Where did Thed come from?

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

In what way is the world a better place because of the Unholy Trio?  Thed tried to use disguise and subterfuge to obtain sex from Orlanth, and that is sexual assault.  That is a sexual attack on Ernalda's main husband.  Not all of us buy into the illuminated nonsense that up is down, purple is orange, evil is good, and Thed is a victim.  You know a tree by its fruit, and there are exactly 2 broos who deserve to live, and I'm not entirely sure about 1 of them.

What do Thed's actions you have taken from a specific source that is not generally available have to do with broo? Why does any guilt that may or may not exist pass on to her distant descendants? What would happen if you set aside the Book of Drastic Resolutions: Chaos and looked at the rest of the published Thed material?

[Ynneadwraith]

19 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

But I cannot take the final step. I am in love with the numinous; I want to believe that if we try to treat the gods as nothing more than the echoes of human belief, that we shall discover to our dismay that the powers and principalities of the world are not so easily dismissed.

Oh agreed. Like John Biles I don't particularly view them as passive recipients of this process. They may be conglomerations of people's stories about them, but there's a ghost in the machine. They're conscious, thinking things with agency of their own.

I view it a bit like the proverbial boiling frog (even if I do find the analogy grotesque). Raise the temperature too quickly and the frog realises and jumps out. Raise the temperature gradually and it doesn't realise what's happening until it's too late. Before you know it, Shargash the Slash-and-Burn-Agriculture God is Shargash the War Demon. Most people don't realise they're changing the water temperature at all.

I suggest the God Learners found out what happens when the frog realises it's being boiled...

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

In what way is the world a better place because of the Unholy Trio?

One could make a fairly convincing mythic argument that rape wouldn't be a sin in Glorantha without Thed's story. Thed's story articulates it as one of the Cardinal Sins that led to the creation of chaos (along with the child molestation that drove Ragnaglar mad).

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

Thed tried to use disguise and subterfuge to obtain sex from Orlanth, and that is sexual assault.

Thed's trauma doesn't excuse her later actions, but nor do her later actions absolve the crimes Ragnaglar perpetrated against her.

I suspect Yelm would apply Justice by totting up the crimes perpetrated by Thed and the crimes perpetrated to Thed, see which scale is heavier and then sentence her.

I suspect Orlanth attempted to do the same, but was sidetracked by familial obligations to Ragnaglar.

Me? Sod Justice. That's just the thinnest of civilised veneers plastered atop barbarous Vengeance. I think the best possibly 'judge' would have been Chalana Arroy. I don't care about punishment, I care about the healing of wounds. But I appreciate other people have different views, and it all gets very complicated when you butt up against things that cannot be healed.

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

up is down, purple is orange, evil is good, and Thed is a victim

One of these things is not like the others.

Thed is a victim. Thed also perpetrated evil things. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Edited March 21 by Ynneadwraith

[David Scott]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Except this is Ragnaglar. Thed is the female goat-legged goat-headed humanoid with the sliced-open womb:

oops! Thanks Joerg, it's been a while since I played - so I got my set out and photographed the correct figure (replaced above)

[Ynneadwraith]

8 hours ago, John Biles said:

Not every possibility is equally true and some are rare, high energy states and when the state crashes, that energy may well go into you.

I'd suggest that 'truth' is not quite the right word to use here. 'Truth' implies that there is one state that is fundamentally right and correct, simply obscured by untruths above it.

The way I see it, 'fundamental truth' in Glorantha is editable. We don't really have a word for 'a reality that may not have been the same reality a generation ago, but is every bit as real now as that different reality used to be then', because real world physics don't function like Gloranthan metaphysics do.

Perhaps it's better to talk about momentum more than truth. Some conceptualisations of a god have more momentum than others, and thus are harder to steer onto a different course. The Little Sun is Yelmalio seems to have been one that was relatively easier to shift. All it took was one proselytising fanatic to change the direction of the various Little Sun gods into a composite Yelmalio (or to reveal the 'truth' that they were Yelmalio all along, same difference). 'Orlanth in King of the Middle Air' seems to have a lot more momentum, and is taking the combined might of the entire Lunar Empire and a god outside of Time to shift.

