Defiled Forever

To be honest, she's a bit of a Drama Queen. Subversion follows in the next frame.

"The fallen man again can soar, but woman falls to rise no more."

— James Nack, "The Difference", Romance of the Ring and Other Poems (1859)

The idea that extramarital sex, including sexual assault, morally corrupts and/or defiles one (where "one" is usually female) forever, possibly to the point of barring them from marriage and/or True Love. Usually present in settings in which virginity is particularly prized. Also used as further justification for why Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, as the rapist is not only violently traumatizing the victim but also permanently rendering them unsuitable for marriage or otherwise unable to reach a Happily Ever After with a lover of their choosing. In modern works, the victim sometimes believes they are Defiled Forever only for a Love Interest to convince them otherwise before they get their Happily Ever After. Traditionally, the popular media sidestepped this issue or avoided it altogether whenever they could, due to The Hays Code and other factors.

In a number of cultures, both historically and currently, people have believed this but this is changing in most of these cultures, and it is now considered cruel by the majority of people.

In real life, victims of violence (sexual or otherwise) may react in ways varying from being deeply traumatized for life even with the best help, through a relatively smooth recovery, all the way to (in less violent cases on the lighter end of the Questionable Consent spectrum) barely affected at all, or even surprised that what happened is considered a crime.

Contrast Rape Portrayed as Redemption for the opposite effect on the victim. Not to be confused with Ruined FOREVER despite the similar name. In media, it may serve as the trigger for characters who turn to Promiscuity After Rape. In some cases, it can part of the reason for a Good Girl Gone Bad. See also Nature Adores a Virgin.

Played for comedy as often as not, with a character complaining that they are "ruined for marriage" after a stolen kiss or being seen nude/in revealing clothes by a member of the opposite sex (even by accident).

No Real Life Examples, Please!

noreallife

---

Examples

Anime & Manga

• In After School Nightmare, as a kindergartener, Kureha was brutally raped on her walk home from school; it's implied that this alone might not have been so bad, except that her father didn't give half a damn that his five-year-old daughter had been beaten and sexually violated, only complaining that she was now "damaged goods" that no man would want, and her own mother (who, incidentally, was frequently beaten by the father) didn't even object.
• Discussed and ultimately defied in Bad Teacher's Equation, with a Rare Male Example. Masayoshi's brother Masami was sexually abused as a teenager and has many hidden issues about it. He finally explains them to his boyfriend Tooru and says he considers himself soiled. Tooru then defies the trope via supporting Masami and telling him he's not defiled and that it's not his fault.
• Berserk:
  • Guts is a Rare Male Example. As a boy, Guts is raped by a fellow mercenary when his adoptive father sells him for three silver coins for one night. This experience pretty much ruins Guts's life and turns him into the man he is in the present. Then, he meets Casca, and eventually, they consummate their relationship. But then Guts has an emotional breakdown right in the middle of the act and tries to leave because he thinks he's ruined and that he's driven Casca away. But Casca doesn't think this at all.
  • And then it gets worse: Their gang leader Griffith goes insane and rapes Casca. She never gets over it, partly because by this point, he's supernaturally crazy and anointed by GOD (said god is actually a manifestation of people's self-denial/ignorance of their evil). Not only does she revert to a childlike personality, but when she gets pregnant the baby is corrupted by the supernatural and turned into a tragic monster. That gets sacrificed for the rapist's sake. Yeah, this is one hell of a crapsack setting.
• In Bitter Virgin, female lead Hinako is plagued by this way of thinking after she was abused by her stepfather and became pregnant in middle school. Much of the story is made up of Daisuke trying to get through to her despite her thinking this way about herself. The trope is very much defied by Daisuke's sister Izumi, who makes it perfectly clear to their somewhat old-fashioned and moralistic mother (and anyone else that tries to judge her) that she has no less self-respect for herself just because she got pregnant out of wedlock.
• A Cruel God Reigns: In a Rare Male Example, Jeremy INSISTS that his body is rotting and that he gives off a bad smell as a result of the sexual abuse he is receiving from his stepfather. In a slight inversion of the trope, it is Ian, who is both the offender's son and Jeremy's love interest, that tries to convince him otherwise.
  Jeremy: It hurts to talk about my rotten smell with the person I like.
  Ian: You don't smell strange. You don't smell rotten, Jeremy.
  Jeremy: Did I make you dirty?
• Don't Meddle with My Daughter!: Artemis was a virgin and a paragon of cleanliness. That ended once Zenovia captured her. The "MILF of Steel" epilogue story, shows Artemis was repeatedly gang-raped by Zenovia's minions, 'til her mind finally broke once she realized she was starting to enjoy it, despite her tears. By the time Artemis was rescued, the damage had already been done. She adopts a new persona and wears a mask out of shame.
• Dragon Ball Super's Universe Survival Arc plays with this trope. The Muten Roshi has suppressed his sexual desires in his training for the tournament of power. When a female warrior employs her sexual wiles to gain the upper hand against the Muten Roshi she gets a more extreme response than she anticipated. She brings her entire universe closer to erasure by jumping off the fighting stage while screaming "He will make me undesirable as a wife!"
• In Fushigi Yuugi, it is apparently the preferred major tactical strategy of the forces of Seiryuu Star Warriors in neutralizing their rival forces of the Suzaku Star Warriors by raping/seducing their Celestial Maiden, and thus preventing her from summoning the patron god Suzaku (who required Virgin Power) who could then battle their patron god Seiryuu. Also used as a ploy into tricking their own Celestial Maiden into joining their side in the first place by turning on her best friend (who was the other CM). The Big Bad, however, is a relatively uncommon male example of this trope, as it is later revealed to be what originally caused him to become evil.
• Invoked in Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden, when Takiko discovers that the girl she helped is one of her celestial warriors... and doesn't stay a girl all the time. Takiko was very shocked when she woke up with a man in her bed, and freaked out, saying that she'd never be able to marry.
• Another male example occurs in Gakuen Ouji with Mizutani, where the visiting prince claims that Mizutani has been "tarnished forever" after finding out that he used to sell himself in order to get food. After hearing this Rise, the female lead, responds by giving the prince a slap.
• In Hayate the Combat Butler, two characters react this way to the 'threat' of being touched this way. When they complain about this, neither character would have an inkling of a thought of doing something inappropriate, so it's able to be played for humor.
  • Saki is worried about being seen as this whenever Hayate touches her.
  • Hinagiku thinks she has been defiled and bemoans that she can't be someone's bride anymore when Ayumu dries her off after she faints in the hot springs. Ayumu says she'll still take her, and when reminded of her crush on Hayate, she suggests Polyamory.
• Played for Laughs in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean when Jolyne shouts that she'll never be able to get married while throwing a fit over her embarrassment from a male prison guard catching her in the middle of masturbating.
• In K-On!, the extremely timid Mio sobs, "No one will marry me now!" after tripping onstage and giving the audience a Panty Shot...and also after being forcibly stripped and put in a skimpy outfit. Played for Laughs, being a Minor Injury Overreaction.
• Legend of the Blue Wolves: Jonathan is raped by the monstrous Captain Continental and has a reaction of despair and looks down in shame after Leonard walks in to see him being forced to give the Continental oral sex. Leonard castrates Jonathan's rapist in revenge. Jonathan asks Leonard if he wants to have Sex for Solace and Leonard, being the Nice Guy he is, asks Jonathan if it's okay knowing what he does about Jonathan's treatment at the hands of the Continental. He also asks if it's okay during sex if he can give him oral sex, knowing what the Continental did to him.
• Soubi from Loveless after having been raped by his teacher as a teenager, and now he's pretty much an Extreme Doormat. Yeah, thanks a lot, Ritsu. Also used to deconstruct the idea of Sex as Rite-of-Passage.
• Maken-ki! also used it for comedy. At the start of chapter 16, Kai finds himself staring directly at Ms. Aki's thong while she's on top of him in the 69 position. Which was a needlessly risqué method for a nurse to treat a patient, but she proceeds anyway. One scream discretion shot later, it's done and Kai mumbles that he won't be able to marry Azuki now.
• Episode 8 of Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! has the Lovable Sex Maniac Nyarko overreact with "I'll never get married!" when she thinks a boy has seen her underwear. The parody comes from the contrast with the normal course of events, and that her dress is too long and flowing for any such incidents.
• Referenced and Played for Laughs in the penultimate chapter of Negima! Magister Negi Magi when a character being attacked by a Skinship Grope enthusiast is described by narration as almost being made unmarriable.
• Phantom Thief Jeanne attempts to invoke this, but ultimately defies it.
  • Jeanne d'Arc invokes this herself, telling Marron that she lost her ability to exorcize and capture demons because a prison guard raped her. And Noin attempts to invoke this by trying to rape Marron, believing that 'purity' and being a virgin really is what allows her to perform her duties. He's stopped before he can go too far.
  • Ends up defied when Marron loses her virginity with Chiaki the night before the final showdown, revealing that her presence or lack of virginity has nothing to do with 'purity' in that sense. That she can still turn into Kaitou Jeanne as long as she remains true to herself.
• Yet another comedic example in the manga Princess Jellyfish when Tsukimi has to overcome her geekiness to help a drunk, naked Kuranosuke to bed after he slipped in the shower.
• A comedic example occurs with Aoi from Psychic Squad, who has this reaction to things that aren't really sexual.
• Mizore Shirayuki from Rosario + Vampire reacts this way to Miyabi, even though he only went as far as stealing a kiss and handling her a bit forcefully. Still, that alone would have been a very traumatic experience, especially since she was so emotionally fragile to begin with. She proceeds to jump out of a window, only for Kurumu to save her.
• While a mild and instantly forgotten example, episode 2 of the first season of Sailor Moon had Ms. Haruna, Usagi's teacher, immediately believe that "no one will ever marry her" after a possessed Umino (Melvin in the dub) flipped her skirt. This scene is the most likely reason why this episode was not dubbed into English. (at least until VIZ obtained the rights and redubbed the anime, missing episodes included.)
• Played for Laughs in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei when Shrinking Violet Kiri Komori declares herself this after Commodore Perry, in his frenzy to open anything and everything, parts her bangs and gets a look at her eyes.
• Invoked and discussed in Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest, while Akiko Aoshika, the lead female, is gang-raped. The guy who staged her gang-rape, Haguro Dou, filmed said incident and is about to release it on the Internet for everyone to see to have her life ruined even further. And, for worse, Aoshika already considered herself defiled beforehand, having been sexually abused in her younger years.. Ultimately defied: when she explains her backstory to lead male Akira Inugami (who was driven to tears when he was Forced to Watch the gang rape through a video), he tells her that no, not only is she not defiled, but he is the one who doesn't deserve her at all. This is reaffirmed via his Anguished Declaration of Love a few episodes later.
• Used a few times for comedic value in Your Lie in April.
  • Kaori first says this after Kousei accidentally sees up her skirt when they first meet.
  • When Kousei, Tsubaki, and Watari walk in on a nurse washing Kaori in the hospital she says it again after becoming embarrassed.
  • Kaori exclaims she can never get married when her parents show off nude baby pictures of her to Kousei.
  • These incidents become Harsher in Hindsight once we learn Kaori had been Secretly Dying and was well aware of the fact. She could never get married in the first place.

