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Comment by Xylakant | Hacker News Reader

> can't all be rapists, right?

Why not? Considering that not too long ago it was deemed legal to rape your wife? It's not too long ago that rape wasn't exactly treated as the crime it is now. Without wanting to apologize any of the behavior, it's less than my lifetime ago that the man who took a woman against her will wasn't considered a rapist but rather a role model in large chunks of the population. So yes, it's quite well possible that all of them are rapists. That's the kind of world we live in.

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> wasn't considered a rapist but rather a role model in large chunks of the population

Pop history. Be specific (time, place, evidence) or stop with the demon-haunted characterisations of the past.

1. Howard Roarke (The Fountainhead) 1943 Novel

2. Stanley Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire) 1947 Play

Just two that spring to mind. I'm sure a diligent person could find plenty of other examples of rapist protagonists in 20th century literature.

Wow, just because a protagonist does something in a piece of literature or theater doesn't mean that the author, much less society, approves of the deed in question (rape, in this case), or considered the one responsible for the deed a "role model".

I mean, didn't you read and discuss "Native Son" in high school? Do you think that the fact that its protagonist committed murder means that Richard Wright or society at the time approved of murder?

And by the way, when "The Fountainhead" and "Streetcar Named Desire" came out, those rape scenes were just about as controversial as the publication of "Native Son".

Pop history in particular artistic works are reflective of society.

Look at early Bond movies for example. Quite a lot of behaviour in those movies would be considered sexual assault if happened today.

In many ways, for better or worse, the early Bond movies mixed the 'suave, debonaire spy' with the reality of the books:

That Bond was a lonely, bitter, alcoholic (beyond "vodka martini, shaken not stirred", but in many of the books Bond would often find himself alone at the bottom of a bottle of liquor), misogynist with a short temper.

So certainly they could, and in many cases, that would have been the underlying premise - not that he was (just) a ladies' man who would have women falling over themselves.

>Pop history in particular artistic works are reflective of society. Look at early Bond movies for example.

The Human Centipede

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