[ SECRET POST #2649 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2649 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.


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03.


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04. http://i.imgur.com/eD4bGbG.jpg
[frozen, full nudity]


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05.
[AlternateHistory.com : Malê Rising]


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06.
[Amelie]


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08.


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09.


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10.


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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]




























11. [SPOILERS for Superior Spider-Man]



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12. [SPOILERS for Believe]



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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]






























13. [WARNING for rape]

[Orwell]


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14. [WARNING for rape]

[Colditz]


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15. [WARNING for child molestation]


















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #378.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wait...the tying her up and shooting her with arrows, or beating her to death with a rubber truncheon, those things are okay? But because he also had a rape fantasy (tied in with a massive subplot speaking to the subjugation of humanity's essential sexuality and the way that subjugation is used to diminish the human soul, which seems to have gone over your head entirely), that bit was too much? I mean, yes, it's horrible, but I don't get the fixation with rape being worse than these other abuses, especially in this particular context.

I keep trying to articulate why I find this secret tiresome...do you want people to pat you on the back because you stopped reading a literary classic at the mention of a rape fantasy?

[(Anonymous)]

I had the same thought when I read the secret. Murder is okay, but not when it's coupled with rape, oh no!

It's the "rape is a special kind of evil" mindset.

:/

[(Anonymous)]

In my view, it is a special kind of evil.

:/

[(Anonymous)]

As a rape survivor, I disagree with you and the notion bothers me. I understand that everyone deals with their trauma differently, but it was the people insisting that I had been completely destroyed by what happened that fucked me up more than the assault itself. I realize that I can only speak for myself, but I'd rather be raped a hundred times over than be murdered.

[ibbity]

I'm sorry if this is difficult for you to talk about, but are you saying that people deliberately convinced you that you had been ruined by being raped, when you didn't initially feel that way? That they actually told you you would have been better off dead? (I mean, I've seen people baldly state that in public forums and then get pissy and defensive yet continue to stand by their words when told that rape survivors don't appreciate hearing it, but I don't think I've ever actually seen someone say it TO a rape survivor.)

[(Anonymous)]

It's all right, thank you for your concern. While the words "you would have been better off dead" never left anyone's lips, the implication was certainly there. Yes, people were very actively and deliberately trying to convince me (and others that knew about it) that my being raped had utterly broken me as a person, because how could it not have? I was clearly only in denial about the whole thing. At my repeated insistence that, while what had happened was awful, I was still very much intact and ready to move forward, I noticed that some people were even becoming offended-- one suggested that I was covering for my rapist by not being more traumatized by it. It was horrific.

+1000

[(Anonymous)]

You're not only speaking for yourself. Rape is horrible, and for a given person it may be the worst thing that has happened to them to date, but it's by no means the worst thing imaginable and it certainly doesn't 'ruin' everyone it happens to.

I worry a lot about this attitude. Seems to me it's just playing right back into the "a woman's value is determined by her sexual purity" bullshit we're supposedly trying to get away from. The only difference now is that they're trying to convince us that we're the ones whose property has been irreparably damaged and made worthless, rather than some man being the victim.

[tenlittlebullets]

It's "special" in that it's at that weird intersection of sex and violence, but ultimately it's just as crude and prosaic as most other forms of evil: some combination of "I can use this to hurt you" and "My desire to do something matters more than the pain it will cause you." It's more complicated than just conking someone on the head with a baseball bat, sure, but it doesn't do anybody any favors to treat it like a cosmic evil from an eldritch dimension.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Two parts highlighted there. One, he wants to rape her (and kill her) because he hates her, which is nasty and threw me all the way out of the narrative when I tried to read the book the first time (and reading the ending gave me no incentive to go give him a second chance, poor doomed bastard). But yeah, it's not really out of sync with the other violence.

Two -- he hates her because he wants to have sex with her and never will? Her statement she won't have sex is a personal attack on him somehow? She's committed the crime of being attractive and sexually unavailable? Too many people think like that now for it to be entirely a product of the dystopia.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I saw both parts highlighted, yes, but I still think you're really missing the point. The emotion he feels is so strong, such a visceral reaction, precisely because he hasn't been allowed to live as a normal human being would. He has absolutely no outlet for his emotions, no freedom, no life outside of constant monitoring and fear. The attitude he expresses feels so real precisely because it's not Orwell's invention; it's a very primal human emotion...but the depth and violence of it is absolutely a product of the dystopia.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

...I'm really not okay with "I hate you because I can't have sex with you", period.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, you are bound and determined not to hear reasoned dialogue on this. There is probably a good reason for that, so I'll just step away now.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Two words: Unsympathetic. Protagonist.

You're not supposed to be okay with it.

Re: OP

[insanenoodlyguy]

It's not supposed to be okay though?

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

And...you're...not supposed to be. Like, you aren't supposed to read this part and think, "gosh, that Winston, he sure is charming!" You're supposed to be disturbed and disgusted.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

To his mind, yes, she's committed the crime of being attractive and sexually unavailable. His mind is unstable (because of the dystopia in which he's living), which is why his reaction is to have rape/murder fantasies instead of doing the thing that normal people do, which is be disappointed for twenty minutes and then move on with their life.

Too many people think like that now hence why it makes sense to include in an extreme form in a dystopian future.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not saying it doesn't make sense to include in the book. I'm saying it put me off reading the book.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

I get you, OP. People here seem to be missing the point of your secret.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Does this mean you won't read ANY books that might disturb you in that fashion? Because that's gonna be kind of limiting, don't you think?

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

NA

I get that passage would put you off, I truly do. It puts me off, too.

But I think you are limiting yourself if you refuse to read anything that puts you off (I'm not talking a legitimate trigger, I'm talking an 'ewww').

1984 is one of my favourite books precisely because of what you have said. Winston is an awful person. Julia is also an awful person. But the reason they are so awful is because that is what Big Brother has made them become. They literally don't know anything else. Winston's thought process would be totally normal among any male Ingsoc and the point is that we are meant to find that repulsive.

It's much the same with To Kill a Mockingbird. It's very easy to write it off as racist crap (and it is racist, incredibly so), but the themes below that initial reaction are more than that reaction. It teaches more than it condemns.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

It doesn't make sense, though. If men feel violent towards women who won't sleep with them outside of the dystopia - and they do, boy howdy, do they do - then what will make them stop?

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

This question doesn't even make sense. What exactly are you getting at?

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

I think anon means that even in a sexually permissive, non-dystopian society, some men still harbor violent thoughts towards women who are unavailable to them sexually, and that is scary and disturbing. Saying "It's just because of the oppressive dystopia" isn't much comfort.

na

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's also part of the point - I mean, it's not like we don't have screwed up sexual mores and cultural messages repressing sex (purity balls, abstinence education, etc). The particulars were different in Orwell's time, but not the broad strokes.

The mindset is a combination of natural lust + seeing women as objects instead of people. 1984's society tried to turn EVERYONE into objects, but our society does it to women plenty. And the point of the book, or at least one of them, is: dehumanization is fucked up and it fucks us up.

That said, 1984 is not the be all end all of dystopian fiction, and if you don't enjoy reading about/from that POV, you are under no obligation to. But if you like the idea of totalitarian dystopia otherwise, you should definitely check out We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP, but I can relate to the secret. I don't mind reading about murder, and I do mind reading about rape. This is not because I think the latter is "worse" than the former, but because it hits closer to home.

I don't think that makes me a special snowflake or admirably hypersensitive or whatever is supposed to be tiresome here. It just means that I don't want to hang out with too much fictional rape if I can avoid it.