Comic Books

• Jack Chick goes really overboard with this trope in the Chick Tract called "Uninvited": The tract features a nurse who harasses dying AIDS-patients for their "crime" of being gay. Of course, her actions are fully justified within the verse of the tract, since this is an anviliciously bigoted Author Tract. The real kick? It turns out that all the homosexuals became homosexual because they were sexually molested as children. More to the point, when a child gets sexually molested, she automatically becomes unclean, possessed by a demon of defilement. The trope is played straight for everyone who isn't both The Fundamentalist and a Christian. Averted for all characters who are (or become) Holier Than Thou: Jesus Saves, everybody else takes 5d6 points of damage.
• One Gotham Central storyline ended with the invocation of this trope by a crazy, propriety-obsessed old woman, who believing her daughter to have been raped rather than, in fact, having premarital sex, convinced the Mad Hatter to kill the entire football team of her daughter's school. The worst part? The girl was dating the star quarterback, and the reason she had to admit to having had premarital sex was that he had gotten her pregnant, thus meaning that her lie killed her child's father.
• Invoked in Invincible when Mark has dinner with Eve's parents for the first time. Mark is shocked by just how much of a sexist throwback Eve's father is.
  Mr. Wilkins: I wanted to thank you. I know that my little angel is no angel. I caught her one time, with that long-haired boy. The one that died. You know she had him living here for a while? We didn't even know. Anyway, I appreciate you giving her a chance... knowing you're not her first.
  She never really got just how IMPORTANT virginity is to a woman. Men like to feel like they're breaking new ground. They want to be the teachers... they want to be in charge. Hard to do that if there are no corners left unexplored, right? Betsy was a virgin when we got together. You can always tell when you're with a virgin. They just act differently... less confidence. It's ATTRACTIVE. Don't know if I would have married Betsy, had things been... different. I don't like coming in second... or third... or... whatever the case may be. It's good of you to look past my daughter's obvious flaws. Shows character. I respect that.
  [Cut to Mark sitting on the couch in silence, visibly shocked.]
  Eve: I told you it would be horrible.
• In the Very Special Miniseries, Lois Lane investigates child molestation, abuse, and murder. One woman whose five-year-old daughter was sexually abused bemoans the fact that she "ain't a virgin no more" and "what man would want her now?"
• In the "Truth or Dare" story in Runaways, Victor and Chase unwittingly invoke this trope after Nico tries to use Klara's presence in the room as an excuse to avoid answering a question about which of them is the better kisser; they claim it's okay to talk about such things in front of Klara because she's "already been married."
• Defied in a truly heartwarming manner in Saga. Sophie is an absolutely adorable young girl who was captured and Made a Slave, then turned into a child prostitute. After she's rescued, there's a scene where she's alone with Lying Cat, the Animal Companion of the man who rescued her, and will automatically shout "lying" if anyone tells a lie in the cat's presence.
  Sophie: My name is Sophie. I am six and a half years old.
  Lying Cat: (silent)
  Sophie: I can stand on one leg for a real long time. My favorite color is blue-green. I want to be a doctor or a dancer when I am grown up.
  Lying Cat: (silent)
  Sophie: I am all dirty on the inside because I did bad things with...
  Lying Cat: LYING! [Sophie hugs Lying Cat]
• Invoked and defied in The Sandman (1989). The prehistoric African virgin queen Nada wants the amorous title character to leave her alone, so she breaks her own hymen with a sharpened stone, reasoning he won't be interested in her after she's already been "deflowered". This would be an entirely valid tactic for the time and place, though Nada understandably didn't count on the fact that Dream is responsible for the dreams of an entire universe's worth of sentient life and has already picked up some rather cosmopolitan ideas about sexuality from the planets that are at a different stage in their cultural evolution.

