What's rape culture? Look around, ladies and gentlemen, because you're living in it. "Rape culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent, and in which sexual violence against women [and men] is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture." Basically, rape culture is when people take the blame away from the rapist. When that blame is taken away from its rightful owner, it has to be placed somewhere, but where? If not the rapist, then the victim.
First off, let's talk about sex. Good, old fashioned, consensual sex. The kind where two partners consent to having physical contact. Where it's agreed upon that you have permission. Do you see a trend here? The difference between sex and rape is that both parties are consenting, sober adults. So now let's talk about when consent isn't given. "They said 'yes,'" doesn't matter if the "they" you're referring to was under the influence, whether it be drugs or alcohol. "They've said 'yes' before," is irrelevant if they didn't say yes each and every time. Attire, or lack there of, is not consent. Reputation is not consent. Marriage is not consent. No means no, ladies and gentlemen.
And what about statutory rape? Children are children, no matter how old they look, act, and even if they give consent. If a child is communicating with you in a sexual manner, it is up to you, the adult, to shut it down. Don't let them believe that it is okay, because it's not. I can't tell you how many times I see college aged adults commenting on high school/middle school students' pictures saying things along the lines of, "Jail bait." Can we stop?! It's not okay to do, let alone joke about. That is a child, you are an adult. Living in a rape culture means making light of a serious situation, and you are doing just that by entertaining the idea that it is okay to call a fourteen year old 'jail bait'.
There have also been some tweets on social media getting a lot of attention. In these tweets, people say things along the lines of, "If you dress that way, what do you expect to happen?" Maybe they expect people to look, not touch. Maybe, just maybe, they expect people to not take their attire as a form of consent. Someone very close to me once said, "It does not matter if you are laying in the middle of the street naked, no one has the right to your body except for you and the people you give permission to." My favorite tweet (sarcasm) was by presidential candidate Donald Trump. This is what the man who is trying to become our country's leader said, "26,000 unreported sexual [assaults] in the military [and] only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men [and] women together?" What they expected, Mr. Trump, was for men to not rape women and for women to not rape men. They expected people to respect others' decisions and bodies. They expected grown adults to act with self control. If you say things that normalize rape, you take the blame away from the rapist. You make the victim feel at fault and as though what happened to them was inevitable, and you make the rapist believe that forcing themselves upon another is okay.
Men and women stand together at the Slut Walk to take a stand against rape culture. One woman's sign explains it perfectly:
I'm not asking you to read the entire sign, because her first sentence pretty much sums it up. "My rapist doesn't know he's a rapist." Our society writes off and normalizes rape so often that these people don't even know that what they are doing is rape.
Remember that consent is the sexiest thing a person can give you.
On that note, I'll leave you with this video:
