books with consent issues
Aug. 31st, 2010 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinian(I was planning this anyway, but in honor of Rachel's excellent post on why negative reviews are a good thing, here you go right now, even though I ought to be working.)
I have read TWO books with sexual consent problems in a row. Come on, authors. Pleasure Town Is Invite Only.
The House of the Stag, Kage Baker. Really enjoyable, dark in places, but overall charming OH EXCEPT FOR THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME. I do generally love Baker's fantasy despite hating the Company books, but here? Ugh. The virginal priestess character yearns for love and gets kidnapped and raped, so of course she falls for her attacker -- we know he's a nice guy because of the entire first half of the book! He couldn't help himself! She so pretty! As if that weren't enough, she uses her feminine wiles to make over the dark citadel of stone so that it has flowery plastered rooms and a garden. I am not making this up.
Nylon Angel, Marianne des Pierres. Less blatantly, protagonist in a Shadowrun-with-numbers-filed-off world Parrish Plessis has a No Kissing Rule. The dodgy love interest man* kisses her; there is no indication that she wouldn't have had time to dodge this; aaaand she is upset for oh about fifteen seconds I think, despite referring to it as HER VIRGINITY. In my admittedly limited experience, there is no way a rape survivor would not be more pissed off about something that she thought of that way.
* Digression: Parrish has a woman lover at the beginning of the book, but has nothing nice to say about her and dumps her without any intervening love scenes; plenty of dude romancin' is present however. Go fig.
I have read TWO books with sexual consent problems in a row. Come on, authors. Pleasure Town Is Invite Only.
The House of the Stag, Kage Baker. Really enjoyable, dark in places, but overall charming OH EXCEPT FOR THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME. I do generally love Baker's fantasy despite hating the Company books, but here? Ugh. The virginal priestess character yearns for love and gets kidnapped and raped, so of course she falls for her attacker -- we know he's a nice guy because of the entire first half of the book! He couldn't help himself! She so pretty! As if that weren't enough, she uses her feminine wiles to make over the dark citadel of stone so that it has flowery plastered rooms and a garden. I am not making this up.
Nylon Angel, Marianne des Pierres. Less blatantly, protagonist in a Shadowrun-with-numbers-filed-off world Parrish Plessis has a No Kissing Rule. The dodgy love interest man* kisses her; there is no indication that she wouldn't have had time to dodge this; aaaand she is upset for oh about fifteen seconds I think, despite referring to it as HER VIRGINITY. In my admittedly limited experience, there is no way a rape survivor would not be more pissed off about something that she thought of that way.
* Digression: Parrish has a woman lover at the beginning of the book, but has nothing nice to say about her and dumps her without any intervening love scenes; plenty of dude romancin' is present however. Go fig.
