So I was re-reading The Hunger Games

I’m going to assume most of you know the basic concept of the book series The Hunger Games, but a spoiler warning is still in order.

(Also a warning for discussion of sexual abuse and prostitution)

…

…

…

…

So a little while ago I was re-reading the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins as I’ve done many times before, but this had been the first time I’d done so after being introduced to the concept of good-faith men’s rights activism. As expected, the books were just as good as when I first read them, but I found myself especially impressed by the handling of Finnick’s character.

For context: We first meet twenty-four year old Finnick Odair in the middle of the second book, Catching Fire, ten years since he became the youngest Victor of the Hunger Games in history at age fourteen. At first he appears to have fully embraced his role as a celebrity sex symbol, and the main character Katniss writes him off as a self-absorbed playboy who’s had it easy compared to Tributes from the poorer districts. However, the rest of the book steadily strips away this facade of his and shows him to be a decent guy dealing with just as much trauma as the other Victors.

Then in the third book, Mockingjay, we learn some more about Finnick’s backstory, details that recontextualize everything about his character.

"President Snow used to...sell me...my body, that is," Finnick begins in a flat, removed tone. "I wasn't the only one. If a victor is considered desirable, the president gives them as a reward or allows people to buy them for an exorbitant amount of money. If you refuse, he kills someone you love. So you do it." That explains it, then. Finnick's parade of lovers in the Capitol. They were never real lovers. Just people like our old Head Peacekeeper, Cray, who bought desperate girls to devour and discard because he could. I want to interrupt the taping and beg Finnick's forgiveness for every false thought I've ever had about him. But we have a job to do, and I sense Finnick's role will be far more effective than mine.

"I wasn't the only one, but I was the most popular," he says. "And perhaps the most defenseless, because the people I loved were so defenseless. To make themselves feel better, my patrons would make presents of money or jewelry, but I found a much more valuable form of payment." Secrets, I think. That's what Finnick told me his lovers paid him in, only I thought the whole arrangement was by his choice.

My twelve-year-old self reading these books for the first time was not in any way ready for this, but when I revisited the series as an adult, I was shocked at how well this story beat held up.

For most of my life, in most of the media I had been exposed to, sexual harassment and abuse of male characters was typically played for laughs, romanticized, and/or downplayed in comparison to “what women go through all the time”- all of which are tropes that nobody here is a stranger to. But here is a male character whose status as a victim of sexual abuse is treated with the seriousness it deserves, and isn’t pitted against his female counterparts in a victimhood competition, while also having a fully fleshed-out personality outside of his tragic backstory? In a book published back in 2010?

I know some people like to pick on The Hunger Games because a tsunami of clones and wannabes saturated the YA market in the following decade, but it’s honestly still a breath of fresh air in retrospect. In a world where third and fourth-wave feminism’s impact on the media landscape has been a mixed bag (to put it mildly), the topic of abuse against men has become a poisoned well; men can’t even talk about their own experiences without somebody accusing them of stealing attention from female victims. Personally, I applaud Suzanne Collins for her handling of this and so many other serious subjects.

But what do the rest of you think? For those of you who’ve read The Hunger Games, what is your opinion of Finnick’s story and character? And do any other books/movies/etc. come to mind as examples of male sexual abuse handled well by the narrative? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the replies, I’m curious about what you all have to say