With Kesha making headlines over her lawsuit against her recording label, rape culture has become something we’ve all been discussing lately. Sadly, I’ve seen more people than I care to claiming that Kesha made up her charges. It is something that needs to be addressed, and it is something that affects us all.
Rape culture has become prevalent in our culture lately, and it is not just because people are marginalizing or dismissing rape. It’s because society tends to blame rape on the victims' circumstances; what they were drinking, what they were wearing, what their relationship is to the abuser was, and so on. Rape should be blamed on nothing other than the rapists. It's that simple.
This isn’t just a problem women face though they tend to be the ones most obviously affected. No matter what gender a victim is, however, they still face disbelief. Men aren’t believed because people think men can’t be raped, which is false. Women aren’t believed because people think they’re looking for attention or "getting petty revenge," which is usually false as well.
False reports account for between 2 percent to 8 percent of rape cases, which isn’t much more than false reporting other crimes, like theft. You don’t ever hear someone saying "You deserve to be robbed, you were asking for it because you owned something nice."
One in five women have experienced an attempted rape and it’s accepted as normal in our society rather than being considered a crisis. We have a problem.
In our culture, people keep scholarships and jobs after they have victimized someone. Rapists have legal rights to the children that are products of their crime in around thirty states. People are scared to speak out because they know the backlash they’ll experience because of it. It’s the little things that make our culture a rape culture, like when people say someone "was asking for it."
This is problematic for everyone because many rape victims remain quiet when it happens for fear of not being believed or being shamed for being a victim.
It encourages rapists because they aren't scared of the backlash that they'll receive from harming others mentally and physically.
97 percent of rapists never see a day of jail time for their crimes even though people spend years in jail for nonviolent crimes. The victims, however, lose friends, significant others, are taunted, and even blamed for a crime committed against them. The victims are often not believed by the authorities, and sometimes don’t even go to the authorities for fear of it.
People in out culture also think it's okay to joke about rape. A joke like that not only brings up a victims past, but encourages rapists because it makes light of a serious situation. The person making the joke might never do such a thing, but they’re contributing to a culture that makes it possible.
Those jokes are a small part of rape culture though. We shouldn’t have to live in a society where victims are blamed for crimes committed against them.
No one is ever asking to be raped.
It doesn’t matter what they were wearing, where they were, what they were doing, or what gender they are. Every day, someone has to face their rapist in their day-to-day life because their report was ignored. Our society has a problem. When people are allowed to stay in school and keep scholarships after being convicted of rape, it's clear that our society has a problem.
This isn’t something we can sweep under the rug. It’s something people need to address and continue to address until it can be changed.
Rape culture isn’t a joke, and it affects everyone.
