Rape culture is the trivialization of rape, and it permeates our society to an alarming extent.
I’ve written about a lot of sensitive subjects, things like abortion, white privilege and breaking down traditional gender roles, but nothing is guaranteed to generate more vitriol and hate mail than when I write about rape culture.
People tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to the term rape culture. They think that it’s a way of saying that all men are rapists, or all women are victims. At best, my critics think that I’m fear-mongering; at worst, they think that I’m a “misandrist” who approves of women making false rape accusations. I promise that I’m not a misandrist, and I’m as appalled by false accusations as anyone else.
That being said, I do believe that rape culture is real.
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Let’s start out with a definition:
Rape culture is a system that everyone, men and women, unconsciously participate in. It’s a system that promotes the normalization and trivialization of rape. It’s a system that encourages the idea that male sexual aggression is the norm, and that violence and aggression are themselves sexy.
Three questions that frequently come up are:
- Does rape culture really exist?
- How can rape culture exist when penalties for rape are so heavy?
- How can it exist when people clearly think that rape is such a heinous crime?
First of all, obviously, as stated above, I do believe that rape culture exists. And yes, I understand that there are harsh penalties for rape—some of the stiffest sentences in North America are given to rapists. However, the problem lies in how we talk about rape, and how we perceive it. The problem lies in the fact that many things that should be seen as rape are celebrated as being romantic or sexy or even just normal. Yes, some of the harshest sentences are given to rapists, but often cases are thrown out because the justice system doesn’t view them as “legitimate rape” (to borrow a phrase), or because the victim is pressured into dropping the charges. On top of that, many victims don’t report the fact that they’ve been raped (for a variety of reasons), or else are too afraid to press charges or testify.
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If you want evidence of rape culture, I can give you plenty:
Rape culture is the fact that, when reporting the gang rape of an 11 year old girl, the New York Times chose to quote residents on how badly this event would affect the lives of the perpetrators of the crime. It’s the fact that the New York Times chose to print that the victim wore “makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.” It’s the fact that the article wonders, “how could [the] young men have been drawn into such an act?” as if repeatedly raping a young girl was an accident, instead of a choice that they had made.
Rape culture is blaming the victim, saying that they incited sexual assault by what they wore, how they acted, or where they were. It’s saying that an unconscious woman was sending “mixed signals” to her rapist. It’s telling victims that if only they’d been more careful, more thoughtful, or less vulnerable they wouldn’t have been raped.
Rape culture is the fact that Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old girl, pled guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse”, fled the country and continues to make Oscar-winning movies. It’s the fact that so many celebrities that I used to admire choose to either publicly defend Polanski or else tacitly give him their support by starring in his movies. It’s the fact that Polanski’s victim repeatedly told him no, but he continued to rape her anyway because he thought that she was enjoying it.
This idea that men always want sex is the reason why we are dismissive of female teachers who rape male students. We make jokes like, “You can’t rape the willing!”, and talk about how the victim was living out every schoolboy’s wet dream. We don’t say those types of things when young girls are raped by their teachers, do we? So why the double standard?
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Rape culture is the fact that in the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, Sévérine’s assault is portrayed as normal and even sexy. Sévérine, the latest Bond Girl, was forced into prostitution as a child. Because of this, she has come to view sex as her only currency. Bond agrees to help her by taking out her boss, which makes her feel indebted to her. When Bond arrives in her room unannounced and joins her in the shower uninvited, it’s hard to feel that what’s happening is consensual. Although Sévérine doesn’t tell him to stop, it’s hard to imagine that, given her history, she doesn’t feel as though sex is a payment she owes Bond.
Rape culture is the fact that a good friend of mine was sexually assaulted, publicly at a party, by someone she considered to be a friend. It’s also the fact that she was threatened into silence by people she thought she could trust, and was encouraged by her family not to report her assault, to just “put it behind her” and move on. It’s the fact that while most of her friends supported her in calling out the man who assaulted her, some thought that she was making a big deal over nothing and abandoned her when she was at her most frightened and vulnerable.
Rape culture is the fact that I know so many people who have been sexually assaulted or raped that it would take much more than one article to describe every incident.
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Rape culture is the fact that every concrete example that I’ve given so far has involved a woman as the victim and a man as the rapist. Let’s be really clear on this: this isn’t because men are never raped or sexually assaulted—they are, and we know this. It’s because rape culture prevents men from reporting their assaults; it ridicules male rape victims, and makes a joke out of what they’ve been through.