One part where the analogy breaks down is that these 'momentums' have personal agency about whether they want to be shifted somewhere else or not!

[radmonger]

18 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I think the best possibly 'judge' would have been Chalana Arroy.

I suspect Chalana would have said 'this is not a wound, I can not heal it'. 

But  she didn't go to the White Lady, but to a different healing Goddess, Malia. The one who lives in the woods, and everyone publicly scorns but many secretly visit. The one who said something like  'I cannot heal your wound, but I can make it not exist'.  Or 'become non-existence'; texts vary.

Spoiler

Yes, the problem with the standard story of Thed is that it is not controversial enough.

 

 

 

 

[Eff]

"And Thed looked at the faces all around her, those closed off in anger and in fear and in indifference and in shock and those which remained open, but whose voice did not speak up for her. And she spoke: 

'You have cursed yourself, Orlanth. You have damned yourself, Ernalda. Because you have failed to offer redress, but simply offer up your brutish brother as if he were the whole of the matter, this wickedness shall redound upon you and your kin again and again, until that day that you can make that redress. But you could indeed protect the perpetrators, and refuse to accept that the curse is a curse of your own hands and words and deeds.'

'Now I offer my own curse, so that you shall not do this. You have offered me Ragnaglar, to do as I please with him, and so I shall take him. He is mine, and all who follow in his footsteps are mine, and as they take the worst between man and beast, so too shall they become man and beast, between either, and they shall become so repugnant to you that you shall cast them out and think them prey to take at your leisure, monsters to slaughter for glory, and you shall use them as tools, though you deny you do so, and so too will you be drawn down Ragnaglar's path in your own way. That is the curse of Thed that falls upon you. I am a weak and frail being, and perhaps my curse shall only fall upon the weakest-' and here she looked at Vadrus- 'and perhaps you might even resist it, and live lives without ever stepping down that path. So much the better. But my curse has been added to the web, and you shan't break it without breaking the other. I have spoken.' 

And she departed the hall, and Ernalda buried her face in her hands, and Chalana Arroy departed after her, and Orlanth fell down into a still breeze that only lightly swirled in the hall."

 

[radmonger]

16 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

The way I see it, 'fundamental truth' in Glorantha is editable. We don't really have a word for 'a reality that may not have been the same reality a generation ago, but is every bit as real now as that different reality used to be then', because real world physics don't function like Gloranthan metaphysics do.

The real world is actually comparably editable. For example, the 'earth is round' is a well-accepted scientific truth, but smash a sufficiently large moon into it and it would no longer be so.

The are larger abstractions, like gravity, that are less mutable. But they are not the things that form the foundation of human existence.

 

[Ynneadwraith]

35 minutes ago, radmonger said:

'I cannot heal your wound, but I can make it not exist'.  Or 'become non-existence'; texts vary.

And thus was born Kajabor...

36 minutes ago, Eff said:

'Now I offer my own curse, so that you shall not do this. You have offered me Ragnaglar, to do as I please with him, and so I shall take him. He is mine, and all who follow in his footsteps are mine, and as they take the worst between man and beast, so too shall they become man and beast, between either, and they shall become so repugnant to you that you shall cast them out and think them prey to take at your leisure, monsters to slaughter for glory...

 

Interesting. So what is Thed's curse exactly?

Did Thed spread rape into the world past Ragnaglar's one act? Was it already there, but Thed put the revulsion of it into the Man rune? Did she curse rapists to become the first Broo? Were the Broo originally Orlanthi aligned with Ragnaglar, and so Orlanth would mourn their loss?

Man Thed is a good character.

[David Scott]

2 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

So what is Thed's curse exactly?

It's reverse Chaos per RQB 94 / RBM 24. The curse is that not all chaos features are positive.

[Ynneadwraith]

8 minutes ago, David Scott said:

It's reverse Chaos per RQB 94 / RBM 24. The curse is that not all chaos features are positive.

Interesting. So what does that mean in a practical sense?

Before that, were folks with chaotic features just a regular part of Orlanthi life? Were chaotic acts (like rape) not reviled? Did chaotic acts not produce chaotic features? Was it generally fine to do chaotic things because the outcomes weren't punished (i.e. chaotic features all had positive outcomes)?

