Rape and Other Uncomfortable Topics
In my reading I’ve hit something I mentioned in a previous post about the killer vagina. In many Maori legends women are raped. What’s confusing to my western sensibilities is that no one makes a fuss about it, including the women.
In the story of Suki, goddess of rebirth, Tuna-roa, father of eels, rapes her while she’s doing chores near the swamp where he lives. Apparently she doesn’t mind because she continues about her chores, and only decides to mention it to her husband the next day, when it happens again, in the same way, at the same place. I guess she was annoyed at that point?
So, I guess I need to wrap my mind around a cultural concept that rape isn’t that big of a deal. Suki’s husband was pretty pissed, but the act itself didn’t seem to be a big issue.
It’s easy to shirk topics like this one, especially in video games, but I think that’s a mistake. I feel like I have a responsibility to the Maori culture and to the medium to tackle these topics. To understand the beliefs, and to use them to give some emotional depth to the story.
Maybe embrcing these subjects will bring games from their pulp status into the light of literary merit.
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About Pete
Plucky polymath, software engineer by day, dreamer of dreams by night. Longing to behold and beget beauty and love, Kōtiro is an expression of my passion for the magic of the world in which we find ourselves.
This suggests a few questions:
1. To what extent are we sure of the correct translation of “rape”? Perhaps the word that is rendered as rape might be more correctly translated as “seduce”? Certainly, in the context of the plot of the story, that would make more sense. Perhaps, also, the source language (and perhaps even the culture) doesn’t distinguish these two cases as carefully as we do.
2. If we are sure of term “rape,” then I need to ask if other forms of violence are also met so casually in Maori culture. Would the woman have behaved similarly if, say, Suki broke her arm instead? Or killed her sister? Is it violence in general that is not noteworthy, or just rape?
Great points. I think the answer to #1 may be lost in antiquity. The only information I really have dates from European accounts of Māori culture. I have a few sources who are Māori and have received the oral traditions from their family, but this kind of information is guarded and sometimes unclear or unknown.
Based on my research, violence is a strange beast. On one hand, you have a strong warrior ethic, and tribal groups clashed all the time; vendettas would often last until one group or the other in a conflict were completely wiped out because of a strong sense of revenge duty. The vanquished were often eaten. On the other hand, there is a popular legend about a husband beating his wife, and the wife leaving as a result. It worked out alright for him after he grovelled a lot, but it’s my understanding that violence against women wasn’t tolerated by the woman’s male relatives–woe be the man whose father and brothers in law find out he hits his wife. I’ve read accounts of the penalty being death.