When I interview writers for my blog I often read reviews of their books: a little bit research, a little bit procrastination. Even the work I like to do I like to put off. I am, in fact, putting off work right now. But it’s nice to see, often, the kinds of questions other people are thinking about. Erica Lorraine Scheidt’s book Uses for Boys is painful to read in places. Its teenage narrator, Anna, has sex in order to find out who she is and what her value is in relation to other people. The adults in her world do not take care of her or look out for her. She is sexually assaulted on a school bus; she is raped at a party; she has sex that is loving and not loving with people she does and does not care about. She is, you know, human. When I looked up the book before I interviewed Erica, I was not surprised to see that a large number of reviews took issue not with the writing or the plot or the structure, but with the main character’s sexuality; but even I was startled by the vitriol of many of them, the insistence that a story about a girl who fucks cannot be a story with any value at all. That a girl who fucks cannot have any value at all. I read them all, one after the other, and I could feel them in my stomach, gathering weight.
“Anna is probably not a likable character. This is because of her choices and because they don’t make a lot of sense.” “Bad things happen to Anna and Anna does bad things in turn. Do you think Anna feels bad for any of it? No, she doesn’t.” “Anna sort of made these decisions herself spur of the moment not taking into consideration, the repercussions after, so you can see why I had no sympathy for her.”
Today is grey and cold and, unseasonably, snowing, and I am sadder than I ought to be about various things of no consequence. I have had some version of this piece sitting on my desktop for months. I hover the mouse over the “publish” button and then I move it away again. I wanted to tell you about something else instead, like how last night I told my friend over the phone you can never admit in public that you find Infinite Jest boring, because people just think you are too stupid to get it, and then this afternoon on the train I saw a man who looked exactly like David Foster Wallace, and it seemed like a sign, but of what I don’t know. I don’t want to write about rape anymore. But here we are.
“My biggest misunderstanding was in that the blame seemed to be placed more on the boys and less on Anna making poor decisions and her mother’s inability to lovingly care for her daughter.” “I kept expecting her to eventually make better choices or at least learn from her mistakes. But hello, who gets raped and doesn’t even realize I mean not fully.”
I was unaware of what had happened in Steubenville until relatively recently, when, in a tire store in Park City of all places, the story came on the news while I was waiting with a friend for his car tires to be changed. Without warning, the YouTube video was on the television screen. I went into the bathroom and threw up. When I came out of the bathroom the story was still on and so I went into the bathroom again and locked myself in the stall and cried—this is what I do, I guess, go into bathroom stalls and cry—and the image of that girl’s body, swinging between two boys, their faces blurred, is one that I can still see, even now, three months later. The knowledge of not just what was done, but of how many people watched. Somewhere else, that is happening again now. My friend got his car and we drove away. “Are you all right?” he said. “Sure,” I said. “Fine.” Park City is lovely in the winter.
“I also wasn’t a fan of how Anna’s promiscuity started. Anna had a choice from the moment she was on the bus to make very different decisions than she did.”
Slutty, unlikable, passive, drunk, poor decisions, doesn’t make a lot of sense, dirty, has too much sex, has sex, is probably thinking about sex, poor, brown, wrong body, wrong gender, at the wrong party, didn’t say the right kind of no, couldn’t say no, didn’t know how to try. What are we talking about, here? A book? A girl? A human body? One another? Me? It gets harder and harder to tell.
“Here’s the part that really made me wanna smack the girl. Anna goes out to a party, gets drunk, and this post-high school guy spends the night pinching and twisting at her nipples. She doesn’t want him to, but hey, it seems to be a normal occurrence for her, so the most she does is flick him off for doing it. So it’s no wonder the guy finds her drunk @ss later to rape her. He pins her down and covers her mouth, and when he’s done, casually asks her not to say anything to anyone. ‘Okay,’ is her reaction.”
There is more than one way to survive.
“I didn’t like her at ALL. I kinda want to punch her in the face. I don’t really want to go slut-shaming and all that. But seriously.”
If language wounds so well there is hope in the thought that it can also bring us together, mark us out as warriors, as kin. That we can build bridges out of our scars.
“I’m sorry, but this girl truly is a slut with major mental issues, with no one to blame but herself.”
