#data .

one being that her story deals with a lot already and I don't want to feel as if I'm playing trauma bingo with her, as she's a character I've invented and therefore everything in her story is an active choice I've made;

themes of SA in other forms are explored with other characters in her world, characters who have different lives and experiences from the ABW which allows for exploration of how different people cope with their experiences. If I gave ABW all the trauma we're only really seeing one manifestation of coping with that trauma;

this is something I've felt personally as someone who experienced media as a whole- that if there's a woman in a 'dark' piece of media, she will / has been SA'd. I feel it feeds into the idea that SA is a 'female' crime, and due to societal associations with 'female', it creates shame around it... does this make sense. we're all woke here yes. of course girls and women experience SA and are more likely, in some scenarios, to be targeted for it ( SA against girls and women is explored with other characters in the abwverse ), but sometimes when I watch a horror movie, or an adult piece of media, and the female character is sexually targeted-- not to explore themes around assault, or for it to actually MEAN anything for any of the characters involved- while all the men are just killed or harmed... it feels bad to see something like that being treated for shock value. so even if it's "unrealistic" given her backstory, the ABW has not experienced it;

this one is harder for me to feel like I can explain adequately but it's important, it's do to with the idea that SA is the absolute worst thing that can happen to someone forever, and they will never ever be the same no matter what... I've seen discussions that framing SA this way lends into the idea that people who have experienced it are "different", in an isolating way, so having the ABW experience it would have people see that as the overriding, absolute most horrible thing to have happened to her, when she has many other experiences which feed negatively into her perception of herself and the world. Something like the idea of there being tiers to trauma, and SA being a hush-hush trauma. The ABW would not be any different as a person if she had experienced more common forms of SA, just as a person in real life is still a person after they go through it... treating SA as an 'other' results in the survivors being othered. besides, someone does not have to be physically assaulted / r*ped to have sexual trauma.