Rape culture is just as toxic and harmful to men as it is to women.
This harm is what I really want to talk about today. This is the conversation that I’m hoping to start. So often when we talk about rape culture, it turns into an us-versus-them mentality, pitting women against men.
And that’s not fair, and it’s not right—because rape culture hurts all of us.
See, one of the main messages that our culture sends us is that men are naturally sexually aggressive and women are not; our culture also teaches us that men are sex-obsessed and will sleep with just about any willing woman. This idea is pretty well-established as a way to explain and excuse many rapes and assaults on women, but right now I want to look at the hurt this concept does to men. What it means is that at best we ridicule a man who claims to have been raped by a woman, and at worst we totally disbelieve him. There’s this bizarre idea that having an erection means consent, which is just so mind-blowingly wrong and ridiculous that I barely know where to start.
I mean, how does it make sense to say that because you have a physical reaction, you are consenting? Don’t we understand enough about biology to know that that’s just not true?
This idea that men always want sex is the reason why we are dismissive of female teachers who rape male students. We make jokes like, “You can’t rape the willing!”, and talk about how the victim was living out every schoolboy’s wet dream. We don’t say those types of things when young girls are raped by their teachers, do we? So why the double standard?
Because of rape culture. That’s why.
Rape culture means that men raping men is viewed as a funny hazing ritual for certain fraternities.
Rape culture means that we make jokes about prison rape, saying things like, “I’ll make you my bitch,” and “Don’t drop the soap.”
Rape culture is the fact that we think that male rape victims are hilarious, instead of acknowledging that the idea of raping a man deserves the same gravity as raping a woman.
Rape culture means that although I cited above that 1 in 33 men have been sexually assaulted, I know that the number is actually much higher than that. I know that male rape and sexual assault are vastly underreported because of stigma, the shame and fear of disbelief or ridicule. I know that we have no way of learning what the true numbers of male rape and sexual assault survivors are because of the way rape culture teaches us to view men.
I don’t hate men.
I have a husband and a young son, and it scares the shit out of me to think that if either of them were sexually assaulted or raped, they would struggle to get the help they needed. It frightens me to think that I would have an easier time not only reporting a rape or sexual assault, pressing charges, and winning a court case, but also getting access to the services and support that I would need in order to heal. I want to keep my son safe, I want to protect him, but how do I do that in a society that, in many ways, denies that he could ever be the victim of rape?
At the end of the day, what I really want to say is this: rape culture is not a women’s issue. Rape culture is not a feminist issue. Rape culture is everyone’s issue, and we all need to work together to solve this.
—Photo gogoloopie/Flickr
4th Feb 2016 Hello. Dear Anne Theriault, I am in no way, shape or form a FEMINIST, but I write adventure stories (comic book-like) about heroines C.J. Silverstar History 101 which be found at Amazon Books. The asshole “Roosh-V” as featured in the Toronto Sun, Wednesday, February 3rd 2016, well, he is an asshole and I am not actually a violent person, but I have decided to explain to him on his website that if comes to Toronto I have put a bounty on his ass. I do not advocate rape and so with every word spoke from his lips… Read more »
I think there are forms of rape culture out there, but I’d like to disentangle a bunch of things that the article lumps together, because they may or may not be connected to rape culture. A more critical, perhaps less polemical approach might strengthen the argument. First of all, it would be really useful to get a handle on rape culture as a concept if there were some clear boundaries to it. For example, what would a society without rape culture look like? Or, if it’s a relative phenomenon, what would an extreme form of rape culture look like compared… Read more »
Another part that disturbed me. If this is being taught to investigators and I beleive it is, then just how many false reports will be missed because the investigator is being taught to ignore their instincts and just carry one
“Investigators and prosecutors should only act
upon their suspicion that a sexual assault
report is false if these concerns are very serious
and they are based on the evidence
uncovered during the investigation”
So, does that mean that investigators and prosecutor should also only act upon their suspicion that a sexual assault report is true if these concerns are very serious and they are based on the evidence uncovered during the investigation? I can understand the need to make for sure that an accusation truly is false and the need to make sure that “false” comes from the evidence. But at the same time should all determinations be held to that same standard? I would like to believe that investigators and prosectors would only act on their suspicions that a claim is true… Read more »
In my constant search for information about rape, rape culture and also false accusations of rape I was directed to this document. h ttp://www.ndaa.org/pdf/the_voice_vol_3_no_1_2009.pdf It ia a ‘nice’ read, and I won’t got into the many ways in which is it simply ‘building a case’ thus ignoring imperical evidence and manipulating its own definitions but this paragraph really stuck with me “Having demonstrated that the percentage of false sexual assault reports is not as high as many people think, this does not deny their terrible reality. We all know that false reports do really exist, and they are incredibly damaging… Read more »
This is certainly a problem. When it comes to talking about rape, false accusations are limited to lip service and misdirection. “Having demonstrated that the percentage of false sexual assault reports is not as high as many people think, this does not deny their terrible reality. We all know that false reports do really exist, and they are incredibly damaging both to criminal justice personnel and to the countless victims of sexual assault whose credibility they undermine.” Absolutely no mention of the innocent people that are falsely accused. I wonder how the two men (two different stories, that I know… Read more »
What about men who drug and rape women they are in a relationship with as a form of punishment or for the feeling of revenge when they believe they have been wronged? Are these men psychopaths? How do you teach a man who does this that it is wrong when they believe it’s deserved? How do you convict men such as these?
