I like whump and I like women

finished commission for @the11tailed, of their two OCs in a Situation™

finished commission for @bamber344 of their OC, Addison!

Female antagonist who typically doesn’t top in relationships making an exception for the stone butch she’s decided needs to be ‘taught a lesson’ through an assault. Planning things out beforehand, picking out a strap and everything with the sole intention of just ruining this woman’s life when she gets her opportunity. Already having a plan for how to do it efficiently: thinking through what pretense (or offer of regular sex depending on their relationship) will get the butch where she wants, planning ahead if she’ll need to subdue/restrain her with something more than just her hands (physical restraints, drugs, etc.). Everything is coldly premeditated to get the butch underneath her and take what she wants.

There’s all kinds of motives of course; it could be retaliatory for some conflict between them (or people they’re affiliated with even), could be spite, or jealousy and possessiveness. But my favorite is when someone planning stone-cold torture like that is just convinced she’s in the right. She views herself as having been spurned/rejected cruelly, left unfairly, or ignored when she’s so obviously deserving, but either way, she’s the victim here. The butch girl she’s worked so hard to hurt? This is her own fault, she deserves it, she needs to be taught better and this is the only thing that will get that through her head.

It’s even worse if there’s pre-existing intimacy—not even romance or sexual familiarity but trust. The butch girl being targeted told her this private thing about herself, maybe told her why she has that preference. Maybe it was a matter of negotiation or boundary-setting before a consensual encounter even, or mayhem they were just close enough to get into personal-life stuff. Maybe she’d never even thought about wanting that kind of sex with this woman until she was (either literally or inferring from her pov) told she couldn’t.

Just… even the implicit refusal makes her so angry, but she lets it simmer until she’s in a place where she can force herself on the other woman. Maybe she sees herself as inherently more attractive and the butch as less desirable, so being “refused” anything is an affront. She should be grateful someone’s willing to fuck her like this in the first place, she thinks. For whatever reason she doesn’t believe the butch deserves the right to refuse her.

This is especially true if the desire for it is just about that—being told no—and the complete selfishness has layers too. Of course doing something she’s told not to is bad enough, it’s already rape, but what if she goes in knowing full well that the butch girl is stone from trauma, or because she has pelvic pain/vaginismus/something which makes penetration horribly painful for her on top of everything else? There’s no illusions the antagonist has that she’ll teach her to like it, force her to come, anything like that. It’s purely about power, and making her suffer.

All of this—the motives, the blame—being laid out by the antagonist, whether briefly or in far too much detail, for the butch as she’s panicking and trying to work out what to. Fight, despite being trapped? Talk her way out and try to convince her not to do it? Placate her, seek concessions that will make it hurt less? And while the woman is readying everything, removing clothes, putting on the harness, the butch is trying desperately to parse the cool explanation of why this has to happen to her.

Butch girl who is just completely shocked and betrayed by everything about this. Even if their relationship had soured for other reasons—they’ve broken up, stopped being friends for some reason, been forced into (literal or figurative) enemy camps over something, or just drifted—she never imagined this could happen. Not coming from her. Yes, maybe there is a nightmare scenario where someone assaults her, but it’s not something she would even think to be scared of from another queer woman, much less this person specifically.

Or maybe she’s not anticipating because (as far as she knows) the woman doing it is straight. Maybe she’s written off weird previous interactions and told herself it can’t be creepy/harassment because her friend is straight, of course she’s not doing that. Then no amount of knowing these things are about power and not solely attraction can make the delight and satisfaction in her eyes when she’s pinning the butch girl down make sense.

Because it turns out that the antagonist finds that she gets off on doing it. She’d never really seen the appeal in topping as a consensual sex act (maybe she’d never seen the appeal in sex with women even); she really thought she was planning and calculating, not fantasizing. It’s not like she was imagining how hot it would be, she was just angry. But hurting this person, this way? It’s like nothing else because she can tell just how much it gets to the butch girl. How much it hurts and upsets her.

And it turns out she likes it. Maybe too much to do it just once and let her go.

I want to start out by briefly reitorating some basics of how torture apologia typically works within political discussions, because this very much is relevant to how you can avoid accidentally sending the wrong message.

The first thing you need to understand is that the real-life debate surrounding torture isn’t framed in terms of whether or not torture is good or bad – everybody, including torturers themselves, will concede that it is bad. The more insidious argument is that torture is useful for achieving certain goals, and that it is therefore justified in extreme emergencies. Not only does this argument try to soften the usually rigid negative framing of torture in moral discussions, but it also seeks to poke holes in the international laws which ban the use of torture outright. It’s a moral, political and legal argument all wrapped up in one reactionary package. For this reason, having the theme of “torture is bad” doesn’t always mean a piece of writing isn’t making use of torture apologia. “Torture is useful” serves that goal just fine.

