I’m Not Broken – Annalee Flower Horne
Annalee Flower Horne’s essay talks about the portrayal of sexual assault survivors in SF/F. While not graphic in detail, I thought a content warning was appropriate. As she notes, it’s not that our genre never writes about assault; it’s that we tend to do it badly.
I’ve always appreciated Princess Leia as an amazing character, but I’d never considered how powerful her portrayal and story might be to a child survivor. After reading this, I doubt I’ll ever look at Leia in the same way.
When I was a kid, I loved Princess Leia.
She was smart and capable; a leader and a hero. And unlike Luke and Han, I could see myself in her. We were both girls.
We were also both assault survivors.
The original trilogy was on a lot in my house. I saw the Twi’lek dancer pulling away from Jabba with terror in her eyes. I saw Leia in that humiliating bikini. I knew what it meant.
These days, I’m mostly just disgusted with how the movie (and the fandom) handled it, but child-me wasn’t disgusted.
Child-me saw an assault survivor who still got to be a badass. Leia left Tatooine and returned to her life as a leader of the rebellion. No one treated her differently or told her she couldn’t do the things the boys do because someone might rape her. At the end of the movie, she got the dashing rogue and the happy ending.
I wanted to be just like her.
It may seem weird to talk about sexual assault for a series about representation, because sexual assault survivors are all over genre fiction. Jim has written about how much of a cliché it is, and TV Tropes has an extensive list of examples. But seeing representations that bear so little resemblance to your actual experience is damaging. Especially when so many of those representations portray people like you as fundamentally broken.
That’s pretty much the life of a sexual assault survivor in fiction. We don’t get to be the hero. We get to be brutally raped by the villain, leaving the hero—not us, mind you; the hero—scarred and hell-bent on avenging our virtue.
There’s also the trope where writers throw a little agency our way, and we get to avenge our own virtue—but that’s all we get to do. Our entire lives revolve around a thing that was done to us, to which the only “proper” response is murderous rage and possibly world domination.
I used to wonder if I was really a survivor, because I never tried to kill my attacker. He lived in my neighborhood. We made polite conversation at the park, and it was awkward as hell, but I never wanted to hurt him.
I certainly never tried to take over the world. I really don’t know where writers get the idea that sexual assault causes sociopathy in survivors, but it’s lazy bullshit and I wish that trope would just die already.
A lot of folks have suggested that all rape and survivor tropes should just die already. I remember reading one article suggesting that every time a woman on a TV show is raped, a male character should get his balls cut off, for parity.
It took me a long time to unpack why that bothered me, but it comes down to this: I have not been maimed. Popular media often drastically underplays how awful rape is, but it also overplays the fallout. I don’t want to dismiss survivors who really do end up with acute stress disorder and severe PTSD. We need to hear those stories, because the people living them need to know they’re not alone.
But that’s not always how the story goes. One out of every five women is an assault survivor. If you think every woman you know has beaten those odds, it may be because survivors don’t look and act like you think we will. Many survivors get on with our lives. We manage as well as we can. We heal.
For me, the effects have always been subtle. There are books I won’t read and shows and movies I won’t watch. I have a phobia you’d never guess was related to having been assaulted unless I told you.
I show up at work early, because we have open seating, and I want to be sure to get one of the desks with the wall behind it so people can’t get behind me without passing through my peripheral vision first.
I’m happily married, with a steady job and a lot of friends. I build cool stuff and have too many fandoms, and don’t actually spend a whole lot of time thinking about that thing that happened when I was a kid. I wrote most of this post while pacing around my neighborhood alone after midnight, because I know where monsters lurk, and it isn’t the damn bushes.
I still want to see survivors in fiction. I just want them to be whole people. They should have goals and dreams and inner lives that don’t revolve around that one thing that was done to them. They should get to be heroes, villains, lovers, and liars without anyone reducing them to their survivor status.
These days, I understand that this isn’t what Lucasfilm was going for with Leia. Like so many survivors in fiction, her story was only important when the film could pass it off as sexy. Reducing her to her survivor status would have ruined the bikini shot.
