Sex vs. Rape in the Huffington Post
Bill Deresiewicz wrote a piece for The Huffington Post about Pride & Prejudice: Hidden Lusts [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] by Mitzi Szereto, described as a pornographic edition of Jane Austen’s work and another entry in the ever-growing list of mashups that began with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Pop quiz: what’s wrong with the following sentence, from the very first paragraph of Deresiewicz’s article?
If Bob beats Joe to death with a baseball bat, that’s a crime. We call it murder or homicide. We don’t call it a sport just because Bob happened to use a bat. So why the hell do people have such a hard time understanding that rape =/= sex?
It seems like a little thing, I know. A careless word choice, either because Deresiewicz doesn’t know any better or he just wasn’t paying attention. It’s not like he’s actually committing or advocating rape in any way, right?
But the little things matter. The more often we suggest that rape is just “kinky sex,” the easier it becomes to blur that line. We end up with phrases like “gray rape.” We make it easier to excuse rapists, and to question and challenge whether someone was really raped.
Repeat a lie often enough, and many people will begin to believe it. Could we please stop repeating this one?
Parsley Victorious
June 15, 2011 @ 10:04 am
Hear hear. There’s nothing ‘kinky’ about a criminal act. A kink is something fun shared between people who are both/all into it. I don’t think any rape victim has ever considered it ‘fun’. To suggest otherwise is disgusting.
Xakara
June 15, 2011 @ 10:53 am
Bondage is a kink.
Rape is a felony.
It’s not that difficult to understand the difference. The willful ignorance of his statement and others like it, is a form of verbal violence against anyone who has suffered being raped or supporting a survivor of rape.
Thank you for this.
~Xakara
D. Moonfire
June 15, 2011 @ 12:44 pm
I could see acting out rape fantasies as kinky, but actual rape is not kinky. But, most books are not doing it as a consensual fantasy.
Jim C. Hines
June 15, 2011 @ 1:58 pm
Yep. Rape fantasy =/= rape.
Patrick
June 15, 2011 @ 3:41 pm
Not to throw gasoline on the fire or anything, but I wonder if his comment couldn’t be read more charitably. Perhaps he means to refer not to his own view of “kinky sex” but rather the view held by a large portion of Austen’s contemporaries. Much (if not most) of 18th and 19th century erotica conflated rape with sex (some, rather deliberately). If he had written, “There was no shortage of scientific discourse in the novels of Austen’s time — astronomy, chemistry, biology, astrology.” Would we read that and assume the author believes that astrology is a science, or rather that Austen’s contemporaries did?
Jim C. Hines
June 15, 2011 @ 4:03 pm
I think you need to be really darn charitable to read it that way. There’s nothing in the phrasing or context that suggests to me that he’s trying to describe a historical viewpoint. The whole thing is very much an opinion piece, and to me, seems very clearly to be Deresiewicz’s opinions.
Patrick
June 15, 2011 @ 5:29 pm
It’s an opinion piece to be sure, but the point of sentence about kinky sex seems not be his attempt to comment on the nature of sex (or even erotica) but rather on the fact that such bawdy books are nothing new. He’s deliberately placing “kinky sex” in a historical and literary context; “in the novels of Austen’s time.”
I certainly admit that it’s a charitable reading, but not unduly so. I realize that this may seem like I’m picking a nit, but as you say, little things matter. I see no reason to assume (from this one piece) that Deresiewicz is ignorant of the issue, or uncaring. Indeed, the rest of piece was lovely and quite at odds with the image of man who casually conflates rape and sex.
Jim C. Hines
June 16, 2011 @ 7:28 am
It’s certainly possible to assume he meant something very different, but I can only respond to what he actually wrote.