TW: sexual assault & rape. This is a sad, yet important post about this scene in the Maleficent movie and how it is a metaphor for rape:
This reply from gyzym is also very important to include though:
No, no, no, no, no, please imagine some people singing the word no in a four part harmony because: noooooooooooooo.
I understand that this is well intentioned, and I’m not going to comment on the movie itself since I’ve only seen bits and pieces, but I just had to pop up and register the hardest of passes to the sentiment, “When a man violates a woman, he cuts off her wings.” LET’S NOT SAY THAT EVER.
When a man violates a woman (or a woman violates a woman, or a man violates a man, or a woman violates a man), it is harmful and indescribably painful, it may even be life-altering, but let’s please, please, please try to avoid saying shit that implies that being sexually assaulted or raped is something that permanently disfigures you, that removes something from you that you can never get back, that prevents you – forever – from flying.
You know what that plays into? The idea of the “ruined” woman; the idea that once assaulted or raped you are defined by it for the rest of your life; the idea that a rape or assault is not something you can heal from. Don’t push those concepts – they get into people’s heads and become very difficult to eradicate. They make it an even harder struggle for survivors to believe in the open wide future they’re going to get to eventually (I promise), where what happened to them, though it will always be with them, does not keep them grounded.
On a related note, I said I wasn’t going to comment on the movie itself and I meant it, and this isn’t intended as hate against Angelina Jolie because I adore her and she has done a ton of amazing work in so many arenas including this one, plus I’m fairly certain from the structure that that quote was one about her specific character that was simply chopped up to look like it was a statement about all women, but!
Because it is important and needs to be said: anyone who tells you that rape makes women “lose all sense of her maternity, her womanhood and her softness,” is someone who does not know what the hell they are talking about.
Can a rape strip a woman of some or all those things, temporarily or permanently? Yes, of course; so could the loss of a partner, or the loss of a child, or any number of other things. Rape is a significant trauma and significant trauma has significant consequences! But those consequences differ from person to person and circumstance to circumstance, and again what we’ve encountered here is the idea of the “ruined” woman, who has been raped and thus robbed forever of [her womanhood/her personhood/her sexuality/her desire for men/her maternal instinct/her tenderness/her what the fuck ever, oh my god]. Stop saying this shit! People believe it and it harms them, and the process of getting through a rape or assault is arduous enough without fighting past the totally false idea that no matter what you do you are ruined and will never truly heal. Thanks.
