Rape Stereotypes

Recently, I have had an opportunity to watch your TED talk show and analyze one of your political cartoons for school. As a teenage girl of a new generation, I was outraged and disappointed with our society by the gender prejudice demonstrated in your cartoon. Meanwhile, I was able to look into your effort to raise awareness of gender issues and to deliver your message of how women are often wrongly stereotyped as being the main causes of rape by the public. And, I concur with your point. I was stimulated by your challenge to confront the institutionalized behavior of people that stereotypes women, and this encouraged me to write a letter to you to show my support and share my opinion.

“Rape is unique. No other violent crime is so fraught with controversy, so enmeshed in dispute and in the politics of gender and sexuality… And within the domain of rape, the most highly charged area of debate concerns the issue of false allegations. For centuries, it has been asserted and assumed that women “cry rape,” that a large proportion of rape allegations are maliciously concocted for purposes of revenge or other motives.”

The stereotype of who a typical sexual assault victim is, is also detrimental to abide by as male victims of sexual assault will often fear being blamed and feel emasculated as a result of their victimisation. The continuation of stereotypic types of victims when considering a certain crime can often distort the seriousness of sexual

Common phrases college students toss around during their time spent on campus are “freshman 15”, “syllabus week”, or “rape culture”. Culture is understood to be something that people engage in together as a society. Rape culture is when people of a society excuse or tolerate sexual violence. It is when sexual assault, rape, and harassment are ignored, belittled, normalized, or made into jokes. Rape Culture is when pop music tells women “you know you want it” because of these “blurred lines” (Thicke), when society supports athletes who are charged with rape and then calling their victims career-destroyers, when companies create advertisements using women in order to promote business, when people believe that girls allow themselves to be raped,

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

Benevolent sexists apparently consider that women need to adopt a more conservative attitude in order to avoid falling victim to rapists. The article focuses on an Australian research that was meant to analyze an acquaintance rape scenario and determine the impact that gender and victim stereotypes can have on such a case. The study generated information showing that society has a different understanding of victim stereotypes in comparison to gender stereotypes and that factors related to each of them can be altered with the purpose of making it possible for them to fit a particular

Sexual assault is not just a crime against an individual, it affects families, the community, and society as a whole. In recent years, our society has shifted to one of rape culture and rape myth. Rape myths are erroneous, stereotypical, and prejudicial beliefs about rape victims and reasons of sexual assault. Rape myths can impact survivors of assault, as well as the behavior and effectiveness of family, friends, medical and social services, and law enforcement (Rape Victim Advocates, 2016). Rape impacts our society by attacking the cohesion and mutual protection that makes a society. When we allow such crimes to go without the most vigorous and vigilant investigation and punishment, we allow for whole segments of society to be diminished, we are sending the message that society is okay with rape (Abbey,

Tatianna Villegas Mrs.Sheppard AP Lang & Comp 18 April 2016 Rough Draft 1: Victim Blaming in Rape Cases Rape is a crime in which one person forces another person with threats, physical force or deception to have sex or sexual contact. In many cases rape is often through penetration, but victims are submitted to

Findings Report Our group of researchers decided to conduct a study in order to gather information on the rise of sexual assault allegations. We were interested in concluding whether or not the rise of sexual assault allegations in the media tested the validity regarding those accusations. Since Penn State has been exposed to a number of sexual assault scandals in the past few years, Penn State students were an ideal focus group because most students are familiar with our subject. With our phenomenon being a sensitive topic for a handful of our subjects, we decided to conduct a study in which all of our subjects could remain anonymous. Thus, we created a survey composed of nine questions, keeping in mind that this topic can be triggering for

Sexual assault has become an ongoing problem across the United States, especially on college campuses. It is not uncommon for one to expect a female dressed scandalously or a male under the influence to experience sexual assault. There is no known definition of consent or when consent is given that

Peer groups and individuals have been identified as a major contributor for perpetration of sexual assaults surrounding college and university males in the U.S. According to esteemed academic professors Laura Widman and Michael Olson, it has been reported that a self-report of proclivity to commit rape in a hypothetical scenario or having a sexual history of aggression can produce a positive correlation with the endorsement of the rape tolerance or the rape supportive attitudes in men (Widman and Olson, 2012: p. 813; Koss and Dinero, 1988: p. 133). The acceptance of rape myths, as well as, the prejudicial and stereotypical beliefs about rape and the circumstances can surround the context of rape that the belief is only subject to ‘promiscuous women only get raped’ and ‘women are asking to be raped’ are correlated with the self-reports history of sexual aggression and the willingness to commit rape amongst men in the future (Lonsway and Fitzgerald, 1994: p.

A weakness in Maedl article was that the number of women interviewed was a few women, only twenty-five women at the Panzi hospital. The author does mention why they are interviewing such a small number when the author mentions a higher number of reported rape cases. If the number of women interview is small it could be hard for the reader to visualize the actual severity of women experiencing rape with the percentages given. With a larger number of women interviewed, there could be more diverse statements taken from the women and a pattern could be seen in the responses. This would then result in some clarity around the large number of women who have registered as rape victims in the DRC. I also thought that the author should expand her qualifications

The main reason we will examine is “Rape Myth Acceptance” (Stahl, Eek, & Kazemi). According to Stahl, Eek, and Kazemi, rape myths are beliefs that are mostly untrue but widely accepted as a means to justify sexual aggression towards females (2010). Some examples of rape myth acceptance include: the belief that a women is lying about the rape and the belief that the woman did something to provoke the rape. The public uses these beliefs to make victims feel ashamed about the crime that took place. As a result of this, women are “highly reluctant to report that they have been raped” (Stahl, Eek, & Kazemi 2010). As well as very unlikely to testify in a court of law against their attacker. There is an underlining belief that there is always some way that the victim could have prevented the crime which proves detrimental when attempting to get the victim to

Every 2 minutes an American, mostly female, is sexually assaulted, this means on average there are 288,820 victims of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States (www.rainn.org). Throughout this paper I will argue why men need to always have consent before having sex with a female. I will argue this by talking about the consequences you will receive without getting consent. I believe men should always have consent because if they do not they could be charged years for rape and be put in jail or even prison. Critics may say that most girls falsely accuse men of rape or that most of the girls are just asking for it. Even if this was true people should still want to further investigate the situation, because most of the time the victim is being honest when accusing somebody. The critics are mistaken because statistically not that many girls falsely accuse men of sexual assault. According to National Review

In the United States rape completely toxic and it’s a dangerous myth. On college campuses where drinking is prevalent, most victims don’t report their assault to the police because of the fear of being blamed for the incident. “A recent National Crime Victimization report showed that only 55% of sexual assaults reported in their survey were reported to the police” (Hayes, Abbott, Cook 2016). Hayes goes on to explain that rape myths are defined as “attitudes and false belief held