The phrase rape culture is seen as an exaggerated myth made by women; however, rape is real and prevalent. Rape and sexual assault are serious sobering topics. Though many believe the terminology of rape culture overstates things a bit, isn’t such “overblown” terminology the kind that makes people call feminists strident or extremists? The perplexing thing about rape and sexual assault is that we do not treat, talk, or think about them like we would for any other crime. It is impossible to justify an act as monstrous as rape. Although our society claims to despise sexual violence, victims are still the ones who take full responsibility. Our society is implanting senseless theories that a victim should hold accountability for their assault. Unfortunately rape is normalized due to the influence of rape culture; however, because of the new movements currently happening today, we can no longer sweep it under the rug as it needs to be addressed.
Each year, there is an average of 207,754 rape and sexual assault victims. Every two minutes, someone is sexually assaulted. The sexual assault epidemic is prolific as sexual violence is all too common. Rape culture manifests in myriad ways. The sociological concept of rape emphasizes its pervasive nature due to social attitudes of sexuality. At some point, one in five women and one in seventy-one men will experience what it is liked to be raped. Sexual violence affects all of us whether it has happened to us, could happen to us, or could happen to the ones we care about. We do not often empathize with rape victims. Anyone can be raped; however, the perpetrators of sexual violence is overwhelmingly men and that is why I want to talk about sexual violence as a men’s issue. Granted, there are many male survivors of sexual assault. However, men are not conditioned to live their lives in terror, nor are they constantly warned about their alcohol consumption, clothing, or expression of their sexuality. Their actions are not constantly cautioned because they’re less likely to bring violations upon them. The primary targets of the messages and myths sustained by rape culture are women. If the real crime of rape is the violation of another person’s autonomy, then the victim should not be accountable for their assault. What matters is that the perpetrator deliberately ignored the person’s basic human right; however, in the eyes of society, that is not the case.
One reason sexual violence has continued to persist in our society is that we have generally taken the approach of being reactive rather than being proactive. Society has generally framed sexual violence as a woman’s issue. We have to recognize that women deserve a debt of gratitude. Women have started the movement, laid the foundation, and have done the vast majority of the work to nurture it. Women have taken the stance of altering our society’s perception of women and the stance of social, political, and economical equality for all genders, despite of race, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and sexual orientation. Essentially our society fails to acknowledge the efforts of women. Instead, our society presents them with reactive messages of “Don’t walk alone at night,” “Don’t wear that,” “Go with your friends, come home with friends,” “Have a buddy system,” and “Don’t drink too much.” When these are ways we address sexual violence, we are acknowledging the fact that rape is going to happen as if it is inevitable. Instead of using reactive messages as a way to prevent rape, our society must implement a proactive approach such as prevention that will prevent sexual violence from happening to anyone, period. Our society deems to despise sexual violence, but has yet to take a proactive approach. If we are going to be serious about prevention we have to understand who the perpetrators are and not condone victim blaming.
Although men may feel they are all being blamed for the actions of a few, it can be empowering. After all, if the overwhelming number of perpetrators are men, then who has more power to prevent and end sexual violence than men? It is evident that as a society, men are miseducated about what it means to be a man due to the deviant cultural socialization our society has provided for them. On a campus survey, men who met one of the 10 behaviors that met the legal definition of rape, 84 percent of them did not believe their actions to be illegal. This means our greatest challenge in addressing sexual violence is not learning, but unlearning. The difference between rape and sex is informed consent. Informed consent is simply every step of the way, clear unambiguous affirmative consent is freely given. We have all heard that no means no and stop means that you do not have consent, but we have also learned that if we unsure, we go really fast. Society teaches us that if someone does not say anything or is ambiguous, to go for it before their parents come back, before they change their mind, or before they sober up. Rape is better defined as the absence of yes rather than the presence of a no. The reason these definitions of consent are so clear and obvious and yet so convoluted at the same time, is because we are all miseducated by the rape culture. Rape culture encourages, condones, and teaches sexual violence. Rape culture is so pervasive that we have become numb to it. Many do not notice the pervasive nature of rape culture. It is not because it is not out there, but it is because it is everywhere.
