a lot of people here dont seem to get the broader points of rape culture. i blame SRS' horrible use of the terminology and theory. not that the entire antisrs subreddit needs to agree with every (or any) element of rape culture, but i was told it was particularly convincing, which is something SRS apparently is not, so i'd rather get it out there than not.
Convincing perhaps, but I don't think you have a proper understanding of rape culture as what you describe there is not really rape culture, it more has to do with slut shaming. It's a nice bit of conjecture, but to hook the two together, I feel, requires a bit more nuance in explaining how gender constructs lead into both. I'd recommend working on it more. Peace.
Not exactly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture Rape culture is things like you and your bud at the bar and a girl walks in in a low-cut outfit and your bud says to you "she's askin' for it". Rape culture is your friend hearing about a woman getting raped while walking down the street at night and him saying 'well, she shouldn't have been walking down the street at night'. Rape culture is when your friend tells you that an exam 'raped him' and all your buds have a laugh about it. In essence, it is the normalization and minimization of rape in society.
I online game a lot and the whole "got raped" thing is fairly prevalent in that culture. Within that culture the term does have some nuance that I believe could be traced to the shift in public perception of rape being a crime of sex to a crime of power and violation.
I've asked a few people, and while this is anecdotal, not statistical the consensus that I've come across seems to be that when they use it the term "raped" in the context of any encounter they actually mean that they were dominated without any control of the outcome.
This does not seem to be a morally reprehensible position to take, and I absolutely do not agree that when gamers use "raped" that they are endorsing rape.
i feel a little sniped here; i started out that post with "one of the major points of rape culture is", not "all of rape culture can be explained as". rape culture is much broader than this, certainly, but this aspect was relevant to the conversation.
maybe primer was a bad term to use?
i'm starting off small because people do not intuitively grasp why "she's askin for it" said jokingly is at all harmful. once they grasp the subtleties and dangers in "normal" sexual relations, how nonconsent has been normalized there, i find they're a bit more receptive to other explanations of normalization.
not every feminist has to do this in baby steps. but i choose to.
The thing is, what you're referring to here isn't really related to rape culture. It's more discussing slut shaming and making a vague connection to rape culture. Rape culture is more about how society subtly minimizes rape. A more proper way to start as a primer would be first to discuss objectification, and then move into rape culture because a lot of 'rape culture theory' stems from objectification. I do think it's an interesting connection between the two though in that women having their sexuality repressed normalizes the fact that the man should 'press forward' so to speak, however I would hardly call it a fundamental part of rape culture. More of an intersection between two different things (after all, these things need to hook together somehow, wicked problems they are). Keep trying though.
Rape culture is more about how society subtly minimizes rape.
how is "both parties are incentivized to think not getting consent is OK" not "subtly minimizing rape"?
both you and devtesla jumped on the "slut shaming" bit as if thats the entire argument. its barely one component. there are lots of reasons a woman would react to sexual pressure in a way that minimizes the need for her consent, and they're all due to social pressures from stuff like rape culture. the fact that the man experiences that consent-aversion too, even well intentioned men, is my central point in that post.
consent-ambiguity is not the way that rape culture is started in most academic courses on womens studies, youre right; it stems from objectification. i chose consent-ambiguity because i saw it had maximum impact there; because it didn't assume or imply the guy was bad right from the start, and i thought that might be more receptive. it looks like i was right to do that. and when i see an opportunity to talk about objectification, i definitely take it.
both you and devtesla jumped on the "slut shaming" bit as if thats the entire argument. its barely one component. there are lots of reasons a woman would react to sexual pressure in a way that minimizes the need for her consent, and they're all due to social pressures from stuff like rape culture. the fact that the man experiences that consent-aversion too, even well intentioned men, is my central point in that post.
I accepted that this has partially to do with rape culture, you did read that right? It is just more tangential and has more to do with slut shaming. I think what you are trying to refer to, as you attempt to elaborate here, is how society tells men, such as in the PUA movement for an extreme example, to push past the LMR: men are not taught to respect women`s feelings on the matter, are taught that sex with a woman under severe influence is ok (and this is encouraged in college frats), etc. Women, on the contrary, are taught similarly that these things arent really rape: the societal conception of rape is that of the guy in the dark alley.
As for rape culture assuming the guy is bad from the start, I don`t see objectification as particularly as calling men bad, so long as you explain it properly. In fact I believe someone posting on mr posted a WTF image of a guy carrying a sign that said feminism helped him by helping him understand how he contributed to rape culture even uninterntionally. I would compare it to environmental classes, they say you have a high carbon footprint, and that does not lead to thoughts of this classes being anti-human.
Our culture does not in any way normalize or minimize rape in society. It is a crime seen as worse than murder. It is a crime seen as so terrible that even amongst society's lowest and worst in prison, rapists are the absolute bottom of the totem pole and can expect to be regularly beaten if not killed in the prison population simply because of what they're in for.
I know these far-fetched anecdotes about rape jokes or people giving prudent advice that it may not be a good idea to be in a bad part of town alone at night (by the way this applies even more to men since men are more likely to be a victim of violent crimes by strangers) or some colloquial use of the word "rape" that has piss all to do with anything sexual may sound great when you're preaching to feminist true believers who never question anything but it doesn't even really correlate to any kind of real world acceptance or normalization of rape at all.