Torture is also often discussed in terms of civility – not the civility of the torturers, but the civility of the victims. It’s the argument that the people who are being tortured are bad people, and therefore don’t warrant the respect and dignity we usually offer to other human beings; they are so bad, essentially, that it’s fine for us civilized people to war crime them. Whenever I’ve encountered this argument, it has usually been presented in a way that was, shall we say, sussy as fuck – some even give up the pretense and straight up call their victims “savages” or “degenerates”. I hope I don’t need to explain why this line of thinking is insane, but in any case, it’s just my way of getting you to consider that a lot of the myths surrounding torture are rooted in broader sociopolitical issues, often racism and religious discrimination, and historically, most often within the context of colonialism.

With that in mind, let’s get into the myths, starting with the most obvious one.

"Torture for information works."

Every study I’ve read has concluded that torture is counterproductive when it comes to gathering intel from reluctant sources. Under severe pain or distress, victims are more focused on saying whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to make the torture stop, as opposed to providing accurate information. On a neurophysiological level, severe pain or distress actually interferes with the pathways of the brain relating to long- and short-term memory; this means that torture in and of itself is likely to destroy the very evidence it sets out to gather. Furthermore, victims are less likely to cooperate if subjected to physical abuse, including torture, and nothing in the infliction of pain itself works as some kind of truth serum. Lying and defiance are more likely under torture.

To a large minority of people, portraying torture as a reliable tool for gathering accurate information will make the implicit argument that torture, although usually bad, can hold utilitarian value in certain exceptional cases. I’ve written about this more in depth here.

"Under torture, everyone cooperates sooner or later."

French prosecutors used torture in the events leading up to the French revolution, as a way to gain forced confessions from suspects. Their failures and successes were jotted down, leading us with a pretty revealing insight – the highest success rate for gathering forced confessions was in Toulouse, an exceptionally high 14%. In Paris, only 3% of suspects cooperated long enough to sign their name – the rest did not. This is one of the primary reasons that the French criminal justice system eventually dropped using torture for intelligentsia. To quote Darius Rejali, who wrote The Book on torture: “Torture the clumsiest method available to organizations.”

So no, not everybody talks – in fact, rough estimate, 90% of torture victims never do. Defiance is by far the norm with torture.

"When the bad guy does it, it’s torture – when the good guy does it, it’s a tough, but morally justifiable decision."

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Heroes of stories, especially in the action genre, often engage in the use of torture for information, usually following the framework of the ticking bomb scenario, a thought experiment based on the false notion that torture works as an interrogation method. Here, torture is turned into a heroicact, one that speaks to the toughness of the person who uses it. Ask yourself if you want to frame torturers though this lens – because if you do, you are literally justifying the act torture, and, y’know, you do you, but I am gonna call you stupid and reactionary. Torture done by a “good” person is just as abhorrent as torture done by anybody else.

"Some methods of torture are less severe than others."

This myth stems from governments trying to downplay the use of certain methods of torture, and usually goes hand in hand with euphemistic redefinitions of the concept, such as the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation methods,” also known as “torture lite,” or the Israeli “coercive interrogation.” The methods that have been proposed in this supposed less severe category of torture includes stimulated drowning, also known as waterboarding, as well as caning, beatings, limbs being broken with clubs, sleep deprivation, stress positions (ex. forcing a person to crouch against a wall for extended periods of time,) mock executions, sexual assault, and more. If these things all just sound like torture to you, it’s because they are. There is zero evidence to suggest that any torture methods, including those that leave no physical mark on the body, have less severe outcomes than those that do not – on the contrary, non-physical torture methods, including mock executions, or witnessing the torture of a loved one, have been ranked by victims as causing equal amounts of psychological distress as physical torture.

"Torture only causes harm to the person who is being tortured."

This is incredibly unrealistic. Torture is an act that is destructive in all directions, causing trauma to victims, their family, witnesses, and even torturers themselves. It disintegrates the structure of the organizations that use it, it breeds resentment and hatred in the communities around it, and it radicalizes people into extremism. Pretending that consequences like this don’t exist isn’t torture apologia per se, but if your aim is to show the realistic outcomes of torture, these are some of the things you need to consider.

Torture is portrayed as “scientific”; torturers are “skilled” in the “art” of torture.

The most common methods of torture in use today are: hitting people, sleep deprivation, and starvation. These don’t require a whole lot of brain power to conjure up, in fact the infliction of intense suffering is very straightforward. Human beings are full of nerves. Stick a knife anywhere, and I’d be more impressed if it didn’t cause pain.

Not to mention, portraying torture as “scientific” or something that “requires technical skill” makes the implicit argument that torture works for its intended use, here under the condition that you should at least do it right – which brings us right back to that utilitarian fallacy.

"Torturers are expert interrogators, and possess an extraordinary ability to detect lies in their victims."

Studies have been done on the ability of police officers to detect lies for about four decades now. The average person will have a 57% accuracy rate, meaning they’re barely better at spotting deception than a coin toss. For police officers, the highest estimate is around 65% - but it might also be as low as 45%, meaning they might be less accurate than a coin toss – even though police officers tend to think of themselves as exceptional at spotting deception. The same trend is seen in torturers.