What about men who drug and rape women they are in a relationship with as a form of punishment or for the feeling of revenge when they believe they have been wronged? Are these men psychopaths? How do you teach a man who does this that it is wrong when they believe it’s deserved? How do you convict men such as these? Why do you assume it would only be a man doing this against a woman. I have had to deal with such scenarios in progress, and on each occasion it was a woman using drugs against others –… Read more »
@Annie: You are preaching to the pope.The people who need to hear your message are people like Hillary Clinton,Arrianna Huffington,Rachel Maddow,Melissa Harris Perry and President Obama,not the men and some of the women of GMP.
@MediaHound:I just watched the Melissa Harris Perry show on MSNBC( a feminist newstation masquerading as fair and biased…er unbiased), where deception runs rampant through the purposeful manipulation of language.They were discussing rape and they laid out the role of men in the debate,which is to stop men from raping women.Sound familiar?The evil alliance between Arrianna Huffington and the “liberal-progressive” newsmedia,which has sold its soul to the feminism, should concern fairminded progressive men everywhere.
@ogwriter – Thank you for that. I have not had the pleasure of hearing Melissa Harris Perry’s performance before. She has a fascinating way of changing vocal intonation … and in fact It;s so dramatic, the last time I heard anything lie it was Maria Callas singing Tosca! Melissa Harris Perry has a superb Vibrato without any hint of a voice or talent to get in it’s way.
I wondered about the lifetime numbers as opposed to the last 12 months. If men were 50% of current victims, then why are they just 20% of lifetime victims? Are men abused over longer periods of time so the same guy would appear in multiple years, but would only count as one for lifetime stats. Are women raping men more? Are men more likely to block out childhood sexual abuse? Could it be because the CDC didn’t include a sample of the prison population? Maybe there is a higher incidence of childhood sexual abuse among prisoners. Based on their methodology,… Read more »
Why do you assume that the CDC questions were without gender or sex bias? It took only minutes to spot that issue when the full report was published. I even ripped it to pieces here.
Could be a difference in memory, I’ve heard men forget more than women even for previous trauma. Hell I’ve forgotten most of my trauma’s but all I know is that I have mistrust for humans and bad shit happened as a kid. I can’t even remember 2004-2011 at all.
There is one you left out:
Rape culture is dismissing “unattractive” people’s sexual assaults as something the victims should be thankful for…because if it weren’t for their assailants, they’d never get laid.
I really hate it when people say “No means no” im not a rapist i am not a rape apologist, but it is quite one thing to say “stop” or “NO” and yet still have your hand in my pants and your tongue down my throat. Why ? BECAUSE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS, example. i could put on a hoodie and put a gun in my hand point it at you and say “im not going to shoot you” but i seriously doubt a person would belive it, why? because im still holding a gun, pointing it at you… Read more »
Thank you for including male victims.
