We read to know that we are not alone. So said CS Lewis. We read because shared experience is more bearable. We read to know that even if we don’t know people like ourselves in real life, they are out there in the world. We read to be in the heads of those people. We read, if we love books, because there is no one among us who hasn’t had a book or a character in a book pick up the fragmented pieces of our broken hearts and glue them back together just by being like us.
Rape myths are so dangerous because in a large part they are aimed at women and girls, and when girls buy into them, they buy themselves a lifetime of believing that if they are sexually assaulted it is their fault. It is their fault for dressing too scantily, for getting too drunk at a party, for being too pretty. Rape has nothing to do with being "pretty". The two ideas shouldn't even be in the same sentence. It is these kinds of myths that lead to the thought process that would assume that a scene of violent rape was about showing the heroine as desirable. That assaulted and punched in the face was a wish-fulfillment fantasy. Rape culture tells us women "want it." The truth tells us that they don't.
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