If so, no wonder people mourned the loss of Yelm's order. Pre Thed's chastening, Orlanthi sound horrendous!

[jajagappa]

19 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Before that, were folks with chaotic features just a regular part of Orlanthi life? Were chaotic acts (like rape) not reviled? Did chaotic acts not produce chaotic features? Was it generally fine to do chaotic things because the outcomes weren't punished (i.e. chaotic features all had positive outcomes)?

Chaos did not exist before then in the world.

[Ynneadwraith]

10 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Chaos did not exist before then in the world.

True, Chaos didn't. But did acts that are now considered chaotic still exist? I'd say clearly, seeing as Ragnaglar committed one. The timeline* would go something like:

The Mad God invents rape->regular people start doing it too->Thed's trial->Thed's curse->people realise rape is bad->Ragnaglar's folk (Orlanth's kinsmen) turn into Broo

And the rest is history.

Spoiler

*hark me talking about timelines after wittering on about how Time didn't exist yet...

 

[Joerg]

35 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Chaos did not exist before then in the world.

It was called "Predark" in Orlanthi myths, and was a known side effect of Creation through the Chaosium. Krarsht is a case of such Elder Chaos, as is Jotimam (the foe overcome by Yelm's imperial splendour), and the foe hurled out of the world by Vaneekara would be such a specimen too.

Did Chaotic Features exist prior to the birthing of Wakboth? That is a different question. Quite possibly some of the helpful features would have been seen as blessings from the well of Creation.

[Leingod]

4 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Thed is a victim. Thed also perpetrated evil things. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Plus it reflects a truth about the world, as all the best myths do. The Cycle of Abuse, where the victim of abuse becomes the perpetrator of it, is a real and studied phenomenon, and both Ragnaglar and Thed are perhaps the Orlanthi noticing this cycle and trying to explain it, but also to "Other" it, to make it something foreign and inimical, with an external cause that doesn't force them to reflect on themselves as much.

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

In what way is the world a better place because of the Unholy Trio?  Thed tried to use disguise and subterfuge to obtain sex from Orlanth, and that is sexual assault.  That is a sexual attack on Ernalda's main husband.  Not all of us buy into the illuminated nonsense that up is down, purple is orange, evil is good, and Thed is a victim.  You know a tree by its fruit, and there are exactly 2 broos who deserve to live, and I'm not entirely sure about 1 of them.

I see being oblique has gotten the both of us nowhere; apologies. You say I am repeating something I have said before. I shall say it again. Shall I say it again?

Your foundational text for how we are to handle the problem of Thed in Glorantha is 1995's The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Chaos. This zine was comprised of material that did not make it into Avalon Hill's Lords of Terror, as edited and published by Stephen Martin, who was in charge of developing and designing LoT. The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Chaos has not been reprinted, is not available digitally, and the myth you have quoted from it does not appear in 2009's Book of Heortling Mythology or either the first or second edition of King of Sartar, which are still available for purchase and are among the most extensive sources we possess for the corpus of Heortling mythology. In fact, it appears nowhere but The Book of Drastic Resolutions itself, and though it is material that was intended for LoT, that book (which friends tell me is one of the likely origin points for a more monstrous depiction of Thed) is in turn no longer considered canon, either. Now, I happily thumb my nose at the Official RuneQuest Canon, myself, but your origin point for the myth of Thed-Rapes-Orlanth is a zine that is out of print, for a book that is out of print, neither of which can be of any use at all to those who do not have them as they construct their own Gloranthas. (One of the benefits of falling in love with a constructed mythology is that it is easier to source the origin of certain motifs and interpretations.)

To incorporate them is a deliberate choice: one of nostalgia, or because you feel that it adds to your Glorantha, or because of the rush of gnosis. But it is still a deliberate choice! Everything that we are doing here is, after all. Because this place called Glorantha always provides room for choice to everyone. We all share several major incidents that create the basis of the world. And you can fill in the gaps with your own pieces of stories. It’s that kind of game. (Again, here, I italicize as literary invocation; I am not yelling at you quite yet.)