At least 1 in 6 men have been the victim of sexual assault; sexual child abuse counts too.
http://1in6.org/the-1-in-6-statistic/
This is very interesting as it addresses the methodology used by others to asses rape and incidences of rape. It’s how they calculate figures such as 1 in 6 and 1 in 4. Many people quote these figures, and assume they know what they mean – but they don’t know where they come from. The 1 in 6 figure is highly emotive and so anyone who questions it is immediately attacked, called nasty names and abused …. So I’m Not Going To Say It’s Wrong. I’m Not Going To Question it at all. That is right I’m going to accept… Read more »
The problem I have is that rape culture theory in its most extreme forms (thankfully not this article) has virtually no room for disagreement or objective challenges. Any attempt to clarify or present alternative explanations or analyze data comes across as “trivializing” or “denial.” The most strident ideologues see rape culture as a self-evident truth that simply cannot be challenged. The very existence of contrary voices then becomes evidence of the rape system defending itself. In this way, it can be very similar to “privilege theory,” in which all counter-arguments are basically evidence of privilege itself. If you disagree with… Read more »
Hard to argue out of that one. If I can’t see the Emperor’s new clothes, then there must be something wrong with me. Wisdom is not complex and it’s not about age. It’s very simple – It’s addressing reality in the moment. Why was the child asking “Why is the old man sitting naked on the horse?” – dead easy – the child had not been factoid bombed into unreality. They had an existence free from #BadMemes. Giving things fancy title and stringing them along with fancy words does not make them real. Why do some write about “rape culture… Read more »
You’re absolutely right. And as a female i find this attitude as offensive as the attitude it claims to oppose. This (very serious) issue CAN be taken to a place where it is simply a bunch of twisted psychos calling every man who dare disagree a rape apologize and calling the women who finally get sick and tired of the nonsense “victims” and treat us like some shattered victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Quite honestly, we live in a very civilized society compared with our ancestors. Even our recent ancestors. To be talking about this as a problem that has gotten… Read more »
Some of the harshest penalties for rape is in North America? What? Where do you get that from? In fact North America has some of the lightest penalties for rape in the world.
First.. The definition for rape is broader though. You have to think of that. Why are there more serial killers in the USA than other parts of the world? There aren’t. It’s a mistake. It’s because we have the definition in place to accuse them and the means necessary to find them. We are masters of classification and have a great deal of money and time invested in “justice” (an umbrella term but you get the idea) Lots of parts of the world the idea of rape conviction is sort of mismanaged or ignored all together. The women don’t come… Read more »
I agree with the article in every detail except the Skyfall example. It seems like you’re projecting your feelings (as in “it’s hard to feel that what’s happening is consensual”) onto fictional characters in an attempt to read rape into the scene. Moreover, the “given her history” comment comes off as extremely judgmental, as though her ability to make her own sexual decisions is compromised due to her childhood and subsequent views on sex. Let’s say in the scene she verbally consented, but every other aspect of the film was the same (ie, the implication of sex with Bond as… Read more »
Denying survivors their agency is a big problem, especially when it is used to silence sex workers voices. Ie, no woman would ever want to be a prostitute, they’re all survivors prolonging their victimisation.
I think bond’s actions were very un-gentlemanly. If I rescued a trafficked woman, I wouldn’t try to have sex with her, but if she is free then her consent counts.
You know, I find it a bit strange that I have so many issues with “rape culture” and the begotten cultural “war” that it entails based on my religion. No, I’m not a conservative Christian, but a pretty moderately liberal Buddhist. I came across a poem awhile back by a Zen Master which says:”Good and evil have no self nature; Holy and unholy are empty names; / In front of the door is the land of stillness and quiet; / Spring comes, grass grows by itself.” In a large part, the last decade of my life has been spent with… Read more »
My thoughts exactly. And this. This is what rape culture looks like to me.
Women Under Siege Project
http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/
@Ben Berlin
The commenter “Crow” was pointing out the situation her in the west which is far different then the third world, it’s truly disingenuous to change or switch the geographical point of discussion midpoint into a different part of the world were the same social realities exist!!
I believe you do know that there is a difference there, but you’re trying to use the realities of the third world as a the same realities here in the west, which is truly unhelpful & muddies the discussion .
