A couple of days ago, Rachel Swirsky — an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer who posts at Alas, A Blog and sometimes comments here on Man Boobz as well — sent along a link to a brilliant, brutal, and horrifying short story she’d recently published in Apex Magazine. Titled “Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings,” the story is essentially her attempt to get inside the mind of a violent misogynist.
As the editor’s note to her story explains:
Swirsky wrote this piece after talking to multiple editors who worked with horror stories, all of whom reported receiving many submissions about men murdering their wives or ex–wives. Despite the fictional veneer and supernatural justification [for the murder], many have the feel of personal revenge fantasies, and most characterize the women through disturbing, misogynist stereotypes. Swirsky wanted to see if it was possible to write a story that included all the markers of the trope but nevertheless subverted it.
In writing the story, Swirsky told me, “I drew heavily on Manboobz for mood and imagery, to try to get the sense of the narrator.”
So, enjoy. But first, I should warn you that the story is very violent, very disturbing, and could very well be triggering. So giant TRIGGER WARNING.
Here’s the LINK.
It’s a graphic and disturbing story. I would have to say it’s well-written but I don’t see how it manages to subvert the trope of men murdering their wives.
Shit. So editors for journals of fiction routinely receive stories like that, huh? Must be a fun job, very rewarding.
I wonder how many submissions include attached notes like the bits in italics. “Yes, I know it’s a first-person story in which the narrator brutally and graphically murders someone, but it’s just a character. I don’t think like that, I swear.”
Couldn’t make it all the way through. That was torture porn.
Exactly WHAT was she getting from this place?
Two sentences were enough for me.
Nicely done, and of course most of the meat of the story is in the italics, as the “author” oscillates between embracing the fantasy and distancing himself from it.
Actually, I get how she was influenced by Manboobz — not by the regulars, but from the vile misogyny Dave exposes every day.
That bit how the narrator says he can’t tell women apart, and the hateful way he talks about her body and sex. Women aren’t human, his male rage should be applauded as a natural defense mechanism that’s triggered whenever a disgusting female tries to domesticate him or asks to be seen as human…oh, as if a woman could be human.
Yep. Very MRA. It was a grueling read, but I guess she made her point about misogyny.
I wonder if this was posted on an MRA site without the blurb about why she wrote the story wouldn’t get it and instead applaud the story as telling it like it is? Never mind I don’t need to wonder, I know they would.
i like the premise of her writing the story, but in knowing this, and probably with the multiple meta commenting, i did not feel i got into the head of the first person narrator at all. i think a greater effect would have been to read a disclaimer only in the end, as well as the premise, for me at least. maybe i am just not enough into the genre. it didn’t trigger me, it’s a bit yucky, and i liked the harpie idea but i don’t know, something was missing. i try to understand the idea of fiction and subversion and actually see much of the online misogynists with their colourful vitriol as mostly desperate fantasies..encouraged by complicity and anonymity, men full of fear that they are losing control, leashing out. i would be interested in reading a story refused by editors for being to obvious ‘kill the ex fantasy’.
Couldn’t make it through.
The worst part is that I read an anthology where a LOT of the stories read JUST LIKE THIS. It wasn’t a horror anthology either; it was supposed to be about alien sex, but apparently consent and niceness weren’t part of the deal.
That was absolutely disgusting. And it wasn’t written to subvert the trope so much as to say, “Some men actually feel this way, I think.” That was not worth reading, and if I’d known how bad it was going to be, I would have saved myself the trouble. Also, in addition to the trigger warnings, you should put some NSFW warnings on there and perhaps some general warnings about graphic violence being used relentlessly to prove a shallow point more fit for a 500 word blog post and not a short story.
“Yep. Very MRA. It was a grueling read, but I guess she made her point about misogyny.”
“I wonder if this was posted on an MRA site without the blurb about why she wrote the story wouldn’t get it and instead applaud the story as telling it like it is? Never mind I don’t need to wonder, I know they would.”