To prioritize this myth, Thed-Rapes-Orlanth, over what is written elsewhere is a deliberate choice. I am not interested in the reasons for the choice, and shall not openly speculate. But I am interested in the consequences.

The myth of Thed is very troubling material, one of the thorny knots sitting at the heart of Glorantha. Our hero-god, our man-god, the thunderer he, our ancestor he, Orlanth he, finds himself trapped between his laws as king and the needs of his people, and his attempt at a solution fails, and the victim becomes a victimizer; a seed of evil grows from that failure, in more ways than one. This myth tells us about how the Heortlings see the world, and allow us to extrapolate into cultural taboos, cultural interpretations, and to wrestle with what is right and what is wrong, and whether the gods themselves can be wrong in their judgment. You know: mythology.

Thed-Rapes-Orlanth flattens this into a binary. As you yourself say: Thed is not a victim. She is an evil bitch, a scheming whore, and for attempting to rape someone, her punishment was to be raped in turn. Then she dared to demand recompense for her punishment, and so brought that evil into the world! (Presumably, before this, it was something that could only be done by evil women or heroic bulls.) And that, I think, is perversely comforting; a balm to an inflamed conscience. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth. Bad things happen to bad people! Orlanth did not fail because he was inadequate; he was the victim of a crisis actor, a professional narcissist, a lying slut.

I suspect that whoever authored this myth while writing LoT did not think through the implications. Nevertheless, I wish it had never been written, or had at least been left on the cutting floor as part of the editing process. When I said it was unworthy of us, I meant that it is unworthy of us. As members of the tribe, as storytellers taking our turns before the fire.

So I reject it. As a fragment from something that I cannot read and which is not considered part of either Chaosium’s canon or my own, I reject it. As a fact that we must patiently work our way around and through while discussing one of the more complex parts of Heortling myth, I reject it. As the turgid cudgel of Storm Bull, I reject it.

Let us find new ways to talk about Ernalda’s daughter, or Eiritha’s daughter, or Genert’s child; Ragnaglar’s victim, Ragnaglar’s abuser; spirit or goddess or ancestor; -2 +3 *; student of Rashorana, murderer of Rashorana, mother of the Devil; submissive to rape, or so we are told, everywhere but where she is allowed to speak to us directly.

[scott-martin]

I will climb the steps down to the basement on Saturday and unearth my copy of Drastic Chaos, which is so rare I had to source it "o'er frae France" as they say and largely unspeakable in the official fandom at this point. I don't even really remember what exactly is going on in there. In the meantime, three or four things I know about her that undoubtedly repeat what everybody knows.

First and foremost, a fresh encounter with the full lyrics of the English song cycle commonly known as "Tom Bedlam / Mad Maudlin" reveals to me at least that Thed's real function is as a witch cult, maybe the primary witch cult on both sides of the Praxian frontier. Let's look at some of those verses. Across the spectrum of madness and badness and sadness the silver thread that unifies them is a fierce grievance nursed to the point where it defies all libidinal standards, logic and the other gods as well. What separates the protagonist from the rest of us is that she broods on her grudge and disappointment down in "satan's kitchen" to the exclusion of just about everything else. This is a witch anthem. IMG I suspect Thed is like that: the Bad Woman who is not satisfied with the victim or villain narrative that the Ernalda establishment works so hard to perpetuate. As such, the Lords of Terror extended cult writeup gives us a sense of how a Bad One tradition plays out from something like the inside . . . but filtered through a fairly obvious lens of conventional theyalan scholarship ("among the Orlanthi . . . "). 

One of the worst crimes a witch can commit is probably a lack of solidarity with other women. Thed's grudge is such that she will take sour delight in cooperating with broos to perpetuate her primary trauma / myth. This is not necessarily sexual. As long as you are ruining some aspect of someone else's life, your actions are holy and delightful in her jealous gaze. By the way, the "male only" restriction on her cult has been removed from the RQG drafts last time I checked. (So is a lot of the easy talk about her "willing" complicity and "own choice." She's more ambivalent now.) You do need to become a broo though and I think this is part of the enigma of where female broos come from. Like the girl interrupted says, they are very rare and they are mostly men. But not completely.