Fan Works

• Zigzagged in A Caged Bird. Laurel spent three months as a Sex Slave to Count Vertigo. Her friends and family treat her with nothing but the utmost respect and compassion, and Oliver repeatedly stresses the fact she's the strongest person he knows. Laurel herself is deeply traumatized and doesn't think she'll ever recover, sees herself as weak, and at one point bitterly muses that her rape will be the first thing strangers will think of when they met her.
• In Children of an Elder God, Asuka feels like this after getting raped by an Eldritch Abomination who had possessed Rei.
• A Crown of Stars: Asuka was the "voluntary" sex toy of two warlords for three years. Daniel altered the past so neither of them actually ravished her, but she still feels filthy and sees herself as a slut who whored herself out to save her hide.
• Gensokyo 20XX:
  • Played with for Yukari in that she views herself as this after the events of Gensokyo 20XXII, which isn't far-fetched, considering exactly what had happened to her.
  • In Ran's case, it is a rather strange and complex variant, in that she is no longer a virgin (he knows about her previous sexual encounter), she was looking to get married to someone who isn't put off by her and, as far as she knows, any other kitsune that tries to have his way with her by force will ruin her, which in simple terms: almost and just about being forced when she was engaged ruined her. However, according to Amoridere, there is a far deeper reason and that is because, in addition to someone forcibly having their way with her, especially when she is engaged, she feels she has been unfaithful, blaming herself for something that isn't her fault.
• In the Kung Fu Panda fanfic, Memoirs of a Master, Yeying, Master Shifu's supposedly dead wife comes to the Jade Palace after years of being tortured and raped in prison by an evil tyrant, convinced that Shifu would reject her. However, before she can fully articulate that fear, Shifu embraces her with a love undiminished after 40 years of separation and firmly asserts without equivocation that he is overjoyed beyond words to take her back. Furthermore, after hearing what she suffered, Shifu blew his top ranting that he so wished he could spit on the dead villain's grave for doing that to her.
• Narmishly implied to be Dark Link's plan for Jenna in My Inner Life, causing her to exclaim that she "won't have anything to do with [him] in that manor!"
• The Night Unfurls:
  • Lily is a nun of the church who, along with her fellow sisters, are raped by red imps in the dungeons. In addition to experiencing a Crisis of Faith, she refers herself as "ashamed nun" or "worthless nun" after being saved. Fortunately, she would later grow out of this mindset and find worth for herself, as a healer and a hunter.
  • Speaking of nuns, Archbishop Grishom uses this trope as an excuse to stop using the Church's resources on them, claiming that the nuns have been "tainted" by the Black Dogs, so this "corruption" may cause them to betray Eostia and the Church's cause. Kyril and Celestine are not happy with this.
• Queen of Diamonds happening in a medieval setting, everyone in the palace is horrified when the princess spends two years living with an unrelated young man and Prince Achmed outright declares it doesn't matter if Jasmine has been raped, coerced or seduced, nobody will want to marry her unless they want a live-in whore.
• In RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse, Ditzy Doo initially felt like she couldn't possibly be worthy of being a mother since she had gotten pregnant by having sex with a stallion who she knew was married to somepony else. In the end, she not only decides to be a mother to Dinky, but she also ends up becoming one of the Elements of Harmony.
• Scar Tissue: Asuka felt filthy and defiled after the events of the series (which included an Eldritch Abomination mind-raping her, Shinji masturbating over her naked comatose body, more Eldritch Abominations tearing her apart and eating her alive and her mind being completely exposed to literally everyone. She was so furious, unstable, and paranoid that she lashed out at Shinji, often not even being aware of what she was doing. And Shinji was so broken and felt so guilty for never helping her when she needed him, defiling her, and letting her die that he really believed he deserved it. A few months after Third Impact, she barged into his room when they were alone at home and said "pants off, bastard". Shinji was crying through the whole thing but didn't resist and didn't tell anyone what happened, even if it happened repeatedly. On the other hand, Asuka also felt sick every time for what she was doing to him, but she could not stop herself. Fortunately she got a wake-up call after going too far, she resolved to change and they started to get better.
• A Rare Male Example comes in the rather... infamous Hetalia: Axis Powers fic Some scars are easy to hide, where a Lithuania who has been physically AND sexually abused by Russia tearfully tells Poland "I'm damaged goods, Feliks" before an Intimate Psychotherapy session. The premise is so unintentionally funny that the "I'm damaged goods Feliks" line reached Memetic Mutation levels.
• This is how Zelda feels about herself in Their Bond after years of sexual abuse and torture by Ganondorf. She's deeply traumatized by it but won't tell anyone, not even her trusted Parental Substitute (and more) Impa, besides her brother figure Link. Link acts as her Secret-Keeper but they both know it hurts to keep the secret. Zelda makes Link dominate her (despite a mutual disgust towards it) because she physically wants to feel as terrible and gross as she feels she is. Zelda's arc involves her healing from this POV and her past.
• The House fanfic Used invokes this against a man. After House is gang-raped by Tritter and his goons, Tritter tells House that he is a "filthy little whore that no one will ever want to touch again".

Film — Live Action

• In Baise Moi, a rape transforms the victims into destructive Omnicidal Maniacs. This is not Rape and Revenge since the victims aren't going up against those who are guilty or even people who they in some twisted way believe is guilty. It's more like the rape simply made them lose their humanity. It should be noted that both characters had pretty crappy lives even beforehand and the rape can simply be interpreted as their mutual Rage Breaking Point.
• The Charge at Feather River: While never explicitly stated, Anne's comments indicated that she has been raped by the Cheyenne and no longer feels fit to rejoin white society. Miles Archer does not agree.
• Easy A plays with the trope. The heroine, Olive, initially discovers that a reputation for being "easy" has advantages, but soon finds that it also has drawbacks, even in a liberal-minded modern setting. In the end, she concludes that her sex life is none of anyone else's damn business, apart from the guy who might be involved.
• In The Housemaid, after her boss knocks her up, the housemaid says he has to take care of her because no man will marry her now.
• Immortal Love: So says Sadako, who tells Takashi, "I'm damaged goods now" after Heibei the lord's son rapes her. He doesn't agree, and they decide to run away together.
• Irreconcilable Differences: Lucy's fiancé Bink wanted her to be a virgin. After she cheats on him with Albert, she knows he'll never want her again.
• In I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Will's brother Davey commits suicide after being raped by an older man.
• Kull the Conqueror defies this with the Love Interest being a harem girl from a tyrant whom The Hero slew at the start of the movie. Said tyrant pressed her into his harem after threatening to execute her brother for heresy and in spite of no longer being a virgin, Kull still falls in love with her enough to feel jealousy when he mistakes her brother for her lover.
• The Lodgers: An unusual variant stemming from a sinister curse and enforced by the eponymous Lodgers (mysterious, otherwordly presences who dwell beneath a trapdoor in the mansion). Should Rachel lose her virginity to anyone but her twin Edward, her "impurity" will make it impossible to fulfill the curse, thereby inciting the wrath of the Lodgers.
• The Lover. After a fifteen-year-old French girl loses her virginity to her thirty-two-year-old Chinese lover, they have an entirely civil discussion about this trope over dinner. The girl concludes that it's just as well, as given the social values of the time it would be impossible for them to get married anyway. It's one of several conversations where they try to convince themselves there's no love involved in their affair.
• Mandalay: Defied. Dr. Burton not only doesn't care that Tanya was formerly a prostitute, but he also states the reason he loves Tanya is that she was strong enough to seize her first opportunity to blackmail her way out of it.
• This was a common trope in many Nazi Propaganda films that were churned out during the Third Reich's hostile takeover of the German film industry. The cinemas were flooded with overwrought melodramas dealing with virginal Aryan heroines driven to suicide after being raped or seduced by vile Jewish (or other racially "impure") men.
  • German camp icon Kristina Söderbaum made an entire career out of playing such characters. After her third "rape victim driven to suicide" role, she was given the monicker "Reichswasserleiche" (roughly translated as "Reich's Main Water Corpse") by the cinema-goers due to her favored method of dispatch usually being drowning. Needless to say, her own career drowned without a trace after the demise of the Third Reich.
  • The 1940 anti-Semitic propaganda film Jew Suss (also starring aforementioned Kristina Söderbaum and directed by her husband Veit Harlan) is an especially notorious example of this trend.
  • Söderbaum's first role of this type was In the 1938 film Jugend ("Youth"), also directed by her husband, where she plays a love-torn village girl who drowns herself after being slut shamed by an evil priest.
  • Kristina Söderbaum and Veit Harlan later made Die Goldene Stadt ("The Golden City") in 1943. Söderbaum once again played a naïve village girl who drowns herself after leaving her hometown for Prague, where she gets seduced and impregnated by her Czech cousin.
  • Another 1943 German film Romanze in Moll ("Romance in a Minor Key") portrays a young Frenchwoman (this time played by Marianne Hoppe, another popular German actress of the period), who commits suicide by an overdose of sleeping medication after cheating on her husband with a lascivious music composer (played by Ferdinand Marian, who also portrayed the Jewish villain in Jew Suss.)
    • Ultimately, the film turns out to be a subversion, because the heroine is not treated as a fallen and tainted woman and both her and her lover are portrayed in a sympathetic light.
• In Chinese silent film Peach Blossom Weeps Tears of Blood, Lim, the Farmer's Daughter, falls in love with Teh-en, son of the woman who owns the Lim family tenancy. Teh-en knocks up Lim without benefit of marriage because his mother exercises the Parental Marriage Veto. Lim's father is very angry when he finds out about this.
  "Your son has ruined the happiness of my daughter forever!"
• Sednem from A Pearl in the Forest believes this about herself after Markhaa rapes her. She says she can't see Dugar, her beloved fiancé.
• This trope seems to be one thing the differing accounts of events in Rashomon agree upon.
• It's subtly implied throughout Rosemary's Baby that Guy is no longer sexually attracted to Rosemary at all after she was raped by Satan, which is pretty rich, considering he's the one who offered her up for it without her knowledge.
• Both the short story and the movie versions of The Searchers have the supposed hero believing this. At first, we admit that his anti-Indian prejudice is at least partially justified, since his mother, brother, sister-in-law, and older niece are all killed in Comanche raids. But it eventually becomes clear that he is a Politically Incorrect Villain who hates all Indians, whether violent or not (including his part-Cherokee adopted nephew) — and thinks that any white female who is raped by an Indian man (in this case, his younger niece) must die after being "defiled." There are even some Unfortunate Implications that the other family members of the niece — and possibly even the niece herself - would want it that way.
• In Showdown in Little Tokyo, the Big Bad is strongly implied to have raped the lead singer of his new club. In the next scene, the singer is about to commit Seppuku after Kenner notes that it's usually only done by women in cases of extreme dishonor.
• The movie version of Titus Andronicus portrays the rape victim this way, as a way of justifying why the protagonist chose to murder her. Also crosses over with Mercy Kill, since in the original play, the implication that Lavinia is Defiled Forever is certainly present, but the fact that she's had her tongue cut out and her hands cut off also appears to be a factor in her father's decision to kill her. Some productions make this marginally more acceptable to the modern viewer by having Lavinia, after naming her rapists, make it clear (non-verbally, obviously) that she wants to die, and by having her mention before it happens that she would rather die than undergo it.
• In Two Women, a hysterical Sophia Loren says this about her own daughter after the daughter is gang-raped by French Moroccan troops.
  Cesira: You ruined my little daughter forever! Now she's worse than dead. No, I'm not mad, I'm not mad! Look at her! And tell me if I am mad! Rotten crazy bastards!
• In The Warped Ones, after Akira rapes her, Fumiko describes herself as "stained, defiled, good for nothing". She asks for Akira and his prostitute partner Yuki to defile Kashiwaga as well so they will be equal again. Amazingly this works, as the distance between Kashiwaga and Fumiko disappears after Kashiwaga has sex with Yuki on Fumiko's dime—but that doesn't really help them in the end.

