Mark Millar, Just Shut Up

I’ve been going on this tirade on Twitter and generally raging about it for a day or so, and now I’m just gonna suck it up and run it here.  In this article, I’m going to talk about Mark Millar’s recent statements, meaning there’s going to be some pretty frank discussion of rape, sexual assault and rape apology.  I just want you to be aware in case any of these things might trigger you.

So, with that out of the way?  Mark Millar just needs to shut the actual fuck up.

Comics Alliance has a really good summary of the actual situation, said in a fairly calm and professional manner, so I’m going to direct you to them for that angle on things.

From me, you’re about to get a profanity-laden rant about Mark Millar and how he needs to shut the actual fuck up.

It is sad that I had to breathe a sigh of relief when I read that Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who I have this crush on that I don’t even completely understand, was relieved that the gang rape scene from the comic Kick Ass 2 doesn’t appear in the film version.  It is sad that I have to be proud of a guy for not wanting to portray a scene showing his bad ass villain, among others, forcibly fucking a teenage girl in order to get to her superhero boyfriend.

Because it is fucking sad that Mark Millar has written a fucking comic portraying a teenage girl being gang raped by villains.

I’d like to introduce some of the real world here: Steubenville, Ohio.  A group of high school football players gang raped a girl, took video of the event, and bragged about it.  There is a question about whether or not any punishment would have occurred towards the rapists had national hactivist group Anonymous not stepped in and leaked information to the public, garnering public attention.  Even better, once an actual investigation was launched, coverage of the story from major news sources actually sympathized with the rapists, talking about what a shame it was that their dreams of playing college football were ruined by their silly little decision to rape a girl at a party and act like it was something to be proud of.

Millar said that “The ultimate [act] that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is, was to have somebody being raped, you know?”  The problem is the real world doesn’t agree with him.  The real world doesn’t automatically see the rapist as the villain, doesn’t see it as the ultimate horrifying taboo act.  They want to see how far they can push the idea that the victim is actually the issue here: how drunk was she, what was she wearing, well, that’s what you get for dating a superhero, honey.

For every Ariel Castro case (where, thank goodness, that sick fuck will spend the rest of his natural life in jail) where people turn against the rapist almost immediately, you’ve got a situation like USC, where a victim was told she wasn’t really raped because her rapist “didn’t orgasm” and where women are bullied into not actually reporting their rapes.  More and more details are rolling in from campuses around the US, revealing that their policies are in place to protect the rapists, Millar’s supposed villains, rather than the victims of “the ultimate act.”

Mark Millar, you dumb fuck.  If you don’t understand rape, and you pretty clearly do not understand the intricacies involved in it, in our victim-blaming culture, in the emotional and psychological damage it does to a victim that can’t be solved by her super boyfriend beating the shit out of the guy who touched His Woman, then you shouldn’t write it.

But Mark Millar, you won’t.  You will keep putting gratuitous rape in everything you write.

Because you are a fucking hack and you can’t do anything else at this point.  I’m full on saying it: you are a one note hack writer who honestly can’t think of anything to drive his fucking plot aside from taking a female character and basically making her entire story arc “victim of Bad Guy’s Penis, will be avenged.”  And it is sick that Hollywood will keep shelling out money for your bullshit when they’ve got more than enough other writers who will use the same fucking trope (I’m not for one moment going to pretend this is limited to Millar, or to comics or to movies).  It is sad that your limitations as a writer (which, our limitations as writers are what we’re supposed to work to overcome, not lean against and say “Hey, the best I can do is RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE”) and whatever pathological issues you have with women are paying you more money than I will ever see in my goddamn life.

Mark Millar?

Shut.  The Fuck.  Up.

Ashly is an IHO Geek staff writer who would really just like Mark Millar to consider his words a bit more carefully and show some empathy for victims of sexual assault.  You can find her on Twitter @newageamazon