Rape Culture And Sex-Crime Victims

“Rape is unique. No other violent crime is so fraught with controversy, so enmeshed in dispute and in the politics of gender and sexuality… And within the domain of rape, the most highly charged area of debate concerns the issue of false allegations. For centuries, it has been asserted and assumed that women “cry rape,” that a large proportion of rape allegations are maliciously concocted for purposes of revenge or other motives.”

In “Tell Me There’s No Rape Culture”, published in the Huffington Post in October of 2016, Ali Owens explains the inconsistent theories on how a woman can prevent getting raped to showcase the fact that the underlying problem is that women are being blamed for the rape. The author states that the problem with society is that women are being shamed and silenced by individuals who do not believe in rape culture. Victims are trapped in a lose-lose situation. Women who come forward are asked about how they got into the situation. Why was she walking alone at night? Why didn’t she fight harder? Was she giving off mixed signals? Instead of prosecuting the rapist, more time is spent

(US Department of Justice- Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014). While the numbers are startling, what is most alarming, is that it took eighty years for the government to change a definition that was wrong from the beginning. Moreover, this attitude of ignorance and apathy towards rape victims has trickled down and can be seen in the attitudes of the American population. While many feminists have suggested that rape is a tool used by a patriarchal society to maintain a status quo, and rape myths are tools used to justify this violence against women, what I believe is that rape myths are more pervasive than this explanation. Rape myths and their acceptance is in fact a part of the status quo, determined by the gender role construct reflected in current American society, Without a radical change in views towards gender roles rape myths will continue to be widely accepted, and victims will

America has a proud history of being a country that has many different ethnicities and cultures living within its borders. But one of the most prevalent cultures is one that transcends race or country of origin, rape culture. The term used by modern day feminist and gender activist defines a culture which normalizes rape and sexual assaults because of the deeply rooted societal attitudes towards gender and sexuality. In a rape culture the instances of rape are accepted as everyday occurrences and even as the prerogative of men, resulting in the stigmatization and blame placing of rape victims. Although the phrase “rape culture” is relatively modern, the

A society only becomes a rape culture when “rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture” (“Rape Culture,” n.d.). The United States is a rape culture because of

It is six o’clock in the evening, a special news segment on world affairs is on the television. The journalist is doing a piece on inhumane practices that occur in third world countries, one of these travesties being rape. The voices of women who have been stolen from their homes and have been taken advantage of against their own will infiltrate the air. These personal stories have an incredulously powerful impact on those listening and make one think “How could such an outrageous thing happen?” Truth be told, these horrors are not just happening in far-off places, but they are happening right now in the United States of America. The very simple fact that one is oblivious to the magnitude of sexual violence in their very own country is an

In the United States individuals of both genders are being sexually violated, yet way too often their offenders often get off scot free or with very little punishment. Rape culture exists because we don't believe it does. The first step to ending such culture is to name the real problem, which is victim-blaming. We treat victims like they’re responsible, which would be obscenely different for any other criminal charge. When a sexual assault is reported on the news the first questions the media asks are about the victim’s sobriety, clothes, or sexuality. The right question is, “What made the attacker think this was acceptable?” Changing a mind set that has been engraved in us for centuries is going to be strenous, yet not impossible. It starts

“Rape is called the most underreported violent crime in America. In a large national survey of American women, only 16% of the rapes, approximately one out of every six, had ever been reported to the police.” (aardvarc.org) Another issue that goes along with rape culture is the fact that it is not reported very often. This is usually, from my knowledge of volunteering at a rape crisis center, because the victim is embarrassed, is scared of retaliation from the rapist, or is emotionally traumatized by the experience. This causes an issue for the victim as well as other members of society. When a rape is not reported the rapist is left free to assault someone else, or even the victim again. To say that only one out of every six victim’s reports being raped leaves five rapists enabled to assault others.

