The Hole is Not a Metaphor

Plus with fur

That's why most of this books just go straight up to making every single man a rapist/sexual abuser except for their token "good male".

And don't get me wrong, yeah sexual assault was worse back then than it is now. But y'all also think is the only way in which woman were fucked over?

This books never center about other things like:

- Arranged marriages

- The pressure to have multiple children and how pregnancies could deteriorate the health of women

- Lack of education

- No hope for pursuing other thing but motherhood

Besides, in many such cases, the main protag of this books are princesses. Not lower class women.

Take Hippodamia for example, she was a princess. And while she experienced sexual abuse, thankfully, she never experienced rape itself. This because her status gave her a level of protection.

Princesses had guards (sometimes they were castrated, depends on what ancient civilization you're talking about), maids, protection of all kinds. It would be almost impossible for a lower class man such as a soldier to even try to sexually assault a princess without consecuences.

This doesn't mean a princess couldn't go through rape. But in that case it would be coming, usually, from someone close to her. Someone close to her in power. A family member or her husband, for example.

So they don't even explore the subject correctly, nor explore other types of pressure princesses could have on them for the simple fact of being women.

misogyny is not exclusively about sexual exploitation. there are plenty of men who do not sexually exploit women who are still misogynistic, or who still practice misogynistic behavior. examples include, but are in no way limited to:

- men who believe that women are inherently physically and/or mentally weaker than men

- men who believe that the primary goal of a woman always is or always should be to bear children

- men who believe that all women are innate caregivers or are more empathetic, kinder, more maternal, etc. than men

- men who constantly interrupt or talk over women even if they do not realize they are doing it, and do not do the same to other men

- men who will not do housework or childcare because it is a woman’s job

furthermore, rape culture and misogyny as a whole are systemic issues. beyond rape culture, systemic misogyny extends to the things op listed, among other things such as wedding culture, wage gaps, sex segregation in sports, poor health care, etc.

the problem with only representing misogyny through rape is not the representation of rape. it is, like op said, reductive; it erases the other, very real ways in which women have been and continue to be oppressed. it insinuates that rape is the only way that misogyny takes form, which in turn suggests that any man who is not a rapist or sexual abuser, such the token “good man” referenced by op, is automatically not misogynistic at all and a perfect love interest. always making this singular non-rapist man the love interest begins to allude to the idea that “good” men, men who do not take advantage of women, are owed romance and sex.

even if this is not the original intent of the author, and it often isn’t, it is both a noticeable pattern in contemporary lit and a sign of not being a very good writer. the overuse of rape as a way to show that women were oppressed in ancient greece is, quite frankly, lazy as hell.