Literature

• Subversion in 1632: Gretchen is kidnapped to be an unwilling Camp Follower and Sex Slave. When she is rescued by Jeff Higgins she is surprised not only that he is willing to accept her but that he loves her.
• The Acts of Caine gives us an interesting example. There's a religious sect of priestesses who are completely chaste virgins, to the point of dressing like men to stave off advances. If they ever give into temptation, they lose their power. If they are raped, however, they basically turn into a magic nuke. Unfortunately, they rarely survive the massive influx of power, not to mention the resulting destruction.
• Ai no Kusabi's Riki, who explains to his ex-lover that they can't get back together because another man's poison has seeped into his body and he is now permanently tainted.
• Played for Laughs in And You Thought There Is Never a Girl Online?. Hideki feels this way during the Beach Episode when the girls rub him all over with suntan lotion.
• Played with in And I Darken. Lada refuses to sleep with Mehmed because she believes this, but everyone else averts it. While premarital sex does do this in Ottoman society, Lada's still covered, since technically she is part of Mehmed's Royal Harem and therefore fair game under Islamic law.
• In The Arts of Dark and Light, female Elves who are mistreated this way not only suffer all the ordinary trauma but also lose their ability to work magic. Because of this, the Elves consider rape a particularly heinous crime, even as compared to how other people feel about it.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: The belief that pre-marital sex taints a person in some way is definitely present in the setting:
  • One of the reasons Growing Up Sucks for Rozemyne is that as she grows up, it becomes less and less acceptable for her to be in the same room as her mostly male long-time Lower City associates without her noble retainers also being present. Before that, she had been using those meetings as an opportunity to interact with familiar people without any of the elaborate noble decorum.
  • Sometime after Myne joins the temple, rumors that can be interpreted as she and Benno having sex need to be addressed.
  • Fran doesn't want his past as a Sex Slave in all but name to be known, especially by people he looks up to.
  • A recurring worry for Rozemyne is making sure her young, female, cook Ella doesn't end up in situations where she might be forced into sex by a noble. In an instance where such plans must be made not that long before Ella is set to get married, Ferdinand mentions "the possibility that she may be put in a state where she cannot get married".
  • In the last third of Part 4, various circumstances result in Benno taking a young unmarried woman who was forgotten by her traveling family into his household until her family comes back. Those living arrangements alone are mentioned to potentially result in Benno needing to marry the young woman to preserve her reputation.
• In Battle Royale, Mitsuko didn't think this way after the first time she was raped. Unfortunately, the teacher she confided to did, and decided that since she was already ruined, he might as well rape her as well. At the book's start, she's an essentially broken individual and a danger to everyone around her.
• The Prince of Lathah considers his sister to be this The Blood War Trilogy when she becomes pregnant by one of her guards. It's subverted by the fact she's still a princess and has an endless number of suitors eager for her hand.
• In A Brother's Price, a man who has had premarital sex - or been raped - is considered this. Even if his family still accepts him, he's no longer pure, so they can't sell or swap him for a man from another family. The roots of this purity obsession come from the setting's complete subversion of STD Immunity; an STD in a married family quickly spreads to everyone and children are born dead or horribly malformed, to the point where entire families have been wiped out. A man who's been "defiled" usually ends up sold to the cribs, where he's rented out to women too poor to marry in hopes of impregnating them. A woman who's gone to a crib and/or had extramarital sex, aside from with other women, is also stigmatized for exposing herself to STDs - a noblewoman can't get marriage offers and mentions that people don't want her sitting on their chairs - but this is far more acceptable.
• In Caliphate, Petra is brutally raped by her owner's son and his friends, but she is declared guilty of leading them on and therefore it's her own fault she was raped. The judge sentences her to be auctioned off and she is turned into a prostitute, where she is repeatedly abused by the costumers. By the time she meets John Hamilton and becomes attracted to him, she doesn't believe he could be genuinely in love with her since she is just a "filthy whore". Ultimately subverted, as he falls for her nonetheless and he proposes to her at the end of the book.
• Subverted in Charly. Sam thinks that she can no longer marry Charly because of her past sexual transgressions, but his bishop convinces him that if God can forgive her, so can he.
• Juanita Coulson's The Death God's Citadel: Aubage, who was marrying Ilissa for position, considers her defiled and unworthy after finding out she was raped by Vraduir. By contrast, Erezjan cares only about how it traumatized Ilissa (with whom he's genuinely in love).
• In the novelization of the movie Dragonheart, this is Kara's major concern after being raped by King Einon. (In the film it was an Attempted Rape, but implied to have been unsuccessful.) As she says to Bowen later, "What can wash away the stain of soiled innocence?" Bowen is a subversion of the trope, however; he's in love with Kara and insists that this doesn't change anything about his feelings for her. It's also worth noting that only four people are aware that the event ever took place - Einon, Kara, Bowen (to whom she related the matter), and Einon's mother Aislinn, who helped Kara escape afterward.
• In Earth's Children, some Cro-Magnon view Ayla as this upon learning she bore a half-Clan child after being raped by Broud (a Neanderthal); it's not so much because she was raped (which is generally seen as one of the vilest acts imaginable in Cro-Magnon societies) but because they see the Clan as animals and thus see mixed children and those that bear them as "abominations". Notably, Ayla doesn't view herself this way; she knows what happened to her was wrong and hates Broud for it, but she refuses to see herself as lesser or tainted because of it. She also thinks it's disgusting that anyone would have this attitude towards a rape victim. Her love interest Jondalar initially has this reaction, but then realises he actually can't think of Ayla as defiled despite what he grew up believing, instead only feeling sympathy and anger over what happened to her. He still definitely finds her attractive and they go on to fall deeply in love with each other.
• Enchanted: Ariane, the heroine of this medieval Romance Novel, was considered this by her father after she was raped. Even worse, he doesn't believe that she was and instead thinks that it's she who seduced her assailant.
• Anne Rice's The Feast of All Saints (and the miniseries based on it) play this trope deadly straight with Marie Ste. Marie. After her brutal gang rape, orchestrated by her sister, she returns home only to have her mother scream at her repeatedly that she is "ruined" and then attack her. When she flees the house, she goes to the only place she can think of where she will be accepted: Dolly Rose's brothel. As Dolly later says "Sometimes they go to church, and sometimes they come here." Marie herself expresses this attitude to Anna Bella, saying she belongs in the brothel and that she deserved what happened to her.
• Happens to Rebecca in Girls with Sharp Sticks after Mr. Wolfe sexually assaults her at the academy's open house. She is blamed for leading him on and harshly punished, even though she and all the other girls had been given slinky and revealing dresses in order to better show off the "merchandise" to the academy's sponsors; in other words, they were there explicitly to look sexy. Mr. Wolfe, by contrast, gets the comparatively light punishment of a permanent ban from the campus grounds for "theft" (i.e. stealing Rebecca's purity).
• Gone with the Wind: Rhett Butler took a girl out in his carriage without a chaperone and they got held up. Even though nothing had happened between them, the mere possibility that they might have done something naughty was enough for the girl's family to demand that he marry her. He refused and she was "ruined."
• The Grandmother: The backstory of the madwoman Viktorka. She was pursued by a rifleman whose unit was stationed in the area. She resisted his advances, even agreeing to marry the first suitor who came her way after having rejected a string of them previously; however the rifleman succeeded in seducing her. He then left town with his unit, leaving Viktorka pregnant. She went mad, went to live in the wilderness keeping aloof from her family, and was seen throwing her baby into the river. The trope is not played completely straight, as, even though Viktorka goes mad after her pregnancy, her family and the other villagers seem to pity her and even care for her as a local "character" rather than condemn her for her actions.
• This is brought up in Haruhi Suzumiya, when Mikuru asks Kyon if he'll take her if she becomes ruined for marriage by Haruhi's touchy-feely treatment.
• Played for Laughs in High School D×D, where Rossweisse declares she can't ever get married after Issei uses Dress Break on her. It's immediately forgotten about; the joke is that it took her a solid minute to react to suddenly being seen naked - she was more concerned with her clothing being expensive to replace.
• Played for Drama in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? with Sanjouno Haruhime. The poor girl was disowned by her family and ended up sold as a sexual slave, and for years she hoped someone would come and save her. When she meets Bell, at first she refuses his offer to rescue her because, from her perspective, not being "pure" anymore makes her unworthy of being saved by a hero. It takes a hilarious turn when we learn that she's still a virgin, due to always fainting before even being touched by her sexual customers.
• Explicitly subverted with Barra from Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon. Although she was gang-raped after running off to see the Trojan War, it's specifically stated that this wasn't the event that codified her adult life: it's when she started crafting the ax she used to hunt her attackers down that she embraced her identity as an implacable mercenary warrior.
• In the John Carter of Mars series, this trope is subverted: females are lauded for killing themselves rather than enduring such a shame. On the other hand, those who are unable or unwilling to do so suffer no diminished reputation. Princess Thuvia of Ptarth was a slave concubine to White Martian slavers for 15 years, yet she still has suitors such as Carthoris and Prince Astok, who pay no mind to it.
• The Joy Luck Club:
  • One storyteller's mother is forced to become the mistress of a wealthy man after he rapes her and an evil employee of the house (who set up the rape in the first place) tells everyone what has happened and ruins the woman's reputation.
  • Subverted in Lindo's story when she was forced into an arranged marriage. She escapes it by telling her mother-in-law that she was not the woman fated for her husband and that one of the household servants was. She "proves" this by insisting that the child she should have been impregnated with is actually being carried by said servant, claiming that she was impregnated by a ghost of an ancestor. In reality, the servant had just had an affair. The mother-in-law buys the story though, and the story ends with Lindo being sent off to live her own life while the servant marries the guy and is honored by the family, instead of ending up disgraced with an illegitimate child.
• More complicated than one might expect in the Judge Dee books, considering that they're set in Tang China. It is expected that women will remain virgins until married (Dee scolds one man for his laxity in policing his household when it is discovered that his daughter — a murder victim — had been carrying on an affair for some months), and commit suicide if raped, especially after marriage (even if their husband is dead; one woman hangs herself because she feels an "unchaste widow" has no other option). On the other hand, prostitutes are not considered to be ruined by their "unfortunate profession", and can expect to find a marriage with an "honest farmer" if they can get out of said profession with a suitable dowry. Furthermore, Judge Dee himself disagrees with the tradition of suicide for rape victims, and in fact ends up making one such woman his third wife.
