The Myth Of Rape Culture

Almost two-thirds of sexual assault is committed by someone known to the victim. Yet rape and sexual assault are one of the least reported crime in the united states with only 39% of attacks being reported to the police each year. Rape culture has been present throughout history in the entire world and sadly it continues to exist. Rape culture needs to be talked about more openly, so victims are not afraid to accuse their rapist or attacker. Communities should come together to create a culture of care and stop shaming men, women, and children into victim blaming. Educating society about what is right and wrong while offering victims support can potentially prevent rapes from occurring and putting the sick people who committed the crime into prison.

Many individuals might wonder, what is rape culture? “Rape Culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.” Most women limit their behavior because of the existence of rape. (Marshall University)

“Rape is as American as apple pie,” says blogger Jessica Valenti. She and other feminists describe our society as a “rape culture” where violence against women is almost invisible. According to feminists, films, magazines, fashion, books, music, and humor cooperate in conveying the message that women are there to be used, abused and exploited.(Kitchens, 2015)

It’s in the forefront of our lives, our movies, music, on our social media feeds.

As kids we were taught about “stranger danger;” we were taught to protect ourselves from strangers and as we got older, females were told to protect themselves from getting raped. In this paper, I will discuss how living in a rape culture affects women and men, how does rape myths affect society and how we can change the negative effects of living in a rape culture and rape myths. In order to understand this, we must first define what rape is.

It is six o’clock in the evening, a special news segment on world affairs is on the television. The journalist is doing a piece on inhumane practices that occur in third world countries, one of these travesties being rape. The voices of women who have been stolen from their homes and have been taken advantage of against their own will infiltrate the air. These personal stories have an incredulously powerful impact on those listening and make one think “How could such an outrageous thing happen?” Truth be told, these horrors are not just happening in far-off places, but they are happening right now in the United States of America. The very simple fact that one is oblivious to the magnitude of sexual violence in their very own country is an

The casual misinterpretation of the concept of rape extending all the way to its widespread comical usage is ghastly. The term is used when a sports team beats another sports team by a wide margin, or when someone’s electric bill is higher than it was the on the previous billing statement. In this context, rape is being devalued. Rape is not about uncontrollable sexual desire; one only has to listen in on a Call of Duty game to see that. When that kid crows, “I raped you!” he’s not complimenting his opponent; he is saying he defeated him, dominated him, and humiliated him. That is what rape is about, and that should scare society. The author of Transforming a Rape Culture, Emilie Buchwald, describes rape culture as “a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women.” Whether private or public school, rape is still an epidemic being covered up by university systems. We all have a part to play in allowing rape culture to exist—so, we can all do something to eradicate it.

“Rape is called the most underreported violent crime in America. In a large national survey of American women, only 16% of the rapes, approximately one out of every six, had ever been reported to the police.” (aardvarc.org) Another issue that goes along with rape culture is the fact that it is not reported very often. This is usually, from my knowledge of volunteering at a rape crisis center, because the victim is embarrassed, is scared of retaliation from the rapist, or is emotionally traumatized by the experience. This causes an issue for the victim as well as other members of society. When a rape is not reported the rapist is left free to assault someone else, or even the victim again. To say that only one out of every six victim’s reports being raped leaves five rapists enabled to assault others.

A judge sentences a 50-year-old teacher only 30 days in jail for raping a 14-year-old student and defends it by saying that she “seemed older than her chronological age.” A mother blames teenage girls taking ‘sexy’ selfies for tempting her sons. CNN grieves that the “promising” lives of two high school football players have been ruined because they have been charged with rape, and spends very little time discussing the trauma of the 16-year-old victim. A politician distinguishes “legitimate rape,” while another states that pregnancy from rape is “something that God intended to happen.” This is rape culture.

With a rape happening at regular intervals in the United States, calling assault a significant issue is just putting it gently. Today's era was brought up in a society that has driven numerous individuals to accept that, in certain occasions, an assault is okay. It has turned into a social standard in numerous nations, most dominatingly in the United States. From a youthful age, young ladies are taught to not get assaulted as opposed to young men being taught not to assault. This is all a piece of assault society. Assault society is the social standardization of assault. It is the externalization of ladies and the animalization of men. Assault society lets us know that "young men will be young men" and there is nothing that

Rape culture is everywhere, many people don't take this problem as something important that has existed in our society for many years now:

The leading rape myth used to be about what a woman was wearing. The twisted logic goes like this: Women who wear provocative clothing are sluts who are “asking for it.” But the feminist movement has seriously chipped away at this rape myth. Thousands of women in Muslim countries who wear the burqa, hijab, and dress modestly are raped and sexually assaulted. In India according to the National Crime Registry, a woman is raped every twenty minutes. Egypt’s Interior Ministry reports that 20,000 women and girls are raped every year. Engy Ghozlan of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights anti-harassment campaign said, “If the Ministry of the Interior gets 20,000 then you should multiply it by ten .” The United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan

In today's society, the promotion of rape culture is heavily prevalent. Despite the world making massive headway in a multitude of social injustices, victim blaming and the willingness to ignore the truth in media are still major issues. Although one may not realize, both local and global media frequently create pieces that are biased - using prejudice in favor of one group or individual - to blindly sway public opinion.

Rape is one of the crimes committed in the US. Rape is also one of the most underreported crimes in America and has low prosecution and conviction rates compared to any other violent crimes in America. "Rape Culture" has become a popular term when it comes to rape prevention education and advocacy; it refers to a society that contains within it practices and beliefs that minimize the negative impacts of victimization while accepting and continuing the perpetration of acts of sexual violence.

Most people would agree that as you grow up you learn by seeing, feeling ,touching , smelling, and hearing . Albert Bandura supports this by a theory he created called the Social Learning Theory (McLeod, 2011). Social Learning Theory is a theory that explains that behavior is learned by your social environment, interactions and observations of others. With this theory I would say it supports opinion in which I would say that rape is not something somebody just decides one day to do. I believe that rape is learned throughout time. There are many social and even media factors that sometimes may come off with the intention that rape is acceptable. In some media factors they may even perceive that being forcibly raped is pleasurable. Movies tend to do it often and sometimes movies don 't realize that what people see on television can sometimes influence people to see these acts as a norm. For instance the fact that a college kid is in a frat and he 's in a party there is a good percentage that he would reenact what television had stereotype frats boys to do. Television would label the frat boys as potential rapist and the human mind would consider that when you take on that role as a frat boy. One of the biggest media factors all the way from television to the internet that for so many years that perceive rape as acceptable is pornography.