Oh I agree with muddied waters, but it’s also symptomatic of the racisms that exists around rape culture and the misuse of the term – only three countries have been described as Rape Cultures. Taboka Meitse did so with South Africa in 1996, with good reason and after many years of sociological analysis of South Africa both before and post-apartheid. In 2002 Prof Upendra Baxi produced a published withering legal opinion view that India was a Rape Culture, in light of how the state government of Gujarat and the Indian National/Federal Government allowed rape and worse to be used as… Read more »
@Not buying it “I believe you do know that there is a difference there, but you’re trying to use the realities of the third world as a the same realities here in the west, which is truly unhelpful & muddies the discussion .” I’m doing no such thing. In fact I’m trying–maybe not successfully–to show how different these two realities are from each other and how little we seem to care. This discussion has been muddy since it began. What I think I hear you saying here is that women outside the western world—the vast majority of women—matter less than… Read more »
“…how little we seem to care…” If you want to use the Royal We for your own views off you go – but as soon as you include a generic group lager than 1 you count me out!
After that I agree very much with you. Why is it that 5% of the female population is to be discussed 100% of the time and in ways that are negative to 100% of the global male population. You can see now why I have issues with generic uses of WE and place me in larger groups for other people’s convenience.
@Ben Berlin
I think we misunderstood each other Sir, I agree with you % 100 Ben, I understood what you were trying to say in the first comment as the typical response of the advocates of the hyperbolic existence of rape culture in the western world, in which every time you try to point out that at least here in the U.S.A & the rest of the western world the realities are different the defense of their argument is to show stats from the third world as if both realities are comparable.
@Ben Berlin
Let me add to that Sir, I have been born outside the U.S.A, third world country that I believe would pass for a 5th or 6th world country, in which most of the boys I know & some what remember from my 7yrs to 10yrs old age had for the most part been forced to become child soldiers!!! , from their I will let you imagine the status of women their & that fact alone makes me truly see the arrogance of ideological demagogues who try to compare both realities as if it is
Ben You Don’t need to convince me! I had to deal with the gate keepers and control freeks at Wikipedia who insisted that “rape culture” and “culture of rape” were not the same. They even refused and would no address the issue of translation – cos if you do direct translation from languages with Romance Roots (French, Italian, Spanish .. even Russian) you get Culture of Rape and not Rape Culture. It was comical being cyber harassed for clarification of how country lists should be organised – did it go alphabetically, in date order for references … and some got… Read more »
…I’m still confused about this topic, should we attribute a sense of unassailable victimhood to every women who’s been sexually assaulted. Can we dare question the validity of her claim or even monitor risky behavior in the hopes of protecting possible future victims of similar crime patterns. Is this Rape Culture? Obviously not. We do not live in a consequence free world and telling college aged women that living their lives in a perpetual state of sexual vulnerability through inebriation and bad decision making does not serve their rational self interest. What “Rape Culture” tells us is that there is… Read more »
Rape culture is blaming the victim, saying that they incited sexual assault by what they wore, how they acted, or where they were. It’s saying that an unconscious woman was sending “mixed signals” to her rapist. It’s telling victims that if only they’d been more careful, more thoughtful, or less vulnerable they wouldn’t have been raped. Anne, have you read Alyssa’s piece? (It’s odd that you didn’t link to the original version on GMP.) You appear to be intentionally mischaracterizing what she wrote. Perhaps you haven’t read it, and are passing along uncritically someone else’s characterization. Either way, this reflects… Read more »
I have read that piece, yes. I first read it on xojane, which is why I linked to that version. I’m going to c&p my response to someone else who asked the same question: Here’s what was said in the article: 1. The author’s friend had been flirting with this woman for weeks 2. They had been flirting heavily and exchanging sexual innuendo the night of the rape 3. They fell asleep together 4. When she woke up he was penetrating her 5. The author says that, yes, it was rape, but we need to talk about the mixed signals… Read more »
Even the author admitted they were not present and all reports were second hand! It’s amazing how so many take words which are third person and tantamount to gossip and forge them into a steel hard reality!
Isn’t that exactly what the author of the piece did? Anne is only reacting to the author’s take on the situation, as reported by her.
… and so grows Absurdia! I find it amazing that people are happier supposedly reporting hearsay with 103% accuracy than going back to the roots and checking them. Have a look at Rape Culture the Film and not what people have been 103% certain of ever since!