I’m glad child-me didn’t get that. I’m glad I was able to project onto Leia the capable survivor I wanted to grow up to be. Her happy ending mattered to me, because it helped me imagine my own.
But now that I’m living that happy ending, I want more than to see my heroes completely stripped of agency for cheap fanservice. I want to see what child-me saw in Leia: survivors who get to save the day, fall in love, and experience the whole range of human emotions without anyone—including the narrator—treating them like they’re broken.
Annalee Flower Horne is an open-source developer and science fiction writer from Washington, DC. You can find her on Twitter, her website, and the Geek Feminism blog. Her fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Stacey Filak
February 25, 2015 @ 10:03 am
This was beautifully stated. So often, our stories diminish characters (and female characters, most often) down to one, signature aspect. While I had not honestly thought about “the victim” as being one of those tropey aspects, to have it spelled out so clearly makes me wonder why I hadn’t.
It has often bothered me that so many call for a end to ALL uses of sexual assault, in genre fic, because I do think it is important to not sweep this very real problem under the rug. But agency, giving a fully-rounded character a life that includes the attack, the response, the aftermath, and the healing, as well as aspects of their character that have nothing to do with an assault, seems to be the answer. As always, agency is the answer.
Thank you for such an eloquent post.
Virginia Herrick
February 25, 2015 @ 11:02 am
Thank you for writing this post! I, too, am a survivor of childhood sexual assault, and no one would know. I can even sit with my back to the door, if I really, really trust the person facing me. lol I am also working on my first fantasy novel, and the protagonist has undergone some truly horrific abuse (POW). The story does not shake this off like it was nothing, but the journey is hers, and no one is responsible for vengeance or to act in response to what happened to her except herself. She is accompanied by a wizard who may or may not be helpful, but he’s sure not out to kill anyone, and neither wants to dominate the world. #amwriting
Jackalope
February 25, 2015 @ 11:30 am
Can I just second this, like a lot. It took me YEARS to accept that I am a survivor of assault. Not because it was any kind of iffy consent or because I didn’t want to admit that the event happened, but because I don’t feel like the sexual assault survivor everyone says is the only option. It doesn’t dominate my life and it doesn’t come up that often, in fact unless I’m directly discussing sexual assault I don’t really think about it. There are residual effects, but they don’t dominate my life. But that’s not the story that gets told, and thus I never felt like it was actually sexual assault, just a bad thing that happened in my past.
Joie
February 25, 2015 @ 11:38 am
Thank you, ever so much. You have hit on the head something that I could never quite express.
Stephanie Lorée
February 25, 2015 @ 11:55 am
This. So much this. I’m a survivor, but I’m also a whole lot of other things: wife, friend, daughter, geek, author… When you distill a person down to a label you make them an object and not a whole human. Sexual assault is a thing that happens more often than we’d like to admit, and while I don’t want it to never appear in fiction (because really, if we just avoid the difficult topics, why are we bothering?), I also don’t want it to be a plot device or the end-all-be-all of a character.
There’s a reason we’re called “survivors.” We survive.
BlueSimplicity
February 25, 2015 @ 11:55 am
Thank you so much for this. I am also a survivor of childhood sexual assault. While I know everyone responds differently, and everyone’s response is unique – I’ve HEALED. Just thank you for this. Thank you so much. You’ve said it better than I ever could.
Jaws
February 25, 2015 @ 12:13 pm
Leia could have been handled even more interestingly because she survived rather brutal assaults twice: The off-camera “interrogation” early in the first film, and the “incident” noted by Ms Horne.* What this says about the character is one thing; what it says about the “storyteller” (presuming that there’s a coherent story in there in the first place) is much less complimentary. And let’s just not start arguing about 70s sensitivities, ok?
* As it almost certainly would have appeared in any official report regarding the two, and that — all by itself — says an awful lot about how we mishandle people who have been through it. Even more than making them hyphenated-survivors does: It may have changed them, but it shouldn’t be treated as the central aspect of their being by default (unless it really is, which is what I believe Ms Horne is objecting to as a presumption).