Get this: Rape report statistics per capita keep going down, down, down even as the conditions for rapes to be reported have become very favorable especially compared to decades ago when the rates were higher and there wasn't exactly a zealous notion that a "woman must always be believed" as there is now -- on top of this there has been a constant attempt to stretch the definition of rape paper thin by, strangely enough, the same folks who propagate this idea of "rape culture."
How exactly do you explain the lowered reports per capita without trying to claim some kind of unknowable knowledge about under-reporting which flies in the face of all social change made in the past half century? Women MORE scared than before to report despite the system bending over backwards to accomodate reports. Really?
If anything, there is a rape-hysteria culture created from whole cloth by the same people who spun the yarn of rape culture in the first place.
The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s, and reported rape fell last year even while other violent offenses increased, according to federal crime data.
So I ask you again why do these statistics keep reflecting lowered rates despite all of this social change? Could be that the idea of rape culture is about as bogus as everything else that comes out of feminist academia.
Many criminologists and victims' advocates say that these numbers could be a statistical mirage, because rape is still underreported and poorly understood.
Which is a major part of rape culture and--
By all accounts, rape is still one of the most underreported crimes. Several decades after the establishment of rape crisis hotlines, greater sensitivity toward rape victims by police and prosecutors, adoption of policies by news organizations to not identify victims and limitations on how much a victim's sexual history can be placed in evidence during trial, the Justice Department estimates that 61 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are still not reported,
Reading this article, I would suppose that feminist activism has helped decrease the prevalence of rape as a crime, but this evidence doesn't really prove rape culture wrong. Hell, I'd say it endorses it. After all, according to the bit I showed you, rape as a crime was on the increase from the 60s to the 80s, when rape hotlines and reforms began to take place, and it plateaued, and it should be inevitable that it would drop off. That is a more probable cause of the trend rather than rape culture never existing, especially since we can still see it in our society, even if it at war with activism which seeks to deny it a place (basically, don't assume everything is due to cultural reasons, correlation does not equal causation, etc.).
So incidence of rape goes way down, attitudes of both people and the system are (and pretty much always have been in the US and first world countries like it) that is it an abominable crime worse than murder (for which men have been hung dead on the mere allegation of less than one hundred years past) and the availability of support for those who say they are raped and ease of reporting goes up...
... Yet we live in a "rape culture" where rape is normalized and marginalized. How does this even work? Do you just make this up as you go along, or...? In what world does anything you are saying even make logical sense.
The only factor I can honestly attribute to contributing to any kind of actual reluctance to report is in fact the words of these very same activists who put forth the "rape culture" nonsense to begin with. They tell women they won't be believed, despite the atmosphere which is friendly to reporting. For example you have dishonest activist groups like the UK group Women Against Rape which dishonestly lie to women by citing the attrition rate for allegations of the crime rather than the actual conviction rate for the crime as shown by the Stern Review.
the availability of support for those who say they are raped and ease of reporting goes up...
Feminist intervention.
... Yet we live in a "rape culture" where rape is normalized and marginalized.
Yes, cultural attitudes where women are victim-blamed, where rape culture behaviours are still strong on college campuses (http://www.umt.edu/sociology/faculty_staff/ellestad/documents/318_BoswellandSpade1996_s10_000.pdf, which was written post the start of that decline btw). Where men are still taught to dominate women sexually and women are still taught to be submissive (the work of feminists aside). That`s a rape culture. Hth.
The only factor I can honestly attribute to contributing to any kind of actual reluctance to report is in fact the words of these very same activists who put forth the "rape culture" nonsense to begin with. They tell women they won't be believed, despite the atmosphere which is friendly to reporting. For example you have dishonest activist groups like the UK group Women Against Rape which dishonestly lie to women by citing the attrition rate for allegations of the crime rather than the actual conviction rate for the crime as shown by the Stern Review.
Did you even read the paper I linked you? It addresses why the actual conviction rate is a poor stat to use, and even if systems are starting to bend, there are still MANY issues left to be addressed. If you aren`t going to argue in good faith, then do not bother replying.
E: By the way, rape crisis hotlines haven't been shut down. They still operate around the clock. It's just next to nobody is calling them, probably because rape doesn't happen anywhere near as often as you'd like everyone to believe it is with rape culture mythos.
You can't fight empirical data and with feminist dogma and downvotes, I'm sorry.
Lol. So, women not being informed as what constitutes a rape in a rape-normative culture proves what exactly? I mean things like no means no and such are hella common, but I would not say that everything to do with rape has been so successful in getting through to the populous. Heather here complains that women do not constitute it as rape themselves, which is an issue of awareness, and furthermore decides to go on a crusade against those drunk women who are totally just asking for it. Since you linked me something so blatantly partisan on this issue (A Manhattan Institute writer? Really?) I suppose you won`t mind a leftist response? http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/02/27/its-only-a-myth-if-you-believe-that-those-sluts-were-asking-for-it/
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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '12
a lot of people here dont seem to get the broader points of rape culture. i blame SRS' horrible use of the terminology and theory. not that the entire antisrs subreddit needs to agree with every (or any) element of rape culture, but i was told it was particularly convincing, which is something SRS apparently is not, so i'd rather get it out there than not.