“She is saying that the “mixed signals” lead to this man penetrating his friend while she was unconscious. It’s pretty clear.” I agree with this. “It’s saying that an unconscious woman was sending “mixed signals” to her rapist.” This, however, is not an innocuous rephrasing of the first sentence. In this hyperbolic version, now the woman was giving mixed signals while unconscious. This falls outside of the realm of civilized discourse. More importantly, Alyssa never expressed an opinion that the onus should be on women to adjust their behavior to prevent scenarios like this. By my interpretation, she was simply… Read more »
Alyssa was very clear in characterizing this guy’s behavior as rape, from the outset of her essay and repeatedly throughout. That so many have interpreted it as rape apologia is baffling to me. What I understood to be the thrust of her question is thus: how is it that this man, an apparent “nice guy,” would be the slightest bit confused about whether his behavior was rape? What is it about our culture – how we interact with one another; how we communicate or don’t about desire, about sex, about consent; how we’re socialized to be aggressive, or coy, or… Read more »
In too many ways, the discourse that comes from many of the various Feminist groups/sites is woefully inadequate to address the actual human complexity of non-violent, acquaintance assaults. Royse’s article has been, perhaps, the best example of a balanced, human view of the issue that I have yet to come across. But still we just get a chorus of “you’re doing it wrong!” because the article doesn’t immediately jump to essentializing the man in question as a monster whose entire being is simply made up of this one incident. It’s the reality that needs to be addressed, not the fantasy… Read more »
Yup – It’s amazing at the characterisations that are going on and how they are being done. Some read and get it wrong – some don’t read because they know by telepathy that it’s all wrong – and the best one of all is when people read a see nothing amiss and are still mislead and join in the damage of others – and even themselves. I’ve even been looking at how some peeps are attempting to link groups and people to the The Southern Poverty Law Center by a clever dance around a page and using words and Hyper… Read more »
The problem with most rapists is that they are in the mainstream, They maybe have jobs, maybe families, friends. They lie to themselves about what they have done or do. If you tell a lie enough you can start to think it’s the truth. Rapists are accepted for who they are without anyone necessarily knowing the truth about what they do behind closed doors to their friends, co-workers or partners. My ex-boyfriend is a rapist. at least, he raped me on more than one occasion. I can’t say for deffinate that he makes a habit of it. For him, at… Read more »
May I ask why didn’t you take it to trial? and also would you ever allow it to happen again? I only ask this out of curiosity.
I reported it to the police, after 2.5 years. It took a lot of courage to talk to someone about it, to even admit it to myself. He was arrested, questioned and released without charge. Not enough evidence as it was my word against his. The thing with being in an abusive relationship is you (the ‘victim’) aren’t the one with the power. I didn’t allow it to happen. It happened. Saying that I allowed it to happen, well, that almost incriminates me.
Sorry, i mis-read the last part of your comment. I wouldn’t allow it to happen again. That is to say, if i had the choice. The point about rape is really, you don’t have the choice.
Did reporting the crime to the police 2.5 years later bring about any healing or empowerment for yourself?
Why am I not surprised that posts which question basic use of language and how it goes so very wrong don’t get allowed up here? Tis the season for…..
Everyone’s up in arms about prior (aggressive) flirting or other “invitational” behavior does NOT mean actual consent. And I agree to that. However, what we don’t know, and probably never will, is what happened just prior to her falling asleep and he beginning to rape her. (TW for tale of drunken stupor to come.) I have fragments of memories from a party I attended sometime in my mid 20’s, at a house on the outskirts of a village bordering to a forest on the backside. Initially, I was in charge of the punchbowl, and hence got it on a little… Read more »
Once again an author makes the mistake of believing that “The plural of anecdote is fact”.
If we have a tolerance for rape then WHY do we have a sex offender registry for everything from full on brutal assault rape to underage sex between 2 17 year olds. YET not other crime AFAIK has a registry, once you have done your time for murder, that is it, you have a record, but your name isn’t put on a special registry forever.
IMHO, rape culture is being pushed so that we will pass even more draconian laws plain and simple.
…is the fact that.. is it used 7 or 8 times to individual incidents? That is not proof, and it has the same logic as “Red is the fact that…”. The fact that The Term is of unknown origin, of uncertain definition and is assumed to be commonly understood are very worrying facts! How can you have a rational dialogue?
Why am I not surprised that the race issues are glossed over again. It’s all so white middle class rage.
If it’s a black male raped by a white female……what are the odds of justice winning out? I’d give it at least 10 to 1 odds that the court system would lock him up, after all the white knights had finished with it. Worked with a few black guys that told me bluntly they avoided white women, because of the stories/warnings their moms had told them.