The prevalence of rape in the U.S. has become so great that you as a woman have a 20% chance of being raped in your lifetime. That prisoners have a 10% chance of being raped. That LGBTQ prisoners have 15 times greater chance of being raped. And that you are twice as likely to be raped as to get breast cancer. That 32,000 women are impregnated each year against their

Acknowledging that rape culture is prominent in today’s society is a bitter taste many do not want to face, reasonably. This could be viewed as extreme men hating feminist’s propaganda with a desire only to create problems that do not already exist. While it is not unheard of to just scream for attention, when the United States is ranked 13th in the world for

According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), approximately 207,500 rapes occur annually in the United States (“Statistics RAINN”). If we were to spread that out evenly over the 365 days of a year, that would equate to a sexual assault occurring every two minutes. Although the amount of rapes occurring annually has decreased by 60% since 1993 (“Statistics about Sexual Violence”), that’s still an incredible amount of sexual violence occurring yearly--- a facet of American culture that must be addressed. Although women are not the only victims of rape, and men are not the only perpetrators of rape, this essay will strictly refer to male-on-female cases of rape. The factors present in a society that naturalize or rationalize rape and sexual violence are known in Women’s Studies as ‘rape culture’. Many would deny its existence, but here in the United States, ‘rape culture’ is prevalent in the media, social roles, and in the way we educate our children about rape prevention. This gives rise to a society wherein rape is tolerated and even ignored, and it absolutely must be stopped. I will first outline the problematic facets of society that perpetuate rape culture, and then identify solutions to help eradicate the problem.

In today's society, the promotion of rape culture is heavily prevalent. Despite the world making massive headway in a multitude of social injustices, victim blaming and the willingness to ignore the truth in media are still major issues. Although one may not realize, both local and global media frequently create pieces that are biased - using prejudice in favor of one group or individual - to blindly sway public opinion.

It is not unexpected that we as a society do not want to recognize that assault and sexual brutality is standard. This is no surprise because most of us would rather believe that the terrible realities we hear about are not real or that, at least, we cannot do anything about it. The fact of the matter is, the acceptance of rape as normal is terrible. Be that as it may, by denying its existence, we keep on allowing attackers to go unpunished and leave survivors hushed. Rape culture is a giant issue; however, in the event that we focus on tending to each of these parts, we can move even closer to eradicating rape culture.

A prime example of rape culture is blaming the victim when it was not his or her fault. He or she is accused of being to promiscuous and that what she was wearing is the reason that he or she was raped. It is never the victims fault. We live in a society where it is okay for men to force themselves on to when with no issue and no repercussions. We teach do not get raped instead of do not rape. According to the National Statistic Violence Resource Center, every one in five women and one in every sixty-one will be raped at some point in their life. Rape should not be accusable. Our society does not hold the abuser accountable for their actions. A prime example of this is a man named Brock Turner. He was accused of raping an unconscious woman at Stanford University after a night of heavy drinking. The average time rapists are convicted is 9.8 years, he only got six months because of his swimming career. Turner got out in three months. His sentence was much shorter than it should have been. This happens a lot more than it should. The perpetrators hardly ever get their just desserts. About 60% of sexual assaults get reported and even less then that get investigated. One reason it is that way is because the victims are scared to share what happen to them because the backlash against them. They would be accused of lying or they would be blamed for the whole event. Making excuses against the rape of men and

In class this semester, we’ve spent a particularly long time defining and addressing the problems associated with rape culture. Rape culture can be defined as “a culture in which dominant cultural ideologies, media images, social practices, and societal institutions support and condone sexual abuse by normalizing, trivializing and eroticizing male violence against women and blaming victims for their own abuse” (Huffington Post). Rape culture can be as simple as a T.V. commercial or as complex as a rapist blaming the victim for “asking for it” and everything in between. Rape culture is something that effects everyone; not just women, but men too. I’m really glad that we were given the opportunity to spread the word throughout the community;