Is there really a rape culture?
Wikipedia says: "In feminist theory, rape culture is a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality.The sociology of rape culture is studied academically by feminists. There is disagreement over what defines rape culture and as to whether any given societies meet the criteria to exhibit rape culture."
Now that's interesting. It's Wikipedia so we must follow up sources and take that stament with a grain of salt, but nevertheless, that starts with a rather startling claim and then goes on to say that the normalization of rape is not absolutely defined in a way that we ca readily identify it. Furthermore it is identified as a feminist theory--in short it is not defined as a philosophy, a science or a historical body of thought but as a feminist theory. If it were to exist, that would be pretty serious though, right? Let's take a look.
The website Women Against Violence Against Women quotes one woman saying "a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm . . . In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable . . . However . . . much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change. "
Bearing in mind that this is one of the first hits you can find in a searchon what is rape culture, and that this is the firts quote used, I'm going to go withthe idea that this is a prety popular definition within feminism. But I'm not done searching yet.
"quotes3 Rape culture includes jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery, that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable. Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem to change, people in a rape culture think about the persistence of rape as “just the way things are.”" says another anti-rape culture website called Force.
Everyday Feminism has a 25 point list of outrages regarding rape culture, which are nearly all offenses against women. I mention this woman, woman woman thing because sometimes people try to debunk concerns about rape culture theory being all about women as saying that men are affecred negatively too. Men are barely mentioned on these sights which purport to educate our society about feminism and its concerns.
So clearly these two sites and a number of others define feminsm roughly the same way. But here's the question: is it real? Is what they're saying true? Does Western Civilization trivialize rape?
I would also like to narrow down this definition a bit more.
If feminists are so concerned about consent and about power dynamics and rape culture in part revolving around that, why won't they address the issue of women who abuse and engage in sexual misconduct without trivilizing that?
Why do feminists insist that any discussion of sexual morality on the parto f women is victim blaming rather than responsibility for ones own actions?
If feminists are concerned about the identification of culprits and preventing their being able to prey on victims, why do they reject practical analyses and solutions?
Let the discussion begin.
so true