SherryH
February 25, 2015 @ 12:27 pm
Annalee, thank you. I had never thought of Leia as an assault survivor, and, like Jim, will now find it difficult to think of her as anything but. Excellent post, and I appreciate your writing and sharing it.
Naomi Stone
February 25, 2015 @ 12:31 pm
” I just want them to be whole people. They should have goals and dreams and inner lives that don’t revolve around that one thing that was done to them. They should get to be heroes, villains, lovers, and liars without anyone reducing them to their survivor status.”
Yes. It never occurred to me that the heroine of ‘Shining Hope’ (the latest Team Guardian adventure) should be anything less. Her experience as a survivor of date-rape is only mentioned in the story because it creates an issue for her in a case where the Team has to deal with a vigilante targeting sexual predators. The vigilante has issues – but more because of the violent murder of her sister than rape per se.
Tungsten Hippo
February 25, 2015 @ 12:41 pm
What a wonderful essay. Thank you for writing it. I had never thought about this topic in this way before, but you are so very right: we really need to see this sort of story.
Kanika Kalra
February 25, 2015 @ 1:02 pm
What you have expressed here touches a theme I can never rant enough about: one-dimensional writing. Normally, everyone criticizes such writing. But, when it comes to stories of assault victims it’s considered perfectly fine to base the whole plot on that one terrible incident that happened in the character’s past. Like you’ve mentioned, there ARE people who suffer PTSD, and never quite manage to heal, but you know what? Even those people have other traits associated to them, other dimensions. They, too, have hobbies, interests, likes, dislikes, opinions, and chunks of their life that have nothing to do with the assault. The PTSD is a part of their personality, not the whole. And so, even if the book is ABOUT how a fictional character recuperated, writing one-dimensional characters is just being lazy. Most stories simply leave out the other aspects of a character’s personality. Either that, or they’re just mentioned in passing, and the reader doesn’t get to actually witness their implementation.
Annalee, you have very beautifully highlighted the fact that accurate representation is more important than representation itself, and that inaccurate represention does more harm than good. So, thank you, for writing this.
Patti L
February 25, 2015 @ 1:26 pm
Thank you for this. It’s true and important.
People are trying. Have you read the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. Mercy has issues after “Iron Kissed”, but she’s still one of the ones who sees herself as responsible for safety of those around her, and risks herself unto death to protect them.
Wimpy Coyote-girl among the werewolves.
Right.
Zippy
February 25, 2015 @ 2:27 pm
It is regretful that you were assaulted, and I am glad that you have been able to recover and do well. I certainly don’t begrudge you any comfort you got from the Star Wars series.
However, I think you’re reading a bit into Return of the Jedi. While it’s fairly clear that Jabba mistreats the dancers whom we appears to be keeping as slaves, I think it’s unlikely that Jabba even has the equipment to rape her. They are, after all, wildly varying species.
This doesn’t mean he doesn’t assault her — we see her lick her with that disgusting tongue, and that’s certainly an assault, and gross. It’s right that his treatment of her is brutal. But I don’t think sexual assault is implied by the movie.
By the way, Jaws is right about one other thing. I do agree that off-screen interrogation in the first Star Wars is strongly implied to involve torture, and she seems to have handled it well.
Jim C. Hines
February 25, 2015 @ 2:31 pm
Zippy – you say that Jabba assaults Leia, and it’s pretty clearly in a sexual way, so doesn’t that not only imply but show a sexual assault? If we look specifically and narrowly at penile-penetration as rape, than you could be right. I honestly don’t want to know that much about Jabba’s anatomy. But rape and sexual assault are much broader than that, even among humans.
And agreed about the torture in A New Hope. I appreciated that a few of the tie-in novels touched on that.
Avilyn
February 25, 2015 @ 2:35 pm
“I used to wonder if I was really a survivor, because I never tried to kill my attacker. He lived in my neighborhood. We made polite conversation at the park, and it was awkward as hell, but I never wanted to hurt him.”
