This is the seventh installment of a series about sexual assault and comics. You can find the previous posts here:
Introduction
Rape in the Gutters
Writing Sexual Violence, Part 1
Writing Sexual Violence, Part 2
The Widowmaker
Is It Too Much to Ask?
Rape Is Rape Is Rape
April is done, but I’m not: there are still a few topics I want to touch before the SAAM series comes to a close. However, this will be the final column dealing directly with sexual violence in comics; the nextand lastSAAM column will be about real-life resources for secondary survivors (in response to several requests) and my general reflections on the series and the responses its received. After that, we’ll return to the regularly-scheduled programming.
Today, though, I’m going to write about same-sex sexual assaultsand their absencein comics.
I struggled a lot with how to handle this topic, because, even more than heterosexual sexual assault, same-sex sexual assault is divided down gender lines. Assaults with male perpetrators and victims are perceived and portrayed very differently from those with female perpetrators and victims, both in and out of comics, reflecting stereotypes based on both gender and sexual orientation.
When I was researching this column, I asked a number of friends and colleagues whether they could think of examples of same-sex rape in mainstream comics. A few tentatively mentioned Apollo’s assault in The Authority. One faintly remembered a teenage Spider-Man being molested by an older boy; another recalled that Bruce Banner had been the victim of an attempted rape at some point. I remembered Starr’s rape from Preacher. Soon, we were stumped. And if we didn’t count Lost Girls (which it hardly seemed fair to), we couldn’t think of any same-sex assaults involving women at all.
Of the assaults we did think ofas well as ones I discovered latermany involved an adult perpetrator and a juvenile victim. In most, the perpetrators, victims, or both were gay. And in a few, I was horrified to see victims become gay or bisexual as a result of their assaults.
I’m going to table the pederasty for nowit’s really a whole other discussionwith the qualifier that its prevalence among same-sex assaults in comics reinforces the harmful and dangerous fallacy that homosexuality and pedophilia go hand-in-hand.
That leaves sexual assaults perpetrated upon and by adult men. Of the three I mentioned aboveApollo, of The Authority; Starr of Preacher; and Bruce Banner of The Incredible Hulkonly one (Apollo’s) was handled in a remotely appropriate manner. The other two were grotesque parodies, one played for laughs (Starr’s) and the other for homophobic shock value (Bruce’s). What we learn is that all gay men are rapists; that being raped by other men can make previously straight men gay or bisexual. If I had to choose one of the two that was more offensive, I honestly don’t know which I’d pick: Starr’s rapeparticularly its long-term effect on his sexual proclivitiesis a horrifically twisted portrayal of rape-as-pleasure, but Bruce’s attempted assault features the most blatant and offensive homosexual stereotypes I’ve ever seen in a superhero book.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Well, for starts, over 50% if men who are victims or perpetrators of same-sex rapes identify as exclusively straight. Being raped is not a transcendent experience that moves victims to reevaluate their sexual preferencesunless by ‘reevaluate their sexual preferences’ one means ‘shy away from sexual encounters or engage in extremely risky activities.’
And not one of the scenarios really deals with the long-term aftermath of sexual assault, which is often much harsher for male victims of same-sex assaults than for any other population. Very few ever report their assaults, and those who do are often subject to the sameor worsetreatment as their female counterparts: in addition to victim blaming, they frequently face homophobiaregardless their sexual orientationsand occasionally even criminal charges for ‘crimes against nature.’
But what about the women?
Woman-to-woman sexual violence is nearly invisible in our society; even more so in our media. Few people are aware that women can sexually assault other women, let alone that they actually do. Unlike same-sex sexual violence between men, same-sex assaults between women are much more likely to take place within preexisting intimate relationships; they’re also more likely to involve verbal and emotional coercion or threats rather than physical violence, although that’s far from a universal rule.
This situation is made more complicated by the fact that until fairly recently, sexual and domestic violence were almost invisible within the lesbian community. Survivors who came forward within that community were often accused of lying, because our cultural concepts of sexual violence require a male perpetrator and are therefore antithetical to a community of women. Like male survivors of same-sex assaults, women who have been raped by other women frequently find themselves the victims of homophobia, profiling, and even criminal charges.
When writers portray same-sex assaults in comics, they are doing so in the context not only of their cultural conditioning and prejudices gender and sexuality, but also of internalized homophobia. Furthermore, they’re writing about survivors who suffer much worse treatment at the hands of law enforcementand often even friends and familythan perhaps an other group of victims of crime; perpetuating and reinforcing that treatment through inaccurate caricatures and serious assaults played for uncomfortable laughs is lazy and irresponsible writing.
CODA: In the discussion of Rape Is Rape Is Rape on the Girl-Wonder forum, a poster mentioned the upcoming comic Satan’s Sodomy Baby, which involves (among other questionable content) same-sex rape. I’m going to copy and paste my response here, because I think it addresses an important issue: that the standards for the portrayal of assault are very differentand very rightly sofor serious and satirical comics:
SSB is very, very clearly satire, and it’s published as such; it’s a spinoff from a very off-color humor comic (The Goon, which I heartily recommend to anyone with a strong stomach and a twisted sense of humor). While I could pick it apart and insist that it was in fact subtle commentary on issues in mainstream comics, I’m much, much more inclined to chalk it up to the fact that Eric Powell’s sense of humor starts where most of ours taper off into confusion and horror.
It’s also being shrink-wrappedwhich means it shouldn’t be sold to minors. Its cover will be black, with a large warning label. This is not a comic being marketed to people who will buy it without knowing exactly what they’re getting into.
Given that context, and given the tone of the story itself, I don’t think the rape that takes place in SSB can really be judged by the same standards as rapes in mainstreamparticularly superherocomics that are fairly serious in tone. No one is going to develop misconceptions about sexual violence in the real world based on its portrayal in SSB.
I am a queer feminist pacifist with very strong feelings about appropriate ways to present sexual assault in comics, and while I found SSB incredibly offensive, I was not offended by it.
Discuss this column here.