Her nature as a bright and leaping nymph is only of theoretical interest to me because like I said, she's had some crimes done to her but she's also made some choices around that. No matter how we judge her choices, I think we can all agree her own case could have been handled a lot better. She was failed. Some rehabilitations fail. They can't get over it or haven't been able to get over it yet. Some people perpetuate abuse. We mourn the nymph and maybe we can contact the nymph under the right circumstances but when you meet her as the skinless goat mother she only brings trouble. The world is fallen. The relationship with Kyger Litor in particular is very interesting . . . how would troll mother in particular be interacting with this person? They have womb trouble in common. And among the goddesses her suffering and defiance remind me of a red woman we all know about. And then there's Malia. No Kate Bush references here. Nina Simone.

Anyway, Saturday. Appropriate.

Edited March 21 by scott-martin
PEACHES

[Malin]

I would also point out that Ranaglar is probably the first victim of the cycle of abuse after having been tossed into the sex-pit by his uncles...

[Darius West]

On 3/22/2024 at 4:31 AM, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

To prioritize this myth, Thed-Rapes-Orlanth, over what is written elsewhere is a deliberate choice. I am not interested in the reasons for the choice, and shall not openly speculate. But I am interested in the consequences.

No.  Thed TRIES to rape Orlanth.

On 3/22/2024 at 4:31 AM, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

 Our hero-god, our man-god, the thunderer he, our ancestor he, Orlanth he, finds himself trapped between his laws as king and the needs of his people, and his attempt at a solution fails, and the victim becomes a victimizer; a seed of evil grows from that failure, in more ways than one.

So Orlanth should have just exposed Thed's deception and had her executed for trying to rape him?  His real crime then was being merciful and instead trying to teach her why sex thru deception was wrong, as it didn't seem she understood.

On 3/22/2024 at 4:31 AM, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

To incorporate them is a deliberate choice: one of nostalgia, or because you feel that it adds to your Glorantha, or because of the rush of gnosis.

How many Thed stories are there?  Not so many.  I would suggest it is due to a lack of material in print.  I mean, I could make up legends all day, but I prefer to rely on printed material for sources where it exists.  It has nothing to do with nostalgia.  I will even look at HQ material, even though it is largely discarded now.

On 3/22/2024 at 4:31 AM, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

and the victim becomes a victimizer

 Does he though? The abuser was Urox, not Orlanth.  Urox could have sensed Thed's distress and decided not to, but he didn't.

On 3/22/2024 at 4:31 AM, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

Thed-Rapes-Orlanth flattens this into a binary. As you yourself say: Thed is not a victim. She is an evil bitch, a scheming whore, and for attempting to rape someone, her punishment was to be raped in turn. 

That wasn't just a punishment, it was a moral object lesson in why sex by deception is wrong, specifically so Thed could see the error of her ways and repent rather than die.  Orlanth was not the victimizer, he was an educator, and a trickster. 

Edited March 23 by Darius West

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

No.  Thed TRIES to rape Orlanth.
 

I do not appreciate nitpicking about a myth which is from the out-of-print zine The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Chaos (1995), itself a supplement to the out-of-print book Lords of Terror (1994), particularly when that nitpicking is used as a dodge. Do you have anything to say about the quoted paragraph and what it means?

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

So Orlanth should have just exposed Thed's deception and had her executed for trying to rape him?  His real crime then was being merciful and instead trying to teach her why sex thru deception was wrong, as it didn't seem she understood.

One thing which endeared me to Greg Stafford and convinced me that we had similar appreciation of mythology was his insistence that mythology is better understood through the oral storytelling tradition than through the literary tradition. It sharply highlights the ways in which passing on mythology (as, say, in an Orlanthi youth’s initiation) is an artistic expression in and of itself. The stories that a given storyteller chooses to recount, the details they include, and the parallels that they make are all part of this artistic expression. Mythology, as with many things that are concerned with conveying meaning about the numinous and the universal, is serious business, and we must pay attention to these meanings.

When you tell me this story, are you listening to what you are saying?

