the thing i was getting at is there is no right way. experiences of sexual violence are so incredibly diverse, the specifics so important, and are experienced by such a range of individuals, that those experiences and reactions to them are going vary very widely. i have encountered depictions of sexual violence by other survivors or that speak deeply to other survivors which i find offensive or poorly done, politically or aesthetically; i also have texts i treasure for their depictions of sexual violence and which speak to my own reality that other survivors find unrealistic, crass, or tasteless. i think the framework of “good representation” breaks down in a lot of areas, and especially this one. it is never the one i use, when i critique depictions of sexual violence. however, a hallmark of many treatments that personally rankle me is a sensation that the writer in question has not truly mentally or emotionally sat with csa or sexual assault as a real experience. that their writing comes from a place of received cliche and reactive disgust rather than the real imaginative engagement that is the prerequisite to depicting any lived experience well. that is my main advice: really live with it for a while, imaginatively, in some way.
read widely, not only fiction but non-fiction and memoir. think about the specifics of what occurs, not in generalities. how would this happen, for this character, in these circumstances? what is the shape of the relation in which violation is occurring? what are the specific bodily realities of the acts inflicted upon the victim, how do they feel, how is that experienced from the inside? how would this individual character react - not some poster child victim, not a list of signs or symptoms, but this individual person, according to their culture, worldview, emotional and relational landscape? what sense do they make of it? what frameworks do they use to comprehend it, sustain themselves within it? what emotional resources do they use to survive? stay with it, enter into it, go with this fictional person there, even if the answers are distressing or uncomfortable. greet the answers as human and comprehensible, rather than inspiration for condescension or pity. there is no set of answers you will arrive on that will make any one depiction unoffensive to everyone; i would say the hallmark of an actually meaningful engagement would be it probably will offend someone, somewhere, that this in fact means a representation has escaped platitude and entered into the real messiness of such complex and difficult and alienating experience. but care about it. this is what fiction is for, this kind of imaginative connection. use it to the fullest, for yourself and your own imaginative empathetic capacity if nothing else. think of it that way, a relation between you and what you wish to grapple with, rather than between the work and a projected audience.
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
2087
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