The tears started flowing at this point. I unfortunately can identify with you here, and at several other points. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I *was* a survivor, and that what happened to me (childhood sexual assualt and date rape) was real, not my fault, and didn’t have to define my life. Counselling helped. Most days, I tend not to think of it at all, and just go on with my life; happily married, mother to two cats, geek, gamer, etc. It’s part of who I am, but not the totality.
“I’m not broken.” Words to live by. Thank you.
Nenya
February 25, 2015 @ 3:49 pm
Yes.
Sally
February 25, 2015 @ 7:09 pm
What’s that stat, that one in every (3? 6?) women will be sexually assaulted in her life?
And yet we don’t see 1/3 or 1/6 or whatever of women cowering in their homes in fear/insanity, or picking up a gun to mow down their rapists and others like them. They just go on shopping, working, paying bills, raising the kids, bitching about the government. And nobody knows.
The “must get painful revenge” and “must have permanent severe PTSD” tropes do a disservice to most women in your position. And to others. If a woman gets raped and doesn’t have PTSD a year or five years later, is she doing it wrong? If some creep molests him/her as a kid, s/he doesn’t think about it at all for years, and then a) doesn’t declare jihad on him and others like him and b) goes on to have an average sex life, neither frigid nor promiscuous, is s/he doing it wrong?
BTW, sitting with your back to a wall is a quirk that many people who’ve never been assaulted have. So while it might be your little PTSD symptom, nobody else is going to think twice about it. Cops are told never to do it even in training, before any bad guys ever beat on them. Some people do it just because they’ve seen so many movies where it’s best to do that! It’s just a thing. Who knows, you might have developed it anyway.
Tabitha (Not Yet Read)
February 25, 2015 @ 7:15 pm
I’m not broken. That says so much right there. Thank you so much Jim for having Annalee as a guest. And Annalee for writing something so very to the heart of so many of us. We women aren’t the only survivors and as a function fan I know that I have rarely ever seen sexual assault handled / written in a way that I could identify with. Often I think those writing it into their fiction don’t take into consideration enough what it means to be that person on the receiving end. Nothing upsets me more then when I see it used as a convenient plot device, or when the survivor is made to feel it is their fault. But ultimately I sadly doubt the use of it in fiction will get much better but I can only hope that authors that plan to include it in their works happen upon your words and think more deeply and wisely before they choose to do so. Thank you so much. We’re definitely not broken and most certainly are heroes in our own way because we survive.
Sally
February 25, 2015 @ 7:18 pm
First of all, different species rarely matters — look at bestiality right here on Earth.
Second of all, she’s forced into a freakin’ bikini and chained up. And then he puts his slimy tongue all over her, and I don’t care what his anatomy under the fat rolls are, that’s a sexual assault, and Jabba intended it to be, with that whole scenario. He’s got a fetish for conventionally-attractive humanoid ladies. No men, no ugly or fat or anorexic women. Nope, whatever and wherever his crank is, it’s turned by scantily-clad pretty women.
That she could survive mechanized torture with drugs (that syringe!), being temporarily a slave and sexually assaulted, and still lead a rebellion AND end up with the hunky man — that’s a kick-ass woman.
Virginia Herrick
February 25, 2015 @ 9:00 pm
Thank you, Sally, for making the point that this “must get painful revenge” scenario seems to play into some cultural fantasy, and definitely is not on the agenda of many women who have experienced sexual assault. My husband just watched a movie the other night in which young woman is gang-raped. The “heroes” of the movie immobilize the bad guys shortly after the assault, arm the woman with a baseball bat and leave her alone with her rapists to take her “revenge.” Many women in that situation are more interested in being validated and reassured — and almost universally interested in taking a shower — than in adding more violence to their day. What an eye roll.
Stephanie Whelan
February 25, 2015 @ 11:01 pm
Thank you for this post. It was actually a long time before someone finally provided me with the word “survivor” rather than “victim” for what happened to me. Gaining that word was a huge realization that I could describe myself beyond what had happened and feel strong in doing so. That I was empowered, and that I had the choices to make in my healing and facing the world.