This won’t make it through moderation here, but all I have to say is that you guys are absolutely out of your minds. First, that one of your rank-and-file actually wrote this short story is bad enough. That you guys think that men just routinely go around feeling like the narrator of this story just because they sometimes say “mean” things about women or advocate for men’s rights says a lot for what you guys think about men.
This will be the last time I read this blog. Y’all are a bunch of hateful psychopaths.
The story is… brrr. The authors she reference should really do a better job at hiding their Id.
In other news, my cats are feeling better, though they are both on anti-biotics. Pantalaimon (nee Frost) lets me pick him up and do anything. When my parents and I skype, I pick him up, Lion King-style, to show them his belly spots.
Jade doesn’t put up with that shit, but she is starting to come to me more, and she’s eating and playing a lot more now.
The italics are definitely the key — I’m actually really glad I read katz’s comment before reading the story. It is still an upsetting read, though. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but I am a bit freaked out. 0_o
So instead I am going to re-focus on wordsp1nner’s kitties! Glad they’re feeling better. Belly spots are the BEST.
I also could not make it through that story. I am glad now to be able to congratulate wordspinn1er on improving cat health, a much nicer thing.
So, um. someone on Ravelry posted this:
It is possibly the weirdest song I have ever heard. I thought Manboobzers might like it.
Wordsp1nner’s kitties in avatar! Wordsp1nner’s kitties getting better! Yayyy!
Bill Oddie singing about knitting? I’ll have to listen to that tonight!
Takes me back to String, string, string, string, everybody loves string …
Well that was fucked up. Well done though.
I’m glad that she made the imagery so over the top, it made it a lot easier to get through. Reading the tame by comparison (I hope) stories that it was based on would have been a lot more disturbing to me.
Barf, I was thinking the same thing.
Yeeeaaaah, I read a story that was pretty much snuff porn, with a woman sex worker being graphically mutilated. I didn’t make it through.
And in the same fucking anthology, there was a guy raping an orangutaun, a blob that made every man, woman, and child fuck themselves to death, and I think I gave up after that. Seriously, the book was called Alien Sex, not Alien RAPE.
LBT… Jesus Christ….
RE: baileyrenee
I KNOW! I had no idea what I was fucking getting into, the book was marketing itself as something completely different to what it was. It really skeeved me out.
I dug up my old blog entry on it, and of the sixteen stories, I made it through half of them. Six were rape, bestiality, necrophilia, or snuff, and two had no sex in them whatsoever. It was horrifying.
I shouldn’t have read that just before going to bed. The author is a good wordsmith, and effectively creates a very grotesque and gory narrative. However, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be certain of the intention of the story (with the author’s notes blurring the line between fiction and reality and outing the writer as a person with a skewered world view) if I hadn’t read David Futrelle’s preface first. I don’t know what a reader who just stumbles on that text would make of it.
But, as I said, I shouldn’t have read it just before going to bed. Now I must look for something capable of soothing my mind, like lovely watery-eyes kobolds.
LBT . . . is this the book you were talking about? If so, I’ll make sure never to read it and will have you to thank for the warnng. Yeesh, there are quite a well-known sci-fi authors here . . .
http://www.amazon.com/Alien-Sex-Masters-Science-Fiction/dp/0451451422/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1377576054&sr=8-2&keywords=alien+sex
Oh, I didn’t know the link would embed like that. I hope that’s okay . . .
I don’t think it was very good at all. There was no subversion and there was no narrative really. Just a vague feeling of anger.
RE: grumpycatisagirl
Yup, that’s the one! Unless there’s another anthology by that name with Ellison and Niven in it. (To be fair, Niven put in ‘Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex,’ which was light and funny and everything the rest of the book wasn’t.)
I admit, I enjoy reading ANYTHING that involves humans and non-humans trying to interact and get along, but godDAMN was that book gross.