Abusing the Abused: A Survivor's View of Abusefic

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Title:	Abusing the Abused: A Survivor's View of Abusefic
Creator:	Deslea R. Judd
Date(s):	2001
Medium:	online
Fandom:	multi
Topic:	fiction writing, X-Files
External Links:	online here, Archived version
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Abusing the Abused: A Survivor's View of Abusefic is an essay by Deslea R. Judd.

"Abusefic is a cornerstone of X Files fanfiction, and little wonder. In a universe featuring damaged men and women who have been abused in almost every physical and emotional way, fiction dealing with abuse in the past or the present is a logical progression. But how do we write abuse in fiction in a way that is compelling, meaningful, and responsible? Deslea R. Judd is a fic writer and an abuse survivor, and she comments for Working Stiffs on the ethics and issues surrounding the genre of abusefic."

Excerpts

Like many survivors, for me, writing fiction (fan-based and otherwise) began as a dissociative mechanism for survival. It is something I have done for as long as I could write. And as a writer, I quite understand the compromises we sometimes make for the sake of a good story. I can quite happily reconcile, for instance, the canonically staid Assistant Director, with unashamedly plot-free smut in which Skinner takes his leading lady (or man) in every possible position while still retaining control of his Harley. But abusefic by definition can never be in the same class as PWP. If we tackle abuse in our writing - certainly sustained abuse - we tackle a complex, profound subject that must be taken seriously, and written seriously. Abuse is not something that can be written as a convenient excuse for comfort sex, detailed and dismissed in a few paragraphs. If we write it, we have to follow through and do it right. If you want to write an easy excuse for comfort sex, please show some respect to abuse survivors and find something else.

Abuse is often used in fiction as a justification for a character's bad behaviour. I am thinking specifically of the type of fiction which holds, essentially, that Krycek (for instance) is a cold-hearted killer as a by-product of past abuse, so he can be absolved, and seen as a misunderstood nice guy. (Incidentally, I am of the opinion that Krycek can be plausibly written as a misunderstood nice guy, but not like this). Now, there's a fine line there, because an abuse history does produce a hell of a lot of dysfunctional tendencies - it's a whole different way of viewing the world - but ultimately, unless the person is damaged beyond the capacity of making any free choices, there is still a basic moral capacity. That capacity may be damaged, but it is almost never irrevocably absent. Abuse survivors are victims of their pasts, but they can and usually do remain powerful people able to make good moral choices. There are situations, as in Lorelei's exceptionally written post-abuse fic Shaken, where that capacity is radically compromised; but it's the exception rather than the rule. To routinely, thoughtlessly write an abuse history as a blanket absolution for a character's crappy moral choices is a cop-out that really disempowers abuse survivors. It is also a lazy shortcut around dealing with what a character does and what that means in the context of who s/he is. Understanding and absolving are, or should be, different things.

Additional Reading

• "Shaken", by Lorelei, ^{Archived version} Accessed May 20, 2016