I want to write the thing that will make it all make sense because I don’t want to write about this anymore. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Do you understand? Walking through the park a few nights ago, not that late. I have an old, bad back injury; every now and then, the muscles seize up, and I walk with a noticeable limp. Past a group of men. The algebra you do: how many of them there are factored by do they mean me harm times how fast can I run. “Why’s she walking like that?” one of them said to the others. “Sweetheart, you hurt? You want me to help you?” My heart stopped. I’m sure he meant well. In the wild, a wounded animal is often left to die. Last night watching an old episode of Buffy. Some cheesy biker demons rampage across the town. They corner all of Buffy’s most annoying friends. “Some of us have anatomical peculiarities,” sneers a demon to Buffy’s witchy bestie. “They tend to tear up little girls.” Well, I tell you what. Picturing that really fucked me up for a while.
“I honestly and truly believe that Anna had something wrong with her.”
I chose not to link directly to any of the reviews; I have no interest in summoning the short-lived Internet vengeance machine. They’re real. You can find them for yourself, if citations are important to you. I will tell you that every single one of them quoted here, except for one, was written by a woman.
“Had the author just given me that last scene where she proved that Anna was going to become something better than she was, I could’ve give this novel at least three stars. Now… I hate even giving it one. It disturbs me that much that this girl slutted around, got high, got drunk, and didn’t change anything about herself moving forward.”
I didn’t change anything about myself, moving forward. “Okay” was my reaction, too. This body, this heart, the same old fucking stories. I still drink too much sometimes and sometimes I don’t. I went to a lot of the wrong parties. I tattoo my own history on my skin but I’m starting to forget it anyway. Am I becoming something better than what I was? Should I be?
I don’t know. You tell me.
22 responses
I really love this. Thank you.
Is it just me, or do readers seem to forgive male characters in books all sorts of faults (that makes them interesting, right?), while judging the female ones? Rhetorical. 😉
The older I get (and I’m getting pretty old), the more I wonder – What is this “better” that we’re all supposed to become?
It’s sad–so sad–that a reader’s reaction to a girl/character who was victimized is to want to punch HER in the face…
Thanks for writing this. I didn’t know anything about the book (but will now have to check it out). You know what I really like about what you wrote? That you left it till the end to say that almost all of the comments came from women. Okay, let me clarify, I don’t like that a lot of this vitriol came from women, but that you included that towards the end, because that really had an impact. I read your article just assuming these comments must have come from men.
WTF?
And I agree w/Robin above. Why is everyone talking about Anna’s choices? Maybe they weren’t great (I don’t know, haven’t read it yet) but at worst they seem like human, teenage choices. Whereas the choices the boys make sound malicious. But no one talks about the boys’ bad choices; it’s Anna who is demonized. Such a pervasive and destructive pattern.
~EJ
The reviews and this article make me want to read the book. This is a great piece thank you.
It is like the critics are trying to erase or rewrite their own, or our shared, history by being so condescending of an invented one.
I drank as a teenager. I let stuff happen to me and I did stuff that in hindsight showed poor judgment. I drove when I was drunk. I had risky sexual liaisons. I didn’t stop things happening to me that I wanted to stop at the time.
We are imperfect. We don’t learn. it has taken me 2 decades to process some of that stuuf and I still can’t live with some of it.
Great article.
its taken me hours to get through reading this because my fight instinct kept kicking in and i’d have to walk away. i’m glad i finished. thank you.
This is an amazing piece of writing, and an amazing voice. I am so sorry for all the fear and sadness you have been given; I can say that after reading this, I mostly wanted to give you a hug…give ALL the girls a hug, all the little girls and the big ones, and fucking scream and yell and dismantle this stupid horrible world where rape culture is considered to be acceptable.
I’m so happy to read this. Right now I’m trying to figure out what I want to say about this article, and all I know is that I’m happy you wrote it. Why is there this pervasive attitude against women? This self-righteous desire to put a young girl into a box marked “slut”, say that it’s her own fault she’s there, and then leave her, and forget that she exists… it’s sickening. Your physical response to things like the Steubenville incident is warranted. That’s how people should feel. Sneering, jeering, blaming the girl… what does that accomplish? It makes women feel afraid, like there’s no one in our corner. Not even other women. But pieces like this need to be read and heard and spread. We need to educate everyone, not just women but everyone, about how to treat ourselves and other people so that things like Steubenville stop. fucking. happening. Wow. Reading this really brought up some serious emotions. Thank you.