• Kat, Incorrigible: In A Tangle of Magicks, Viscount Scarwood eloped with a young woman. She's ruined forever; he's still a perfectly eligible young man, having wounded her brother and suffered no injury in a duel.
• Partial subversion in Lone Huntress. What Lisa's abductors did to her is actually less important to her as an adult than what they did to her tribe — not that it doesn't leave her with a Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality.
• Completely averted in the Mercy Thompson books. Both Mercy and Anna have been raped, and while it is treated as a serious obstacle, both go on to have healthy enjoyable sex lives with their chosen mates.
  • Mercy notes that beating the hell out of her rapist helped a lot. She wonders if it will ever be a recommended therapy technique.
• Fantine in Les Misérables, who never had any parents to guide her, or friends who cared enough about her to warn her, ended up abandoned by her very first love and left to take care of their child. When word breaks out, people treat her like a prostitute until finally that's the only job she can take to save her daughter's life. As with the examples of Tess Durbeyfield and Hester Prynne, the novel is harshly critical of society's treatment of unmarried, non-virginal women (including prostitutes).
• Invoked in The Monk with Antonia; her rapist's enabler cites this as a reason to kill her, and Antonia tells her suitor that she doesn't mind dying since being raped means she couldn't have married him. However, other female characters like Marguerite (who was raped by her second "husband") and Agnes (who became pregnant not only out of marriage but while she was a nun) defy this trope and manage to have happy lives afterward; in fact, Marguerite's parents are specified as overjoyed to have her back and dissuade her from entering a convent.
• Played for Laughs in Monster Girl Doctor, as some girls suggest this is the case after some of Dr. Glenn's more intimate examinations. Sometimes not even then — Tisalia Scythia, a haughty centaur princess, says this verbatim while getting a hoof trim and new shoes (if you know horses, it would be like a human girl screaming bloody murder while getting a pedicure).
• My Forbidden Face (an autobiography written under a pseudonym) discusses this trope, though none of the characters in the novel get raped. The main character reflects that under the Taliban, a woman being raped would be forced to marry her rapist.
• Mary Vaughn from The Neanderthal Parallax manages to avert this. While she is defiled at the start of the first book by the second one she has already consummated the relationship with her love interest, and by the third book, they are onto making babies.
• Diyet/Hariba of Maureen McHugh's "Nekropolis" views herself as this. First because of her brother's adultery, then because she sold herself into sci-fi indentured servitude, then because she falls in love with a biological construct instead of a real human, then because she ran away from her home country and feels alien in her new country, and finally because she has sex with the aforementioned biological construct. The reader may be a little frustrated with her at the end (and depressed) but the original setting was an ultra conservative near future Muslim country, so it makes sense.
• Subverted in Patience and Sarah. After an Attempted Rape, Sarah feels disgusted and embarrassed. It takes Patience's gentle words to help her out of her self-loathing.
• Peter Pan: Tiger Lily has a vendetta against Captain Hook because he stepped on her shadow, in very specific circumstances, when she was six years old, thus leaving her Defiled Forever.
• Invoked by Mary and Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice when Lydia elopes and endangers not only her own reputation and future but that of her entire family; Mr. Collins even goes so far as to say Lydia's death would have been a blessing in comparison. Neither of them seems to realize that pointing this out isn't helping anybody.
• After Artemisia in The Privilege of the Sword is date-raped by her betrothed, she tells her parents and brother what happened and that she doesn't want to marry him anymore. Their response is basically, "If you break the engagement and this gets out, you'll never get another husband."
• It's possible to read Belinda's reaction to the Baron cutting her hair in The Rape of the Lock as this.^note Rape means forcible theft in this context. Then again, considering the entire thing is a satire of the war of the sexes, it's not nearly as grim as the other examples.
• Parodied in Thomas Hardy's poem "The Ruined Maid", in which a working-class Yorkshire lass meets an old friend who now dresses, talks and acts like a high class lady, and her explanation for this is that she was "ruined". The implication is either that, contrary to appearances, her apparently sophisticated lifestyle doesn't make up for her loss of reputation and rejection by the society she grew up in, or that it does, and said rejection was really more like an escape. Or maybe even a bit of both.
• The Scarlet Letter has a reputation for being about this trope, largely among people who haven't read it. Hester Prynne commits adultery and is punished by being forced to stand on a scaffold wearing the eponymous red "A" for one hour. The community's primary concern is getting her to say who the father of her baby Pearl is so that Pearl does not grow up without a father and, later, whether Hester is able to raise Pearl properly on her own. Hester chooses on her own to exile herself to the fringe of the community and keep wearing the scarlet letter because of her own guilt. The rest of the community, in fact, comes to think of her as a kind of saint because of her piety and charitable works. The only one who thinks Hester has been defiled forever is Hester herself, though the novel makes a point that despite Hester's mindset, she does not cripple herself to it and still manages to accomplish things in her life.
• Schooled in Magic: This attitude exists toward women who lose their virginity outside wedlock (at least if they aren't magicians, who are not bound by normal rules), with no one else willing to marry them. Emily thus keeps on the female servants of the previous Baron (who apparently raped them) employed so they'll be able to make a living.
• In Secrets Not Meant to be Kept, Martha Plunkett, who runs a toddler sex ring disguised as a preschool, invokes an age-appropriate version of this trope, telling the kids that their parents won't love them if the parents find out about the molestation. Of course, as such warnings from child molesters often are, this is a lie.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, the Tuerasians brand the foreheads of those guilty of fornication or adultery so everyone will know their social shame. Hamahra fulfills the trope in a different way by viewing rape victims as damaged goods, a cultural element which the Tuerasians condemn as backwards and barbaric. Sharra in particular worries that her family will throw her out after her brief time as a Sex Slave, which prompts a particularly visceral response from Daylen.
  Daylen: "That's a load of drack!"
  Sharra: "But who'll marry me now? My ... my parents won't want me anymore.
  Daylen: "If your parents love you, that isn't true."
• A rather unusual example occurs in Son. The people in the isolated village Claire lives in during the middle section of the book consider it scandalous that she had a baby in her early teens and without a husband. Of course, due to the nature of Birthmothers in her previous community, Claire didn't actually have sex to produce her son, and she decides that she's not ashamed of herself for this.
• Song at Dawn has two contrasting examples:
  • Alis believes of herself after Raymond de Toulouse rapes her and puts her naked body on display for his vassals.
  • Estela doesn't believe this of herself after a traumatic first time with a stable hand because Dragonetz is still romantically interested in her and shows sympathy for her.
• The continent of Westeros in A Song of Ice and Fire is no stranger to this concept:
  • In the case of Robb Stark, despite already being in a marriage agreement, he weds Jeyne Westerling, with whom he slept upon hearing of his siblings' deaths, in order not cause her any dishonor. The consequences of breaking his word end up being very dire for him though.
  • Lysa Tully was married off to Jon Arryn because it was otherwise hard for her family to arrange a betrothal for her. Lysa had had sex and become pregnant with Petyr Baelish out of wedlock, making her a soiled woman in the eyes of the highborn society. Jon was old and desperately in need of an heir, so Lysa's fertility was a good prospect for him.
  • The "right of the first night" that was practiced hundreds of years ago — and still practiced in some areas of the North — can have dire consequences for the women. When Queen Alysanne Targaryen lobbied for the right to be abolished, she cited a story about a woman who was raped by her liege lord after her wedding. Upon returning to her newly-wed husband, he called her a whore for the rest of their marriage, shaming her to the point that she entered the services of a brothel to become one.
  • Aegon V was forced to accept the marriage between his children Jaehaerys and Shaera because Shaera had lost her maidenhood by the time the news became public, and Aegon didn't want to stain her reputation by annulling the marriage.
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles, good high heaven yes. Tess was raped by her employer while sleeping, and it's implied that she was raped again in the month in his service that followed before she slipped away in the dead of night. Because of this, her family and even her previously adoring and doting husband — Angel — consider her a ruined woman. Angel's reaction upon learning her dark and troubled past is especially egregious — he rejects her utterly, considering her an impostor and a monster that destroyed the Tess he was in love with (shockingly, he addresses she is not to blame for the rape). This comes on the back of his admission that he'd had a fling with either a prostitute or a desperate Old Maid, and his being forgiven by her for it. To cut a rather depressing 'It Got Worse' story short, this sort of behavior continues until the only way she can support her family is to become the mistress of the man who raped her in the first place. When she asks the atheistic Angel if they will be together in heaven, he can't even bring himself to say yes. Worthy of note, however, is the fact that this viewpoint is only espoused by characters within the novel. The novel itself was actually considered groundbreaking for not playing the trope straight in the narrative voice. The full title is, "Tess of the D'urbervilles - A Pure Woman, Faithfully Presented".
• The Twilight Saga averts this with Rosalie, who has no angst about being raped. Some detractors have claimed her cavalier attitude is unrealistic. The reason for this is that the rape happened more than seventy years ago, so she's had time to get over it (and kill her rapists).
• Averted in The War Gods at least among hradani. Bahzell rescues Farmah after she is raped in the first book and when she turns up again in the next book she is happily engaged with no stigma attached (although her fiancé is a little upset that Bahzell killed her rapist before he could).
• Wicked Lovely:
  • Averted with Ink Exchange, which is, when you take out the faeries and magickal tattoos, about Leslie reclaiming her life and body after being raped.
  • Same with Niall, as evidenced by his comments to Leslie about how they're survivors, although in his case he would have been Defiled Forever by mortal standards, but 1200 years is a long time to get over things.
• The Wolf Den Trilogy: Dido believes that "everything good" about herself died when she lost her virginity in the brothel. She fears that, because of her defilement, her family wouldn't take her back even if she found them again.
• Swerved in The Young Ancients with the character of Ursula, the fiancée of the crown prince of Noram, who becomes pregnant by a political enemy of his. Exactly nobody cares about her having lovers or even bastards, but she's now unsuitable for a royal marriage precisely because, as she should have understood, her first child must unquestionably be her husband's, the future king. After some fuss trying to figure out a face-saving solution, she is married off to an entirely fictitious minor noble and sent to a remote country estate with a stipend. After a discreet period has passed, her "husband" will tragically die in a riding accident, and she and her child will be welcomed back to court.

