Lately, the only articles that fill my Facebook feed are either political opinions or about the Stanford rape case. While politics is an interesting topic, nothing gets me more fired up than talking about rape issues in our society. I have said these things before and in the light of the Stanford rape, I will say them again. This is not a victim problem. This is a culture problem.
The definition of a "rape culture" is one where rape and violence against women are normalized due to preconceived notions of gender and sexuality. In a rape culture, victims are blamed for getting themselves raped. In a rape culture, objectification of the body is normal. In a rape culture, rape is downplayed because clothing is provocative and behavior was too flirty and “only no means no.” How do I even begin to convey how wrong that is?
Let’s start with statistics. Statistically, only about 34 of every 100 rapes are even reported. Worse than that, only about six percent of reported rapes lead to arrests. Even worse than that? For every 1,000 rapes, only six rapists will ever go to jail. Let’s talk more statistics. There is a new victim of rape every two minutes. Every eight minutes, that victim is a child. That is 720 victims in a day, of whom 180 are children. It does not seem like rape culture is doing a very good job of preventing rape, does it?
How about the idea that teaching possible victims how they should act and what they should wear is how we should be preventing rape? We tell them that they should watch their drink and learn to stay safe when we should be telling the victimizers not to drug people and not to make individuals feel the need to be concerned over their safety. Let me tell you something, if a man was shot on the street and bled to death on his way to the hospital, no one would rave on about how the victim should’ve been wearing a bulletproof vest or he shouldn’t have let himself bleed out. You would hear no complaints about the injustice of the gunman having his whole life ahead of him ruined because the man he shot had the audacity to die. So how is that different from blaming a victim of rape for causing her own rape? How is that different than saying the Stanford rapist spending more than six months in jail is going to have a negative impact on him? You know what does have a negative impact on a person? Being raped. Can you see how it doesn’t work that way? Let me tell you something else: rape predates miniskirts, flirting does not equal an invitation and being passed out is not saying “go ahead.” One more thing? Rape is not the presence of “no” -- it is the absence of “yes.”
The number of rapists that get away is too high. The number of rapes is too high, period. Why? Because we try to prevent rape by placing prevention responsibility on potential victims instead of potential rapists. That doesn’t prevent rape -- it just causes a different person to be raped. Just because nine girls out of 10 at a small party keep their drinks close and go home with a friend doesn’t mean the one girl that doesn’t won’t be raped. Telling the potential victims to be careful is just telling a rapist to rape the non-careful one. I repeat, it doesn’t work that way.
If we want to prevent rape, we need to take prevention back to the source. We should be teaching people about consent and to not objectify the body. We need to teach people that it is not okay just because you can get away with it. We need to teach people that it is not okay just because she’s wearing a short skirt. We need to teach people that it is not okay because she or he is drunk. We need to teach people that it is not okay. Do you see now? This is not a victim problem. This is a culture problem.