The vitriol reads and feels like internalized misogyny. I was not surprised at all when you wrote that most of the reviews were written by women. I’m a nurse and lately one of the terms we’ve used for stuff like this is “lateral violence”. Thank you for writing this piece, Sarah. It’s important that we listen to Anna’s story–especially the parts that ring true for us.
As for “becoming something better”, what is actually being said between the lines is “you’ve never been good enough and you never will be, but a decent person will at least try to earn my approval”. So, my answer would be no, you (and I) should not be contorting ourselves, trying to appeal to those who would stand in judgement.
I read this on your website and loved it and just read it now and loved it. *standing ovation*
Thank you. I’ve spent 35 years in the movement to end violence against women, so this is all too familiar to me. The world needs your voice. Write on.
There are some hateful reviewers on Goodreads. I think I recognize the voice of a few of these from when my memoir came out. Angry, angry people. Thank you for writing this.
Hmmm – Your depiction of your reaction the rape case was poignant and cutting. But in terms of this fiction book – I mean, it does sound like the character was an unlikable character. That’s certainly a type of fiction – not every character is supposed to be a good person – can you really attribute to those reviewers the idea that they support rape culture? Seems pretty ridiculous. Maybe they just didn’t like reading about someone who they wanted to punch in the face be like “hey – get your fucking life together?” It seems to me that the reviewers are missing the point of the story – that life is complex, and that there are people who may not be good people or make good choices that still deserve sympathy or can serve as protagonists. Just wondering what your take is on how much they didn’t GET the story, and if that accounted for their responses.
Just stopping by to say that I am so SO glad to see this republished by The Rumpus. Uses for Boys is a very interesting book, definitely worth reading, and a great example of the range YA literature has as far as probing important questions re: what it means to be young, what it means to be a woman, and what it means to be a woman in a world that can’t or won’t respect women unconditionally.
Pretty crap reviews if they criticise a book for not having a hopeful ending, quite apart from their complicity in patriachical constructions of femininity. Pitiful! I’d like to punch them in the face, oh no, i meant…
I’m putting this book on hold at the library.
I am having one of those mornings where I want to think about silly things like who gets to criticize ‘Infinite Jest’ and I want to be able to be with people who can watch that Buffy episode and not have a gut reaction. But as it happens I am having one of those mornings where I feel so different and so unable to be held.
Thank you for being different with me.
My heart hurt at the end of this article. Thank you Sarah McCarry for bringing a great truth into the light, but one that it hard to bear … woman hurt other women. They don’t defend them, understand them, walk with them, or empower them. Even though, the biggest truth of all, they could be them.
Sarah, I think you are exactly as good as you’re supposed to be, and it’s pretty f’ing wonderful. Thank you for the article and for caring so much and bringing this ongoing problem to light. I kind of assumed most of the vitriol came from other women, I can’t imagine there’s a huge quantity of guys out there who willingly read books by women with titles like “Uses for Boys” – I’d also guess that’s part of the problem. I’ll be reading it, though, so thanks for that as well. xo
When I was in college one of my classmates interviewed women who had been raped on campus, and wrote up their stories for the school paper.
I heard students on campus disparaging or claiming to know some of the victims, stupid, naive, sluts, drunk, stupid, “you can’t get drunk, pass out and blame some guy for having sex with you”
The people saying these things were nearly all women, it’s, a very strange thing to argue with a woman (when you’re a man) that something that happened to a classmate was definitely rape due to her being passed out.
I can’t help but think that people attack certain women to hide their own fears and flaws, “I can’t be a victim”, by attacking a victim you can pretend you couldn’t be one. It’s sort of like how many of the women I knew who were always shaming other women secretly did those very same things themselves.
The vitriol in a sense praises the book, as it must be so quite true to life to bring up such hatred, as it probably reflects things people would rather ignore.
Beautiful! And all the time I read this I wondered why we accept this behavior in teenage boys as ‘sowing his wild oats’ not realizing the damage that it can do to the male psyche as much as the female psyche. I have not read the book but I will now. When I see a girl acting like this I wonder why she is hurting so much. Do people realize that the teenage brain is not yet developed enough to make good life decisions? I am thoroughly disgusted that these hateful comments are from women. Wow. Thanks for writing this.
I bought and read this book because of this essay. I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going to, and I disagree with most of these reviewers about Anna’s character. I felt like the whole point of the last few chapters was that she DID change – she finally learned what really mattered and what she really wanted. Anyway, thanks for some good writing. The last two paragraphs really hit it home and mirror my experience.
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