The Damage Caused by Rape Culture
Rape culture, often rooted in the domination and objectification of women, is an environment in which sexual assault and violence towards women are prevalent and dismissed because it’s “normal.” Rape culture is also much more than just sexual violence; it’s about the encouragement of male sexual aggression, social norms that protect rapists, shaming victims, and demands that women make unreasonable sacrifices just to avoid sexual assault. Rape culture is the belief that only certain people rape- and only certain people get raped. Rape culture is making abortion illegal, even for rape victims. Rape culture treats rape as a problem that can be solved by improving the behavior of women rather than the behavior of men. Blaming rape victims doesn’t prevent rape; it limits the life and opportunities of women.
Yes, the majority of rape culture mainly affects women, but it also does lots of harm towards men who are victims of sexual violence. Rape culture not only often ignores the fact that men can be victims and that women can be assaulters, but it also ignores the need for men’s prison reform. Men in prison being threatened with rape is seen as acceptable to committing a crime. This leaves men without legal protection and social support.
Media also plays a part in rape culture because they have created a stereotypical view of what “real” rape looks like. In “real” rape, there is a forcible attack from a male onto a female victim who has been drinking or was being provocative, which is then reported immediately.
Juries, police officers, and prosecutors tend to latch to the stereotypical view of rape.
The military continuously fails to address the sexual assault that occurs. The military's failure to report sexual assault magnifies the social pressure for victims to stay silent. A report from the US Commission on Civil Rights the Department of Defense estimated 26,000 members in the U.S military were raped or sexually assaulted in 2012 alone. Fears from created stigmas meant only around 2,550 victims pursued justice by filling out a report, and only 302 of those cases proceeded to trial. People in service who did report their assault often faced retaliation from superiors, who controlled whether the case would proceed or not. For example, PBS reported a story about one soldier who was raped by a superior in Iraq and reported the assault but had been told that she would be charged with adultery if she pursued her report.
Rape culture comes from centuries of patriarchal ideologies and power that helped develop and support it. When the U.S was founded, men created a system where women’s rights were legally and socially less than a man’s. People tend to try to justify a system like this by saying it was out of morality, tradition, and the need to “protect women''. In reality, it was all about male power over women. Historically men were concerned and wary about giving women any sort of power. In 1680, British jurist Lord Hale stated, "Rape...is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent.” His rape apologist rhetoric took root and flourished in the US justice system. In early U.S court decisions, rape cases were treated as a crime against a woman’s “sexual purity”, instead of it being against her consent. In order to pursue legal action against a man, a woman had to prove she had a “good character”. The woman also had to prove she physically resisted the attacker. In 1833, a New York court stated, "she must resist until exhausted or overpowered, for a jury to find that it was against her will." Many other states required a woman to cry out for help and report her assault immediately for it to be prosecutable. Even if all of the listed requirements were met, the woman’s testimony stood against the respectability of the man, meaning he was less likely to be prosecuted if he socially stood higher than the victim.
Rape culture isn’t something that can easily be solved because people will always have ideologies that are deeply rooted in misogyny. However, there are ways that we can combat rape culture. Speaking out against the root causes for rape culture, redefining masculinity, broadening your understanding of rape culture, and listening to survivors are just a few ways that people can go against rape culture. Recognize that people don’t ask nor deserved to be harassed, abused, or raped no matter what. Join the conversation about why rape jokes that perpetuate rape culture or misogyny aren’t okay. Take time to educate yourself and others on what giving consent looks like.