Live-Action TV

• Castle uses this with a rare male example, although it has less to do with the fact he had an affair as much as who he was... well, kinda. A member of the New York City Council got caught having an affair with a prostitute. This would've been disastrous for his career, so much that his political opposition kept copies of photos proving the affair as their trump card. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the private detective who got hired to find this secret kept copies for himself and threatened to blackmail the councilman. Long story short, the councilman tried to buy off the blackmailer in one major payoff with money stolen from his own campaign fund and his wife's trust fund, thereby exposing his affair to his wife and his campaign manager. However, he wasn't killed for being 'damaged goods' as much as a 'Political shit storm' and had to be removed from the picture. However, each person involved has a different reason why he was defiled forever, some more personal than others.
  • His wife uses this as a Motive Rant when exposed as having been involved in the killing. The wives of those caught having affairs always get dragged into the mud because their husbands couldn't keep their dicks in their pants and she couldn't live with her family's name being ruined. It's also why she ran in her husband's place when he died - if the photos ever came out, it'd help with her sympathy vote.
  • His friend works at keeping his reputation as pristine clean as possible - the second the news about the affair hits, his career is over. This is why he kills the councilman.
  • His enemies would've benefited for different reasons - The blackmailer could've gotten a large sum of money for easy work had he not gotten his mark murdered while his opponent would've won the election by a landslide had he not been outgambitted by his own PI and the councilman's wife.
• On Dollhouse, the original Eleanor Penn was raped and left for dead as a child; she tried to get over this, even becoming a hostage negotiator so that she could prevent this from happening to others, but eventually killed herself. Fortunately, her personality in Echo winds up getting some posthumous revenge on her rapist.
  Penn!Echo: You can't fight a ghost.
  • Sierra plays with this trope—she does manage to move past both Hearns and Kinnard's treatment of her, but it's notable that even being wiped doesn't fully erase the memories.
• In the Brazilian historical Soap Opera Donha Beija, the titular character is kidnapped and raped by a powerful man, but nobody believes she was forced and instead accuses her of doing that voluntarily. Her fiancé even left her because he didn't want a "fallen woman." She ends as a prostitute as a result, a profession she uses as a way of revenge against the world. While this worked fine and dandy in the original version, when a Foreign Remake decided to "actualize" the story by just placing it in modern times... well, let's say that the backslash because of the Values Dissonance hit it hard.
• Downton Abbey:
  • It's unclear exactly what happened— the episode is deep in Questionable Consent territory, and the assaulter assures her that she'll "still be a virgin for your wedding night"— but when Mary is implied to be sexually assaulted by a visiting Turkish minister, she and her mother treat it as though she had willingly "taken a lover" and is Defiled Forever and unsuitable for a proper marriage. Love Interest Matthew disagrees strenuously with this interpretation of events.
  • After being raped, Anna says several times that she feels unclean and fears that her husband won't want her anymore. It's ultimately subverted. Her husband is more worried about her well-being when he finds out and Anna is able to recover.
• On Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman:
  • In "Another Woman", a young white woman is rescued from the Indians during an Army raid. The townspeople naturally assume that she was raped by them and initially react with sympathy, only to be sickened by the revelation that she actually married one of them and therefore had consensual sex with him, to the point where they all but run her out of town.
  • "The Abduction". Dr. Quinn herself is kidnapped by dog soldiers. When the townspeople discuss her plight and Sully's quest to find her, Hank snarks, "He ain't gonna find her. And if he does, he won't want what's left", obviously assuming that she will be raped (she isn't).
  • "An Eye For Eye". The brother of a young girl who was raped is convinced of this, asking, "What man is going to want her now?"
• One episode of ER concerned a teenage girl who was gang-raped by three of her boyfriend's friends. She continually blames herself for the crime and suspects her boyfriend will blame her as well and likely break up with her now that she is "defiled". He does.
• On General Hospital, a young woman traumatized by memories of being sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend became convinced that she was "bad" and "dirty". To that end, she began hanging out in seedy nightclubs, eventually becoming a stripper because she felt she wasn't good enough to be anything else. When her marriage and several other relationships subsequently fell apart, she asked her therapist point-blank if she had been so damaged by the abuse that she was unlovable.
• Gentleman Jack: Ann Walker is utterly horrified when her rapist's wife dies because she knows he'll want to marry her — and since he already had "relations" with her outside of wedlock, she feels she can't refuse. Fortunately, she eventually opens up to her lover Anne Lister about what's going on, and Miss Lister tells her that the idea that a woman is sullied after being raped is utter nonsense. Miss Walker breaks down in her arms but resolves not to marry him, and Miss Lister decides then and there that someone needs to "do something" about him.
• House of the Dragon: In "King of the Narrow Sea", Alicent Hightower and King Viserys point out to Princess Rhaenyra that she'll be seen as "ruined" just for being seen in the pleasure house with her uncle Daemon regardless of whether she actually had sex with him. Invoked Trope by Daemon, since his motivation for taking Rhaenyra to the pleasure house was to force an Honorable Marriage Proposal between the two of them.
• A mild, Played for Laughs version from How I Met Your Mother.
  Lily: I am gonna have to walk this Earth knowing Barney has touched my boobs.
  Robin: Yeah, it stays with ya. His email reminders don't help.
  • Ted is consistently shown to lose interest in any Girl of the Week who has slept with Barney. While it might have more to do with him not wanting to date a girl who is dumb enough to fall for Barney's schemes (long-term love interests (including the Mother) are shown to be smart enough to see through them), there is an element of this trope at play, albeit Played for Laughs.
• In I, Claudius, Lollia, a Roman matron, commits suicide in front of her husband and friends after being defiled by the emperor Tiberius.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • Detective Olivia Benson has been through all kinds of horrors, physical as well as psychological, without being shown to have suffered much psychological damage. In a later season, she goes undercover as an inmate and a prison guard attempts to force her into oral sex (and is stopped, not even touching her), which is pretty much her worst nightmare come true. She develops PTSD, and for the rest of the season, there's an ongoing subplot about whether she will be able to keep doing her job after experiencing such a trauma.
  • Possibly deconstructed in a season 1 episode where a TV journalist goes public with her rape story in order to put it behind her. The city rallies behind her, and she is widely viewed as a hero for it. Unfortunately, a Loony Fan murders her and her attackers due to their belief in this trope.
  • In another episode, Olivia refuses to believe a victim who claims to have recovered psychologically from being sexually assaulted — the rest of the episode shows she hasn't (she ends up becoming a vigilante), but even before that plot twist happens, Olivia's disbelief is presented in a way that suggests that nobody ever comes to terms with being raped. This likely has a lot to do with the fact that Olivia's mother almost certainly never came to terms with being raped.