There are four aspects of rape culture. First is the objectification of women. Images portrayed on billboards, magazines, or on tv commercials where a woman’s body or body parts are singled out and separated from her as a person and she is viewed primarily as a physical object of male sexual desire (Bartky, 1990) are around us all the time. When we become use to viewing women as these objects over and over again, sooner or later, for some, it is going to be a little easier to treat women like objects which can lead to sexual violence. Second, our culture sends messages that subordinate women’s intelligence, capability, and humanity. It is not that we do not see a women in her full humanity, it is that our culture teaches us not to. Sometimes we view some women with less intelligence, capability, and humanity which can lead to sexual violence. Third, our culture has narrow ways of how men are allowed to feel, think, and behave. There are these external expectations that have been implemented on men in which none of them feel like they can ever measure up to. It leaves men feeling insecure and desperate to prove their manhood according to toxic definitions of masculinity being sexual conquest. This can lead to competitive sex and demeaning and degrading women in an effort to prove masculinity to women, other men, and to themselves. This can lead to sexual violence. Lastly, the intersecting forms of oppression is an aspect of rape culture. One of the forms of oppression emasculates men and when men feel emasculated by oppression they turn to the toxic definitions of masculinity we have been taught and that can lead to sexual violence.
Although it is important to understand who the perpetrators are and hold them accountable for their unjust acts, it is also important to understand the faults of our society. As a community we depict these individuals to be deviant beings of our normal society; however, that is not the case. These individuals are normal beings living in our deviant society. The serial rapist Brent J. Brents caused a media frenzy. The man who terrorized Denver in 2005, was labeled as a monster. It is understandable to put such labels on a man who did something so heinous; however, we forget that there are other factors that contribute to an individual’s reasons. During an interview, Brent’s mother described him as willful, intelligent, a kid who grew up hunting and fishing, ran track, wrestled, and boxed. Brent had a learning disorder. He became frustrated and then angry in school. He started to indulge in drugs and alcohol at age 10 and was in and out of juvenile detention until the age of 18 when he was convicted of raping two children. Brent did monstrous things but that does not make him a monster. Brent had been resonated by mishandled cases of sexual assault and domestic violence not because he was a perpetrator, but because he considered himself a victim. Brent was raped by his father for three year during his early adolescence. When Brent was 12, his father had beaten him so badly that he suffered a left orbital blowout fracture in which his left eye socket was broken. Brent’s father was a violent, sadistic man. In an interview, Brent said that his father has told him that he himself had been beaten and sexually abused as a child by his father. The pattern of abuse and sexual violence repeated as an endless cycle. Pain, degradation, shame. Brent did to others what had been done to him as a child and while he was enduring his abuse, like many victims, he blamed himself. These factors are not an excuse for the horrific violence Brent committed. He made choices; however, knowing what happened to him does help explain why someone could commit such violence with the lack of empathy that his brain was predisposed to it. The abuse inflicted on him was his model. Putting a rapist in the category of a monster may make us feel safe and have a sense of security but it may also be dangerous. If we use these labels to describe perpetrators, it will be difficult to believe that these monsters can be neighbors, coworkers, friends, etc. and that enables them to hide.
The dominant theme of how to prevent sexual assault today is cloaked in the reactive advice our society has provided for us; however, we should turn our focus to a different perspective of not only prevention, but taking it a step further and ask ourselves what are we doing wrong as a culture that we continue to produce rapist. All the perpetrators choose to exert anger, power, and control over someone else and with that choice they are all the same. They all leave pain in their wake. Today we are seeing new generations of serial rapist. Why are we allowing this message to be reinforced to our boys and young men that their worth is liked to their ability to dominate? If we want things to change, why not offer more of the compassion that can be felt with focused attention. Instead of our society implementing more prisons and focusing on punishments, why don’t we try to prevent them. If you help an abused child, you can prevent a lifetime of pain for more than just one person.
If we are going to be effective in ending rape, we need to be clear not just how we are socialized and miseducated, but how we can interrupt and challenge these cultural messages. When we understand the roots of the sexual assault epidemic we can be empowered to intervene as bystanders in a spectrum of behaviors that directly or indirectly lead to sexual violence. We can intervene at the root causes of sexual violence that make those moments possible and acceptable. We can speak up and use our voices. Our society needs to be held accountable for its faults and decrease the influence of rape culture.