Even with more and more education on rape and why it is wrong, the rape culture in America doesn't seem to be getting any better, and here's one of the reason's that I believe we have become stagnant in our progress.
Before I get too far into it, I want to define rape culture for the many out there who might now know what it is. Women Against Violence Against Women, or WAVAW define "Rape Culture" as, "a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women... In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself." While this might seem severe, rape culture is apart of American society, anything from rape jokes, to the constant victim blaming we see by media and different universities across the country.
While women are not the only victims of sexual assault, this constant cycle of blaming the victim, and in this case women, is one of the many things that drive rape culture in America.
One of the biggest things that I think is the biggest perpetrators of rape culture is school dress codes, because it is imprinting so many things on both men and women at young ages. While concepts of modesty differ between cultures, American school dress code requirements are pretty standard across the board. These dress codes have two really big problems; one is the over sexualizing of teenager girls, and the other is placing blame.
Telling a 14-year-old girl that she can't show anything more than four inches above her knee because it is immodest is over sexualizing her body. It's saying that she's showing skin and skin equals sex. This over sexualizing of female students is also saying that women who chose to not dress as conservatively as other, are therefore asking for attention, which brings me into my next point.
Putting strict dress codes on teenage girls in high school are placing the blame on the female students. Instead of teaching the male students to keep their hands to themselves, and to control their own 'sexual urges.' We are instead telling women that they must dress modestly to avoid the attention from men, therefore if female students dress "scandalously" they are just begging for attention. This creates this idea, and pushes rape culture forward, so that society is so apt to telling the victim that they are "asking for it," or "wanted the attention," because of the way they were dressing.
While I do believe that school dress codes aren't the sole thing that is keeping rape culture alive in America, I do believe it's playing its part. I would really like to see rape culture come to an end within my lifetime.
