All Comments on 'Meta'

So is it like...satire?

I like the mindfuck. Woman at least has a life after her treatment.

> So is it like...satire?

Yes.

But also real ideas. Men who are OK with pretend rape or even real rape may also want women's approval if they can possibly get it. Or occasionally not. "The wounded will wound." People generally care more what things mean to them than what actually happens. But sometimes we can't ignore reality.

Etc.

I say, read it the way it works best for you.

It's difficult to check the "Like It" box because I really didn't; I do so only as a gesture of giving the devil his due by acknowledging the quality of your writing skill.

Otherwise, your own characterization (by proxy of Malcolm) that this tale was designed to be a "mindfuck" for both the victim and the rapists is accurate. Given that to be the case it would take a psychiatrist (not a psychologist) eons to unravel all the psychotic sadistic elements you've interwoven into the plot--and with bows to the Stockholm Syndrome, all the psychological damage you essentially foisted upon the victim Elaine for life since she will never be able to divest herself of all the destruction done to her sense of self.

Just one further observation: In crafting this tale you essentially validated the mindset of the rapists and made one more contribution to instilling that mindset into the brains of all those men who take what should be "extreme FANTASIES" and make them sound normal--tossing in the twisted justification that at least Elaine now knows what an orgasm feels like so long as its psychologically tied to her being raped.

As a writer I guess you can take a modicum of comfort from having created a scenario that aroused such a visceral response (from at least this one reader) even if it was overwhelmingly negative.

I usually say thanks for sharing your creative imagination to writers who've taken great care to craft a good solid story with believable characters and a plot that holds up throughout.

I could say that. But I won't.

Keep writing, though. You have talent.

MLJ

Thank you for the feedback! You've given me a sense of things I wanted to say that I didn't get across. I didn't want to be all preachy and hammer my own intepretations, and yet....

I consider Malcolm entirely unreliable. If he says "here's something that works like this" and then you observe it working like this, then maybe he knows what he's talking about. The reasons for him to say it are open to suspicion. He doesn't speak for me.

I think of Elaine as extremely tough-minded. She wasn't stuck on social roles. Bruno Bettelheim described his experience in a Nazi slave labor camp. People who were too intent on their previous social roles could not adapt and died. They just stopped trying and others ate their food. He survived long enough to be rescued, by accepting his new reality and looking for ways to achieve goals -- even though they were goals he would have considered beneath him in his old life. She looked for ways to manipulate the people around her into giving her things she wanted, even if it was only more food and some comfort and a little emotional support. Maybe I should have described her life before, a victim of mass culture, with a boring job and occasional boring boyfriends and nothing much to live for. To the point that she would almost prefer a life of poverty in a Brazilian slum with unreliable Malcolm, to going back to it.

I want to describe some things about rape, without claiming any expertise -- I could be wrong. I claim that when a woman thinks she's going to have sex soon, her body adjusts. This is independent of whether she thinks she wants to. Given time to adjust, most women can have sex without being damaged. Surprise sex *will* often cause damage. Some of the trauma of rape in our culture often comes from the thoughts and feelings about responding, when there isn't much physical damage to override that. Avoiding thoughts about how it ought to be instead, reduces the trauma considerably.

US culture does not have it straight about sexual reluctance. Often married women don't really want to when their husbands want to, but learn to get in the mood. Or sometimes they just say no, and the husbands are tempted to find someone else. When they just really don't want that husband, it naturally tends toward eventual divorce. The details can get complicated, and women can feel kind of coerced, almost raped, when the men involved have no idea. Men mostly don't have to face that kind of thing except of course some gay men. But homosexual males are so diverse it's hardly worth generalizing about them.

I tried to show some diversity among the rapists. Some of them like John were happy to believe it was actresses who were pretending to be raped. It was at least ambiguous. Some like Charlie were angry and wanted an opportunity to make someone feel degraded. Many wanted sex, and also preferred to have a woman who liked them and wanted what they had to offer.

Elaine sometimes surprised herself. Like, wanting John to care for her in ways he didn't, and then intending to manipulate him but getting mad at him instead. Sometimes I surprise myself.

I thought about writing a sequel in which Elaine gets involved with an organized group of women victims who intend to hunt down Malcolm etc and get revenge. I haven't started because it seemed like it would be too socially unacceptable. This story was a little bit edgy, and the sequel might go over the line.

1* not more ...