  • In yet another one, a young immigrant woman is horrified of having to admit she was raped out of fear that her brother and herself will be deported, and because she's Muslim and therefore no longer capable of finding a husband. Olivia and Casey Novak tell her that her brother doesn't have to find out, as he's more rigid about their religion than she is, but he does anyway. Rather than attack his sister, he attacks Casey, thinking she's the reason his sister isn't "clean" anymore and that by savagely beating her he's saved his family's reputation.
  • Martin Short plays a fake psychic in one episode who justifies his serial rapes by blaming his wife, whom he met long-distance for not staying "pure" before their marriage.
• In New Amsterdam (2008), the episode "Honor" has an Indian-American rape victim being killed by her father because she's no longer a virgin. The flashbacks to the immortal's past also revealed that the protagonist had previously held the same notion that a woman who loses her virginity is defiled until he discovered that she had in fact been raped.
• Outlander: Jamie warns Claire not to let anyone know of Mary's rape, or she'll never be married, which she finds outrageous.
• Oz: Being raped is a stain that will stay with you forever in the eyes of the other prisoners. Truth in Television.
  • Beecher manages to largely overcome it, mostly due to his vicious takedown of said rapist. After that, everyone's convinced he's nuts.
• There was an episode in The Pretender where Jarod investigates the case of a woman who had a mental breakdown after the second time she was raped. Turned out one of her co-workers was secretly the man who raped her years ago in college. Upon meeting her as an adult, he was furious to discover that this trope has not been played and that she has a completely normal life, so he raped her again and switched her medications with anxiety-inducing drugs to make sure that this time she won't recover.
• In the pilot of Reign, this is part of a plot to prevent Mary Queen of Scots from marrying the heir to the French throne. A drug is slipped into her drink and when she falls asleep, a man slips into her room to rape her. As a rape victim, she will no longer be eligible to marry the future king and the Arranged Marriage will fall through. However, she is warned not to drink the wine, and when the rapist enters her room, she screams and alerts the guards.
• Rome:
  • Lucius Vorenus has his children kidnapped and forced into slavery. By the time he finds them, the eldest is being used as a Sex Slave. Vorenus refuses to consider finding a husband for her, as he believes that no worthy husband would marry a woman who'd worked as a prostitute. This further helps to alienate him from his children, who already blame their father for what happened.
  • Jocasta is gang-raped and her father's riches confiscated by the state — as a result, she's not happy that the only candidate for marriage is recently freed slave Posca. But Posca turns out to be quite adept at making money via corrupt political deals and is tolerant of his wife's ditzy ways, so it turns out quite well.
• Al Rawabi School For Girls: When Ruqayyah sends a photo of herself without the hijab to a boy she likes, her mother calls her a whore and tells her that she's "damaged goods" and pulls her out of school.
• Sons of Anarchy: After Gemma is raped by the white supremacists, she keeps the entire thing hidden from Clay out of fear that he won't want to be with someone who is defiled ("Men need to feel like they own their pussy"). In the end it turns out Clay is more compassionate than she gives him credit for.

Manhwa

• In He's Dedicated to Roses Mi-Mi decides to invoke the trope via setting up her rival I-Da to be gang-raped by her delinquent boyfriend Hak-Yoon and his gang, and making sure Ida's friend Juh-Na and Mi-mi's own cousin Shih-Nah (who's in love with I-Da) will be Forced to Watch and thus refuse to associate with I-Da anymore. It backfires, though: not only I-Da is rescued (though her savior, Na-Ru, takes a knife to the gut and almost bleeds to death), but Hak-Yoon is captured and taken to juvie, and neither Juh-Na nor Shih-Nah abandons I-da afterwards. Since Mi-Mi is stupid enough to dump Hak-Yoon right after he's captured, things go downhill for her from then on.

Religion & Mythology

• The Bible:
  • Book of Exodus: Deuteronomy contains a law that states that a woman is not guilty of sexual misconduct if there is evidence that she was forcibly raped (for instance, she was heard crying for help) or if it cannot be proven that she didn't resist.
  • Books of Samuel: In the story of Amnon and his half-sister Tamar in 2 Samuel 13, After Amnon lures Tamar into his rooms while Playing Sick and rapes her, Tamar herself says to him that his rejection of her afterwards is even eviler than the rape.
  • Book of Genesis: In Genesis 34, Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, is raped by Shechem of the Hivite. Then the rapist demands that his father Hamor (the local chieftain) get Dinah for his wife, apparently trying to invoke 'marry me or be defiled forever'. It doesn't work. Jacob's sons go overboard in revenge; Simeon and Levi, having led the slaughter, lose the possibility of being considered next in line for head of the tribe after Reuben (the eldest) loses his right.
  • Book of Exodus contains a law that states that anyone (male or female) who has sex with an animal is to be executed. The animal is also considered Defiled Forever and must be slaughtered.
  • The Four Gospels: Averted. Sexual immorality defiles, but not irredeemably. Paul says in the sixth chapter of 1 Book of Corinthians that a believer's body is considered a temple of God, which is defiled when it's involved in sexual immorality. But it doesn't say defiled forever—and Paul had just said in the same chapter that some of his audience used to be "sexually immoral" before they were "washed" and "sanctified".
• Christianity:
  • In St. Augustine's writings, this trope is averted in the case of rape. He says that if a maiden is raped and doesn't consent in spirit, then she is still a virgin just as if she wasn't raped because she did not bring the rape upon herself and she maintained her purity in mind throughout the experience.
  • Lampshaded by C. S. Lewis in one essay in which he says that scandalmongers deserve it more than prostitutes.
• The Qur'an: Averted with rape. The victim isn't considered defiled, and the perpetrator is given a punishment ranging from lashing to execution. If the crime was adultery however, then both have commited a form of zina and must be executed.
• Classical Mythology:
  • Some versions of the myth of Medusa has her getting raped by Poseidon, then, as punishment for being so tempting, she's transformed into a gorgon.
  • This may be the reason Lucretia of Roman mythology (and likely history) kills herself after naming her rapist. The other is that, in general, Roman nobles were required to commit suicide once their honor was sullied.
• Mabinogion: Averted. Goewin's job is to hold Math fab Mathonwy's feet in her lap since he would die otherwise. After Math is tricked into leaving, his nephews proceed to rape Goewin. When Math comes back, Goewin tells him this (his footholder must be a virgin), and he proceeds to punish his nephews by turning them into mating animals for three years. He also marries Goewin on the spot, so nobody could speak down to her since she was now a queen.
• Arthurian Legend:
  • In Le Morte D Arthur, Malory occasionally invokes this trope either through the rape of women or their willful adultery, and there is quite a bit of both. Most striking, however, is the rape by deception that Morgause uses to sleep with Arthur and beget Mordred, which is counted among Arthur's sins and failings that lead to his kingdom's collapse and his death.
  • It's even worse in The Once and Future King, where Morgause's rape is counted as Arthur's only sin, as he is otherwise pure, upright, wise and cosmopolitan beyond anyone else in his time; the narrator outright states that it is this sin that seals Arthur's doom, even though he did not know he committed it (though the drowning of infants he attempts to solve the problem doesn't help). It's a really disturbing case when you stop and think about it.