In fact, this myth in particular originated from torturers’ accounts of how they conceptualize themselves, which is not only false, but also cringe. When an interrogator starts making use of torture, their focus tends to shift away from gathering reliable information, and more towards “perfecting” the infliction of pain, which means that over time, those interrogative skills are substantially degraded – they are terrible interrogators. So torturers are no better at spotting lies than your average person; they might actually be worse. They can’t read minds, and they don’t possess some secret mystical knowledge about the psychology of their victims.

"You can train someone to resist torture."

Loads of intelligence agencies and revolutionary groups around the world have published material that supposedly serves as manuals for resisting torture, but the truth is, torture is so extreme, there really is no way to prepare or train someone to “resist” it; this is something that even the CIA has acknowledged. Everybody’s reaction to pain will be different. There is no way to predict how torture will affect anyone, much less give them instructions beforehand that will somehow magically negate those effects.

"Brainwashing through torture works."

Torturers can’t change the emotional framework of a person through the infliction of pain. They cannot change the strongly held beliefs and opinions held by their victims through the infliction of pain. They can’t erase someone’s entire personality or make them a ‘blank slate’ through the infliction of pain. They can’t predict how a victim responds to torture, much less direct that response to their own benefit. This is not how pain works.

This is not only an implicit argument for the usefulness of torture to change someone’s behavior or force religious conversions, but the myth that torturers have some form of control of their victims even after the torture has ended is also used in real life to paint survivors as dangerous or unstable, and thereby bar them from treatment and aid, and even to allow access into countries to escape the circumstances that facilitated their torture in the first place. That last point is why you often see the advocacy of refugee rights in organizations that work to prevent torture; these two branches of activism have a huge overlap.

Torture victims cannot be controlled by their torturers. Brainwashing isn’t real.

"Stockholm syndrome is real."

This is a derivative of the brainwashing myth, which means all the connotations previously mentioned remain, but as a cherry on top, Stockholm syndrome as a trope can also serve as an implicit argument for the utility of domestic abuse. So that’s cool.

If you deliberately inflict suffering on someone, that is guaranteed to make that person dislike you. In real life, torture survivors not only tend to be extremely resentful of their torturers, but they also tend to be resentful of anyone belonging to the same demographic as their torturers, whether that be ethnicity, nationality, or even gender or general appearance. Like I said, torture radicalizes people.

"Torture makes people obedient."

Any physical abuse or neglect, including bad cell conditions, access to medical aid, decent food and clean water, is likely to breed resentment in victims and makes them far more reluctant to cooperate with their aggressors. With torture, defiance is the norm, by far. You saw this on a larger scale in the war on terror, for example – turns out that carpet bombing a country to deter terrorism only radicalizes the civilian population, producing more terrorists. No form of violence exists that will make a person particularly eager to shut up and do what you want them to do. It will just make them hate you.

The notion that torture makes people obedient is also an implicit argument for the use of corporal punishment or as crime deterrence, something that along with capital punishment has repeatedly been proven false by sociological studies. People just do not function like this. If you want to create obedience in your story – violence is the last thing you should use.

"People “break” under torture."

Victims of torture sometimes make the conscious decision to do what their torturer wants them to do, and this often serves as a means to buy enough time to plan an escape, or mount up whatever act of defiance they can manage. Sometimes they simply do it to get the torture to stop – this, too, is a tough, conscious decision. If you want to consider this a form of “breaking”, by all means go ahead, but implying personal weakness or lack of willpower in torture victims rubs me the wrong way. I personally see it as a rational choice made by a person who is in an otherwise impossible situation.

"Torture survivors are “broken”."

Torture certainly can lead to extreme psychological distress, but again, the term “broken” here implicitly makes the argument that torture victims simply lacked the mental fortitude to withstand their trauma. In my opinion, there’s a certain degree of victim blaming involved with framing torture survivors in this way, and certainly, it’s a framing that inherently strips away their agency.

Another thing that rubs me the wrong way is the fact “brokenness” implies a degree of permanence and rigidity to human beings that simply isn’t there, as if we are solid objects that, once shattered, can never regain the function we once had. It’s a nitpick, but I view people as organic things, capable of healing and growth – not as glassware.

Conclusion

I’d wager that while reading this, a good portion of you recognized some of these myths from depictions of torture in fiction; that’s not particularly surprising to me. These myths aren’t just widespread, they’ve been engrained in the global public perception of torture by decades of political debate and government propaganda, and as a result, have seeped into popular culture.

Torture isn’t rare, and neither is torture apologia. According to Amnesty International, 31% of the global population believes that torture is justified “in some cases”; as of 2014, AI had also reported on torture or other ill treatment in 141 different countries, despite the fact that torture is internationally recognized as a war crime.