The problem with people who keep using a toxic relationship to justify rape is that they're completely missing the point. Toxic relationships don't automatically lead to rape, and being toxic doesn't make sexual assault inevitable. This idea that rape is somehow a natural consequence of obsession, jealousy, or a dysfunctional relationship has been normalized in fiction to the point where people treat it as an expected plot development rather than questioning it. If you can't recognize that pattern, you're either being naive or deliberately ignoring it.
Authors are creative people who can take their stories in hundreds of different directions. The relationship could've been toxic in a thousand different ways without including rape. But the author deliberately chose to write it that way, and we're absolutely entitled to question that choice. The problem isn't that the relationship was toxic; it's that people keep using that toxicity to justify rape as though it were inevitable. It wasn't inevitable. It was a deliberate creative choice, and the author's decision to include it is absolutely open to criticism.
The problem with people who keep using a toxic relationship to justify rape is that they're completely missing the point. Toxic relationships don't automatically lead to rape, and being toxic doesn't make sexual assault inevitable. This idea that rape is somehow a natural consequence of obsession, jealousy, or a dysfunctional relationship has been normalized in fiction to the point where people treat it as an expected plot development rather than questioning it. If you can't recognize that pattern, you're either being naive or deliberately ignoring it.
Authors are creative people who can take their stories in hundreds of different directions. The relationship could've been toxic in a thousand different ways without including rape. But the author deliberately chose to write it that way, and we're absolutely entitled to question that choice. The problem isn't that the relationship was toxic; it's that people keep using that toxicity to justify rape as though it were inevitable. It wasn't inevitable. It was a deliberate creative choice, and the author's decision to include it is absolutely open to criticism.