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

How many Thed stories are there?  Not so many.  I would suggest it is due to a lack of material in print.  I mean, I could make up legends all day, but I prefer to rely on printed material for sources where it exists.  It has nothing to do with nostalgia.  I will even look at HQ material, even though it is largely discarded now.

Today, in modern times, we experience a vast diversity of peoples and cultures who have gathered here, drawn by the wealth, peace, and well-being of our land. Each brings their own stories and tales of the ancient days. Many are lies, however. Many are inappropriate for most of us. So, we must choose carefully if we wish to progress spiritually and obtain our eternal bliss among the gods and ancestors.

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

 Does he though? The abuser was Urox, not Orlanth.  Urox could have sensed Thed's distress and decided not to, but he didn't.

I was not speaking about Orlanth. The way you keep reorienting to him, by reflex, is telling— as is my own and opposite reflex. What does it tell us, do you think?

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

That wasn't just a punishment, it was a moral object lesson in why sex by deception is wrong, specifically so Thed could see the error of her ways and repent rather than die.  Orlanth was not the victimizer, he was an educator, and a trickster. 

This is Ragnaglari hermeneutics. I make the sign of the Horns against it.

Edited March 23 by Tatterdemalion Fox
Correcting a misrepresentation

[soltakss]

Here is the myth from the Book of Heortling Mythology. I assume that Orlanth's Brother is Ragnaglar.

[soltakss]

Here is the description of Thed from the Book of Heortling Mythology.

[soltakss]

55 minutes ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

No.  Thed TRIES to rape Orlanth.
 

I do not appreciate nitpicking about a myth which is from the out-of-print zine The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Chaos (1995), itself a supplement to the out-of-print book Lords of Terror (1994), particularly when that nitpicking is used as a dodge. Do you have anything to say about the quoted paragraph and what it means?

I can't find any myths of Thed in the Book of Drastic Resolutions, so I am not sure what the myth referred to is. The myth from the Book of Heortling Mythology shows how Thed became the Goddess of Rape, but nothing that I could see there shows her seducing Orlanth.

 

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

14 minutes ago, soltakss said:

I can't find any myths of Thed in the Book of Drastic Resolutions, so I am not sure what the myth referred to is. The myth from the Book of Heortling Mythology shows how Thed became the Goddess of Rape, but nothing that I could see there shows her seducing Orlanth.

 

If that is not the case, I would be very interested in seeing this myth sourced.

[soltakss]

On 3/20/2024 at 1:57 PM, Darius West said:

Yeah yeah, Thed's not to blame.  She didn't want to be Ragnaglar's girlfriend.  She didn't want to unleash Chaos and destroy countless lives.  She's just a victim in all this.  Chop her head off Erannina Chan, we all know she tried to sexually assault Orlanth.

Where is the myth for this? I can't remember seeing it.

On 3/21/2024 at 9:45 AM, Darius West said:

In what way is the world a better place because of the Unholy Trio?  Thed tried to use disguise and subterfuge to obtain sex from Orlanth, and that is sexual assault.  That is a sexual attack on Ernalda's main husband.  Not all of us buy into the illuminated nonsense that up is down, purple is orange, evil is good, and Thed is a victim.  You know a tree by its fruit, and there are exactly 2 broos who deserve to live, and I'm not entirely sure about 1 of them.

Evil is rarely absolute.

However, I'd like to see what the myth says before drawing conclusions.

[mfbrandi]

43 minutes ago, soltakss said:

I assume that Orlanth’s Brother [who caused Thed’s gaping wound] is Ragnaglar.

I don’t say that you are wrong, but why assume this? The wind lord teaches:

• Thed was wounded by Urox in the Storm Age,
  but turned to chaos to gain revenge on the entire world
  instead of just her enemy. — Lords of Terror, p. 7

In that version — there are surely others — it seems that Thed turns to Chaos to get revenge after being wounded by Storm Bull. I am not especially arsed about that point of exegesis, but let’s bin all the “marry your rapist”, “willing submission to rape”, and similar crap (for which I am not blaming you, obviously). I won’t say that we are better than that, but can we not all at least pretend that we are?