cabin had nothing whatsoever to do with that.

 

Er, back to OP, I hold the viewpoint of betrayal for these scenes.
my (male) MC fears girls, and ends up getting swamped by three of them. He is obviously overwhelmed, but does not feel betrayed, even though I considered writing that. He then encounters a (girl) victim who had drunken sex and got pregnant. He has sympathetic vibe when the girl explains that the guy said he only wanted to f... her 'stupid drunk ass' then leaves.
If the scene depicts the point of view of the victim, and is regarded as betrayal of trust in whatever form, it's a story that needs to be told, as long as the perp isn't glorified.

 

my ego often makes me a prick... or was it my prick needs ego often...
Anyway, if something is contrived or insincere, it will get caught

 

I wouldn't say that having aspirations is a bad thing. Sure, probably many people think whatever they're working on will be "the next big thing." It almost certainly won't be. But that's merely almost certain. We might all be pleasantly surprised, not least of all the creator herself.

When Rowling signed a deal for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone she was advised not to quit her day job. We all know how that turned out.