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Examples Of Rape Myths

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Through my reading of the article titled “Can she consent to sex after drinking” by Margaret Wente I identified two rape myths. As we know, rape myths are a set of beliefs about rape and sexual assault that feed into rape culture. These uneducated beliefs place the blame on rape victims rather than the perpetrators and attempt to blur the line between rape and consensual sex. In Wente’s article the rape myths I found are “As for those armies of would-be rapists lurking in every shadow – they’re your sons, your grandsons, your nephews and your brothers” and “If two young people get hammered and have drunken sex, he is responsible for his behaviour, but she’s not responsible for hers”. In the first rape myth the author uses a sense of sarcasm, what she is essentially say is that the people who you are calling rapist are in fact just your innocent friends and family. The author is assuming that people who commit acts of sexual violence are not people that we know. She uses this quote to make readers think that rapists are dark, devious, and unknown people. However, we know that in reality this is not the case, in approximately 80-90% of sexual assault cases the perpetrator is someone the victim knows. An overwhelming majority of rapes that occur on campuses are actually done so by the person the victim is dating or an acutance. Although the author tries to assume friends and family are not rapist, studies would argue to the contrary. In the second rape myth the author is
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