Growing up, I was made aware that rape happens. However, I never really heard about or understood what rape culture was until I reached adulthood. As a young girl, I knew about how girls get raped sometimes, but I didn’t know that society skews our perspectives about rape. I think a lot of people still don’t know about that.
For instance, society tells women to not wear short skirts and low-cut tops because they’re asking for trouble. They’re told that they’re tempting men to rape them. However, telling girls their clothing is what caused them to get raped is wrong. What we should be teaching people is to respect a woman whether she is wearing a revealing outfit or a modest one. Because the truth is, people get raped in any type of clothing, and saying that a certain type provokes rape is just giving the rapist an excuse. Nothing justifies rape.
When young women are preparing for college, they’re told not to drink excessively because it makes them lose control of their bodies, which increases their chances of being raped. Yes, people who drink have a harder time communicating with others and controlling their motor skills, but society has us approach this issue wrong. Saying that a rape happened because the victim was drunk is victim blaming. Excessively drunk people are not in the correct mental state to properly give consent, and people should not take advantage of that. Once again, nothing justifies rape, which means that intoxication doesn’t permit the raping of someone.
When people are taught about rape, they usually only hear about how men rape women, but this isn’t always the case. There are so many instances where men are raped, too. Typically, men are raped by other men, but there have been occurrences of men being raped by women. Even though I haven’t heard of a specific case, I would be surprised if women haven’t been raped by other women, too. Rape can happen to anyone by anyone, and part of preventing rape is to inform people of all the possibilities that can occur.
Because rape culture focuses so much on men raping women, it makes men who have been raped feel like they can’t report their incident. They don’t want to be judged for the rape and asked accusatory questions like: Why didn’t you fight back? How could you have let this happen? What people don’t understand about men getting raped is that it’s still rape. It’s scary in the moment, and the attacker could be significantly stronger than the victim. Just because someone got raped, it doesn’t mean that they didn’t try to fight back. Instead of asking questions like the previously mentioned ones, people should focus more on comforting the victim after the incident, but they don’t always think to do this.
However, I really noticed how messed up rape culture was when I went to New Student Orientation last year and listened to a lesson about how to prevent and deal with sexual assault. The whole information session was great except for one portion where we were told to rank different behaviors and actions.
A line was drawn on the white board indicating some sort of scale of “not good” to “bad.” (I don’t recall if the scale was specifically “not good” to “bad,” but it was something similar to that.) At the beginning of the line, someone said that calling someone a “bitch” should go there because it’s not very nice. Then, near the middle of the line we had stuff like hitting your partner. And I bet you have an idea of what went near the end of the line … rape.
That’s what I thought it was going to be, but that wasn’t quite the case.
Instead, we distinguished the different types of rape. There was getting raped by a stranger and getting raped by someone the victim knew … but which was worse? Because we had to rank them in order to put them on the scale. Oh, and then there was raping a spouse, which was considered bad still, but it wasn’t as bad as raping someone who wasn’t married to the rapist. Apparently, making a vow of love for the rest of your life to someone makes it slightly more acceptable to rape him/her.
I was infuriated. I spoke up because I didn’t understand why we were ranking rape. Rape is rape, and it’s wrong no matter who it is done to or who it is done by. However, I was told that the point of this activity was to emphasize how people think there is a difference among all of these things based on society’s viewpoints.
I still wasn’t buying it. Society encourages rape culture, which is flawed and misinforms people. If you’re trying to teach people about how rape is wrong, then you shouldn’t teach it according to how society makes us perceive it, and you definitely shouldn’t rank it. The people teaching this lesson barely focused on the fact that rape shouldn’t be ranked according to type, and part of me wonders if they only said that was a portion of the lesson because I complained about it.
They could have also tried to spin the lesson into saying that everything on the scale was actually equal, but that wouldn’t have worked either. I don’t give a crap if someone calls me a bitch, but I would be furious and upset if I had to deal with any type of rape. This scale was not an effective lesson in my opinion.
However, this lesson taught me what rape culture truly is. As I was able to speak up and say that all rape is equally wrong, the room full of new students receiving the lesson was silent. These people were strangers to me, and they were obviously uncomfortable with my outburst. People thought I was overreacting. They thought that ranking rape wasn’t a big deal. But how are we supposed to know whether or not someone will be made more likely to rape a spouse because at least the person never raped a stranger? Whether or not the lesson was supposed to have the end point of all rape being equally awful, that point was barely brought up during the lesson and could easily be forgotten by someone who may only remember the process of ranking various assaults.
I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that rape is wrong no matter what. Obviously, the rape culture taught by society is flawed because every week I see stories about rape all over the news. It still happens every day to people. Instead of blaming victims’ behaviors and ranking rape, we should be focusing how rape is wrong. Even though the victims’ behaviors aren’t the cause of the rape, we can emphasize how changing certain behaviors will put someone at a lower risk.
For instance, it’s not the victim’s fault is he gets drunk and gets raped, but we can teach people that not getting belligerently drunk could help prevent them from entering a dangerous situation. It’s not the victim’s fault if she gets raped walking home at night, but we can teach people how walking alone at night without something like keys between their fingers or pepper spray on them can be potentially risky. Because even though it’s not the victim’s fault, rape still happens, and no one ever expects it to.
People got uncomfortable when I spoke up during the lesson. Friends have laughed at me when I’ve looked around parking lots late at night as we approach the car. People didn’t think much about when I learned wrestling or when I took a self-defense course. Friends don’t understand why I try not to walk alone places at night.
None of these things should have been uncomfortable, funny, insignificant or confusing to people. We live in a world where people think they’re entitled to other people’s bodies. We live in a world where rape culture is real and causes people to be uninformed or misinformed. I’m not uninformed, so if I have chances to inform other people about how skewed rape culture is or if I have chances to minimize my likelihood of becoming a victim, then I’m going to shamelessly take those opportunities. Rape culture and rape are wrong, and I want other people to understand that, too.