Tabletop Games

• In Exalted, the Brides of Ahlat are forbidden from taking lovers outside their own ranks. This even applies when they're raped, a situation which backfired when the Blood Queen made a deal with the Yozi and became akuma. Their patron is very possessive of them, and quite reasonably expects them to be able to fight off a would-be rapist.

Theatre

• Faust: First Part of the Tragedy: Margaret/Gretchen starts off as the typical Satellite Love Interest popular in Goethe's time. Rumors spread when Faust knocks her up and Gretchen's Knight Templar Big Brother Valentino decides to kill her "defiler". He attacks Faust and Mephistopheles at her doorstep and promptly gets Curb Stomped. As he dies, Valentino spews abuse at his sister, setting off Gretchen's personal Trauma Conga Line which breaks the girl completely. By the time Faust returns, he finds her insane and imprisoned for having drowned their child in shame. She no longer recognizes Faust and refuses to leave, Dying Alone in the cold and dark. Goethe does, however, subvert this when God declares Gretchen "saved".

Video Games

• AliceSoft:
  • Subverted in Sengoku Rance with Kouhime's rape. She's heartbroken that she can't get married anymore, but Rance tells her guys like that don't count, makes fun of the rapists' small penises, and promises to marry her himself if no one else will take her.
  • In their Evenicle series, anyone who fails to obey the goddess Eve's law regarding monogamy is cursed with a Mark of Shame similar to that of Cain, branding them an outlaw and forcing any crops or livestock they try to raise to wither and die. This law includes rape victims, meaning not only are rape victims traumatized and barred from True Love, but also dehumanized and forced into a social class of people with no hope of reintegrating into society within an artificial apartheid state. And if you think that's bad, we haven't even gone into the Torture Porn yet.
• Downplayed in Alphadia 2 when the heroine has to violate her moral compass and openly flirt with an assassin who is trying to kill the party in order to get him to drop his guard. She states she feels very dirty afterward.
• The Loathsome Dung Eater in Elden Ring is a Serial Killer who "defiles" his victims so badly even the gods want nothing to do with them, resulting in them being Barred from the Afterlife and reborn as the Humanoid Abomination race known as Omens.
• Camelot in Love of Magic holds this view about premarital sex for women, but not for men.
  Chloe: Erec is furious. And under intense pressure; he has promised Emily's hand to Lord Jerkow, as a bribe to gain his support. To fob him off with pre-used goods would be an intolerable insult.

Visual Novels

• Played for Laughs in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair when Princess Classic Sonia admits to having done "disgraceful things" in front of the cameras and laments that she'll never become Queen in response to Alter Ego Junko revealing that she was broadcasting the second Mutual Killing Game to the Future Foundation.
• Fate/stay night:
  • This is an important part of Sakura's characterization. She's been raped periodically by her adopted brother, and quite a few of the problems in her route arise because she desperately wants to keep Shirou from finding out. Of course, due to Shirou's own problems, he'd never be able to be upset with her over something like that, but her self-image is so low she can't even conceive of that possibility.
  • Ironically, this eventually becomes an inverted example. Her self-image begins to recover and she stops considering herself defiled, especially after she's finally convinced that Shirou's in a relationship with her out of love, not his aforementioned martyr complex. This new self-confidence carries over when Shinji attempts to rape her again. She's overcome her trauma enough to refuse him, and when he becomes violent, she resists...with unexpectedly lethal force. While there's no love lost for him, this also becomes Sakura's Start of Darkness, once The Corruption leads her to wonder why she never thought to do that before...
• Played for Laughs at the start of Umineko: When They Cry while the protag Battler is roughhousing with his tomboy cousin Jessica. After he teases her over her large rack she demands to know if his "elephant" grew as well, leading to him jokingly shouting that he's ruined for marriage.

Webcomics

• In Cross Heart Kotomi's parents reacted this way when she was raped at age nine. Their reaction to it drove her to become introverted as she no longer wanted to be close to people due to fears they would learn her secret and abandon her.
• In Fate/type Redline, Tsukumo says she can't ever get married after being healed by Oryou's saliva. Kanata, her Kid from the Future, is understandably worried about this and insists that she can and must get married, which she brushes up with a "Just Joking" Justification.
• Ménage à 3: Subverted and parodied. In strip #905 (June 28, 2014; NSFW), the semi-deranged Drama Queen Yuki wakes up naked in bed with her arch-enemy and bandmate Sonya, and neither of them can remember what they're doing there. Yuki promptly accuses Sonya of doing "ecchi" things to her in her sleep, and goes into mourning for her "precious innocence". Sonya snarkily points out that, given Yuki's sexual history, this is less than rational. That triggers Yuki's Hair-Trigger Temper — and then things get slightly weird. Yuki subsequently accuses Sonya of re-taking her precious innocence.

Web Original

• Parodied in the Clickhole article 6 Gazebos Forever Sullied By The Blow Jobs That Transpired Therein .
• In the Das Sporking dissection of Eclipse, Mervin notes that Edward seems to have shades of this in his views towards Rosalie, given how he is so obsessed with Bella remaining chaste and is disgusted when Rosalie is brought in by Carlisle, having just been gang-raped.
  Edward Cullen is talking about Rosalie, a woman who just got viciously beaten and effectively raped to death by five men, as if there is something wrong with her.
  In front of her.
  [...]
  * grim* At worst? This is what we conclude.
  Edward: What made you think I’d want anything to do with her, Carlisle? She’s been used.
• Rare Male Example: The Nostalgia Critic's history of sexual abuse has given him an insane amount of problems, and he only comes out of spooning-induced muteness at the end of SWSII to sob that the experience felt like prom night all over again.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time has an episode where Finn forces a goose and a fox to kiss each other. The goose then bursts into tears while crying out that now no man will ever love her because she has been soiled. It was exactly a Does This Remind You of Anything? moment.
  • It also turns out the fox was in love with the goose, but now thinks she'll never love him back because Finn defiled their first kiss. Both examples are subverted at the end, however. The goose hooks up with the gander she loved and the fox just got over it.
  • It's also referenced when a little girl tricks Finn into committing theft. "You've soiled my purity!" Although he's able to use soap to make himself clean again.
• Family Guy:
  • Parodied in a cutaway, where Peter imagines himself as a strawberry. A caterpillar starts eating his way into Peter amidst his screams. Cut to Strawberry-Peter taking a Shower of Angst:
    Peter: He was my neighbor and he violated me. Now I'll never be made into a fancy pie!
  • Another episode is about Peter freaking out when his doctor performs a rectal exam on him, believing himself to have been raped. He angrily scolds himself in the mirror, accusing himself of being sexually promiscuous.
• King of the Hill features an episode that reveals that Hank's dad, Cotton, had a lovechild with a Japanese nurse at the end of World War II and was forced to leave her despite wanting to stay with her. When he returns to Japan years later, he finds that she had to marry an unsuccessful businessman because no respectable man would touch her due to the dishonor of bearing Cotton's illegitimate son.

---