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Femal It Happens To You Essay

Decent Essays

It is evident that society has created an indestructible gender binary when it is even reproduced in the ideology of crime, which is represented as ‘fear of crime’. As Ferraro explains, the fear of crime emerges from the perceived risk of being a victim of crime and the constrained behaviour – the reaction to the perceived risk (1996). These two concepts are reproduced in the media, leading females to believe they are always at risk of being victims. Occasionally, some productions work to reveal the truth to the public, to alleviate dominant gender ideologies that allow female fear to endure. One such song is Lady Gaga’s Til it Happens to You. This song and video challenges dominant gender ideology because even though women are sexually dominated by men, the song encourages victims to stand up and come together to fight domination. This song also reproduces fear of crime, but in a more realistic way than do other representations of crime in media because of how the video represents the setting, victims, and rapists. Overall, the video works to challenge perceived expectations of rape.
Dominant gender ideology refers to the attitudes regarding the domination of women by males in society, and how the roles, rights, and responsibilities of the genders are in line with the expectation of …show more content…

But also like the dominant gender ideology, fear of crime is reproduced only in the ways society forces it to be reproduced. Fear of crime if exaggerated for women for all crimes except rape because this is the only crime women are more victimized for (Ferraro 1996). Therefore, even though the fear of rape is reproduced in the video, in that it illustrates to women why they should fear rape, the fear is a very real

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