Realism Still Doesn't Justify Including Sexual Assault

The author is spot-on here, "realism" is a very flimsy justification for including sexual assault. One also does not need to even include sexual assault to evoke the same "gritty" or revolting feeling as rape, just look at the larval state of xenimorphs in the Alien franchise - they enter through your mouth and "birth" themselves violently through your chest.

This feels like a strawman. Realism is a flimsy argument.<p>If it doesn&#x27;t make you feel something then it isn&#x27;t art. Depicting sexual assault is clearly an artistic choice. Would it be better if your multi-billion dollar multi-national media company never depicted sexual assault? Did that scene make you cheer for the rapist? Perhaps the artist nailed their intent: inspiring disgust in the audience. Maybe the audience now remembers that sexual assault happens in the real world and just because they don&#x27;t see it everyday that they should advocate for protection of victims and punishment of perpetrators.<p>Or maybe it was all pro-rape. Whatever.

graphic, highly detailed depictions of anything at all are not needed, they absolutely pale compared to what you can evoke by cueing the imagination.

This argument is a slippery slope for banning all sorts of unpleasantness (for all sorts of peoples&#x27;s definition of unpleasant).

Wasn&#x27;t there a whole storyline about rebels starving in that episode of Andor?

I guess for people who spend most of their time in fantasy lands, it seems jarring for a storyteller to tell a story about anything that could actually potentially happen in reality. Or even just actually shown the results of violence. Or even depict anything that&#x27;s personally distasteful to them. If one wants a story in which nothing particularly bad happens to female characters or any characters at all, they should seek out children&#x27;s literature. Maybe this is just my weird worldview given I grew up watching Law and Order SVU. But I would find stories quite boring if authors weren&#x27;t allowed to depict anything that&#x27;s at all distasteful to some particular subset of humans. I just find the point of view from this article immature and lacking in understanding of the full scope of possible storytelling.