Rape Culture

[lil bit]

[lil bit]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-kac ... 68577.html

.... associate director of the Center for Women and Community in Amherst, Mass., says popular culture has helped create a mindset where sex is less about intimacy and more about possession. "We've objectified sex. It's almost a commodity now, and its really unattached from any sort of intimacy or emotional experience, and if it's a commodity, people feel okay with doing whatever they can to get it," she said.


"Rape culture is anything that supports a culture where people think that it is okay to use sexual violence to get what they want," Lockwood said. "And, it's usually not about sex. ... It's usually about power."

Exactly what I've been saying from the beginning.


Rape culture is 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," Phillips said.

The whole article is really worth reading.


The idea that males are rowdy, always have been, and always will be, allows us as a society to think that males have less responsibility to act respectfully.

For example, in October 2011, a Yale University fraternity came under fire when members from Delta Kappa Epsilon chanted across campus "No Means Yes, Yes Means Anal." Yale quickly announced that they do not by any means support sexual assault and a public summary of the disciplinary actions was released.

"This was considered kind of a funny sort of thing that a large group of fraternity men were doing, and collectively this sets a tone that says 'this is no big deal' or 'this is what women deserve,'" Phillips said.

Doing away with the "boys will be boys" attitude and in turn holding men responsible for how they speak, act, and feel towards women can seem like a large task.

Lockwood suggests education on healthy relationships starting in elementary school. Education around bullying in schools could also have a significant part to play in stopping this cycle as well.

"So boys who are bullied often are boys who don't fit what is seen as the traditional masculine script," Phillips said. "Girls who get bullied, it's often because they had sex when somebody thinks they shouldn't have, or in a way somebody thinks they shouldn't have, too much, too easily, or whatever the norms are in her particular school. Basically, she's a slut, he's a wuss. It's very gendered."

I think sex education should not just be about the mechanics of sex, but about how relationships work - and that it should be compulsory.

[Philly]

Get a grip. It's not "popular culture". We've had more "rape culture" in almost any previous time in western civilization than we do today. Not that we should stop improving now, but this idea that rape and objectifying women started in the past few decades is insane. Shit in the ancient world if your people lost a war all the women got raped as a matter or normal course. Surely things are much better now.

[Darkhorse]

[nordictruce]

[eynon81]

[The Dharma Bum]

I wish this subject would die, it's horrible

[eynon81]

[exploited]

Rape is about power in many cases. Often it can result from women denying their partner sex, so the partner establishes his dominance by taking it.

That said, I think the rape is power idea is really simplistic. The truth is that all sex is bound up in ideas of power, dominance, submission, etc. Look at BDSM or pain play or the various fetishes that people enjoy. Look at how gay men classify themselves - they are tops or bottoms or switch-hitters. Lesbians are bitches or butches. Look at how some women use sex as a bargaining tool. Look at how some men use it as a punishment. Even the terms are bound up in ideas of power: women "lose" their virginity, as if a state of innocence existed and was then given away to a man.

The point is, saying rape is about power kind of misses the point. It is first about sex, and then it becomes about power depending on the specific situation. That guy who has sex with a really drunk girl is probably just looking to get his rocks off - so it is primarily about sex. But that guy who takes pleasure in drugging women at bars and then violently raping them is surely after a sense of power, control, dominance, getting what he wants when he wants it.

The whole concept spawned from second wave feminism, which should tell you that it raises a very valid point but nonetheless does not really capture the essence of the truth, and often obscures the complexity of the act.

[eynon81]