Annalee
February 26, 2015 @ 12:50 pm
Thanks for all the kind comments, folks! I especially appreciate hearing from other survivors for whom this resonated.
I do want to take a sec to clarify one thing: when I said I want survivors in fiction to be able to experience the full range of human emotions without anyone treating them like they’re broken, I didn’t mean to indicate that folks who are having a tough time are somehow broken. I meant that, however a survivor is dealing or healing (or not), they’re still whole people. They shouldn’t be reduced to plot devices whose every thought and feeling is chalked up to trauma.
Virginia Herrick
February 26, 2015 @ 12:55 pm
Absolutely agree, Annalee. Thank you again. Most of us sometimes feel broken, getting through life. And then we heal, change, grow up and around and through the broken places and are made whole. I am particularly fond of Elizabeth Lesser’s book, “Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow.” Portraying women as permanently destroyed by abuse, or, as you say, using violence against them as a plot device, is a grave disservice to this basic human reality.
Sally
February 26, 2015 @ 8:51 pm
Well exactly! Who’s in the mood to add more violence? A long hot shower and curling up under the covers, with someone patting their hand and saying “there, there” and bringing them warm milk or shots of bourbon or something is going to be way more appealing than smashing people when you’re already in physical pain.
(Also, since it’s a movie, why didn’t the “heroes” arrive just in the nick of time instead? Right BEFORE the assault instead of right AFTER! Kinda useless at that point, guys. Eye roll.)
celli
March 3, 2015 @ 11:27 am
This piece moves me. When I was assaulted, I didn’t have a point of reference except media depictions and news reports…and when my experience didn’t match those, I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t as “bad” as it felt, that I was totally blowing it out of proportion, etc…which led to years of either being Visibly Fucked Up or Totes Fine, around and around in cycles. I still feel like that sometimes.
(My secret is that when I feel alone I backread Jim’s rape posts…because seeing other survivors talk about their feelings and seeing people defend survivors against rape culture remind me that I’m not [terrible thing I tell myself] but part of a community of survivors.
Add me to the Back to the Wall Club – I like to think of it as following in Wild Bill Hickock’s footsteps. I also have a sign in my cube telling people to knock. To me it’s this huge deal and PTSD trigger, but my coworkers just shrug and knock. Whew. 🙂
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Marcy
April 5, 2015 @ 1:04 am
Oh man, yes. I… haven’t been assaulted, and I’m not trying to say it’s the same thing, but I really relate to maybe a more moderate version of those cycles. My experiences of all kinds of grief and trauma have definitely had cycles, at least internally, between that “Visibly Fucked Up or Totes Fine.” Sometimes I describe it as things that feel huge and like Such a Big Deal one moment, and then nothing at all the next. (Or in a week, or whatever.) I’m fine.
From my mom’s dementia to miscarriage… especially strikes in areas where people don’t talk much about things, I guess? (I’m young for someone with a mom with dementia.) Realized the other day when I mentioned my trip to the ER after my miscarriage and someone was like, “I can’t imagine how traumatic that would be,” that the combo of feeling like a big deal and yet not… well, the ER itself was great. That happened to be when the pain started to go away, and it was good to be somewhere equipped to deal with blood.
The blood and pain were at… kinda traumatic levels? (I mean, it felt horrible, and I think “traumatic” might be an appropriate way to put it, but I don’t think I have PTSD…) But it’s not as easy to talk about those. So the ER was a big deal (and not Totes Fine), basically just as a symbol of everything else. A shorthand that… kind of works, even though a reaction to the ER itself feels kind of “off,” and like I’d better explain that it was mostly just lots of waiting around, because hospital. And that I was really fine, just needed some more IV fluid before they released me, to calm my standing heart rate. Fine! Totes Fine, I tell you!
anglerfish07
April 15, 2015 @ 6:32 am
Thank you so, so much for this beautiful and powerful post… I’m shocked and angered when people use survivors as mere plot devices, so I’m relieved beyond words to read this article.
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