Trey – it really has so little to do with conviction rates, but it does have a great deal to do with people who have the courage of their convictions. People such as Loretta Ross, Yulanda Ward and Nkenge Toure and William Fuller and Larry Cannon – Black African Americans who are responsible for the term rape culture even existing! There is even a Movie called “Rape Culture” – filmed 1974 released 1975… but of course the facts keep getting buried in the racial negation that swamps the USA. People kept telling me just how bad it was – but… Read more »
Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I reject the authors definition of rape culture. I prefer a more simple one: Rape Culture is a culture, or elements of a culture, that produces rapes. And there are elements of our culture that lead to rape, that I don’t see people talk about much. Because they don’t sound good to say – but it’s okay, I’ll be the bad guy. As illustrated in my comment above – what about the normalization of male aggressive sexual tendencies when women WANT men to be sexually aggressive? What about all the… Read more »
I agree with you Drew. There is certain discourse limits placed on discussions of overlapping dynamics. We hear lots of discussion on toxic masculinity but very little on toxic femininity, and when we do, it’s typically identified as an end result of toxic masculinity. The framing is stuck on oppressor / oppressed archetypes, which in itself is evidence of high levels of politicization. The much better truth is that these archetypes are fabricated as counterparts – this is really basic, basic stuff that gets usurped by expedient and meaningless political language.
I would much prefer to talk about it in terms of traditional gender roles, and how enforcing those can be harmful to both men and women.
Right, because addressing how women characterize aggressive, violent sex as “exciting” and “sexy” would mean admitting that both men and women contribute to the problem.
Which I did admit, in my post. I said that rape culture is a system that everyone, men and women, participate in. I’m not sure how I could have been any clearer than that?
But what I always see glossed over is how women participate in furthering elements of our culture that encourage rape to happen. Slut Shaming is a part of rape culture. Go ahead and call out women for slut shaming other women. The sexual objectification of women is a part of rape culture. Call out the women who make money being sex objects. “Sex as Power” is a part of rape culture. Call out the women who use sex as a bargaining chip to manipulate men. “Men as Sex Beasts” is a part of rape culture. Call out the women who… Read more »
I am totally happy to do any and all of the things on that list! Well, except for women who make money “being sex objects”, because a) I’m not sure what that means and b) if a woman chooses to be a sex worker, then more power to her – she’s allowed to do whatever she wants. I guess my issue with this whole toxic masculinity vs. toxic femininity thing is that it ends up being more divisive than anything else. It turns into a whole “Well, women do THIS” and “But men do THIS” and neither side benefits. I… Read more »
“Well, except for women who make money “being sex objects”, because a) I’m not sure what that means and b) if a woman chooses to be a sex worker, then more power to her – she’s allowed to do whatever she wants.” Usually when a see some writing about “the sexual objectification of women”, it includes something like a clothing ad where a woman is portrayed as an object, or the “women as decoration” trope (Hooters waitresses, for example), or scantily clad super heroine drawings. In most of those examples we’re given, you have at least one woman – either… Read more »
Anne Rice’s “Sleeping Beauty” erotica is pretty weird. The female character gets repeatedly raped and sexually abused, but but she enjoys all of it. I guess it ‘s basically BDSM erotica. There is also quite a bit of kinky male-male sex in the books. Anne Rice wrlongships stuff long before she got famous with the vampire books. She was writing for a niche market. Defiitely way outside the mainstream at the time.
So a woman writes a book where a woman is “repeatedly raped and sexually abused, but enjoys all of it.”
And it’s “pretty weird”. Not Rape Culture, not evidence that women find rape and sexual abuse exciting, not part of the problem. Just.. pretty weird.
If a man wrote a book where a female character enjoyed being raped, feminists would crucify him. They would hold the book up as a holy grail of evidence that “Men think rape is okay! Men think women want to be raped!!” Yet when a woman does it.. pretty weird.
IDK, I am not into BDSM so I think it’s all pretty weird. I read the Sleeping Beauty books years ago because I was a fan of Anne Rice but it did not do much for me. I don’t know why anyone would get turned on by being abused so someone with more insight than I have would have to explain how it’s different than scenes of male dominance in Bond films.
Uhm… okay but aren’t you forgetting the option men have of withdrawing from the sexual dynamic altogether.. MGTOW, Herbivore Men, Going Gault, ya know something like that?