Backstories for girls and women in stories that *don’t* involve sexual assault.

I beta read a lot, and am involved in writing communities of various kinds, and I briefly taught English way back in the day, and I consume much storytelling media in general – and one of my biggest pet peeves is sexual assault backstories. While I think this is improving, it’s still annoying to me that a lot of writers (of all genders, but particularly men) fall back on a sexual assault backstory whenever they need to make a girl or woman in a story complicated or haunted or fucked up in some way.

Unless your story is dealing with the topic of sexual assault in some way, please don’t use it as a way to give a character depth or angst. We’ve been saturated with it, and enough is enough. All of us can name a book or movie or tv show where women are sexually assaulted in some way and it’s tiresome. Yes, it’s pervasive in society and yes, it’s a very real issue for women – but it gets old constantly reading it and seeing it and feeling like in some ways, our sexual traumas are the most interesting thing about us. That in order for people to care about a woman in a story, she has to have been a victim of something horrible. It almost feels like sexual assault has become…fetishized in stories, in a bizarre way. It’s gross.

There’s also this “I have to save her and prove that #NotAllMen will mistreat her” trope that I’m so heartily sick of. It ties into the rescue trope, where a girl/woman character exists only to need to be rescued, so the man can be the hero.

In stories, you need to give your characters obstacles and complications, so I’m not saying don’t traumatize them. Let’s just get more creative with the ways in which we traumatize them.

Here are some prompts, just to get you started.

Why would a woman be trying to escape her past? Why would she be seeking a fresh start?

• She hated her small town; the people there didn’t understand her and she never felt like she fit in – she’s queer, she has a weird birthmark, she’s got unique interests, she has magical powers, etc.
• She’s a criminal – she robbed banks or stole cars and she wanted a fresh start
• She was an addict and hurt people, and she wants a fresh start now that she’s sober
• Her parent is a criminal or an addict and she’s trying to outrun the stigma of being related to them
• She didn’t get along with a stepparent and skipped town as soon as she turned 18
• She was parentified and tired of being responsible for her siblings and skipped town as soon as she turned 18
• She had big dreams for her life, and left to pursue them
• Her childhood home was haunted, but no one believed her
• She got married young then divorced, and wants to start over somewhere that no one knows her
• Heartbreak of any variety – she’s leaving a place that reminds her too much of someone she lost or couldn’t have
• She wants better; maybe more money, or a career, or simply a higher quality of life, and feels she has to start over somewhere else to achieve that
• Some other violent tragedy occurred – a school shooting, an explosion at the plant, police brutality, her best friend drowned, etc.
• Her hometown no longer exists (climate change, the main factory shut down, it was overrun by rabid squirrels, etc.)

What would make a woman distrustful of others?

• Heartbreak; being lied to, cheated on, left for her best friend, her boyfriend comes out as gay but she’s still desperately in love with him, etc.
• A big betrayal – her former best friend told everyone a secret about her, someone weaponized her trauma or her past or a major flaw she’s sensitive about, etc.
• She witnessed a traumatizing event as a child
• Her mother was a grifter and used her as part of her scams
• One parent cheated on the other and broke up the family
• Her older brother isn’t dead after all, he was disowned for being gay and now she’s questioning everything her parents ever told her
• She has problems with her memory, and is never quite sure what the truth is
• She’s bad at reading people and has been taken advantage of
• She gradually comes to see that someone she idealized as a child is not at all what they seem – someone she thought was a good, kind, and genuine person is arrested for a terrible crime, etc.
• Spiritual abuse – the worldview she was taught was right turns out to be exploitative, represses women, etc., so she leaves

What would cause a woman to have trauma or mental health issues?

• Any form of abuse – doesn’t have to be sexual
• Her parents had really high expectations that she couldn’t live up to
• It simply runs in the family
• Survivor’s guilt – she survived something that someone else did not
• She was bullied and no one protected her
• Her parents were very controlling and destroyed her confidence
• Her sibling was the golden child and she was the scapegoat
• She was blamed for something she didn’t do
• She was blamed for something she did do and people won’t forgive her
• She’s had issues since childhood but her parents refused to admit there was anything wrong with her, so she didn’t get help
• Being a part of any oppressed group of people who experience discrimination – she’s a person of color, she’s an immigrant, she’s got a disability, she’s queer, etc.
• Any major trauma, either witnessed or being a part of – weather events and natural disasters, infrastructure collapse, crashes and accidents, fires, a shooting or a murder, war, economic collapse, etc.

You’re a writer – get creative. There are lots of ways to traumatize and haunt a girl/woman character without having to resort to a sexual assault backstory. You can even make her the problem! Maybe she’s the one who did something bad and is trying to outrun the guilt. Maybe she was the villain in someone else’s story and is trying to change.

Let’s also let go of the idea that it’s meeting and falling in love with a man that saves her from her trauma. Let her have a healing arc that doesn’t involve a man – a love story can still be there, but it can’t be the magic healing balm that fixes her. Make her do the work. Make her have to save herself. Give her autonomy to both make her own mistakes, and improve her own situation. Don’t let your man go into savior mode – let him get frustrated with her. Let her push him away without him clinging to her in a desperate bid to show her what unconditional love is. Don’t let him be a martyr to her trauma.

Women are complicated for many reasons. We have trauma for many reasons. We have mental health issues for many reasons. We may want to escape our past for many reasons. We’re angsty and weird for many reasons.

Please pick literally anything other than sexual assault.