Ship it, re notes on rape culture & media & men

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+# This Is Rape Culture
+
+In the last couple of years, I've been interacting with folks who take a more
+active hand in gender and social issues, and it's changed the way I see the
+word "rape". It didn't entirely make sense to me how so many people could be
+self-identified victims of rape culture while so few people are, even in a
+euphemistic way, identifiable as rapists, so I dug a bit at my assumptions.
+
+Growing up immersed in what I now recognize as the early stages of modern
+"news" culture, rape was always reported as a violent act. Something so black
+and white that if you committed rape, you would know yourself to be a rapist.
+Media descriptions of rape and of rapists focussed on acts of overt violence:
+"she was in the wrong neighbourhood and got raped at knifepoint", "held down
+and raped", and so on.
+
+Reading more recent postings on the idea of "rape culture", however, paints a
+very different picture of the same word. "Raped at a party", "too drunk to
+consent", and other depictions of rape as an act of exploitation (or,
+appallingly, convenience or indifference) rather than violence.
+
+Let me be perfectly clear here: without _active consent_, any sexual contact
+is rape or is on the road to it. In that sense, violence, exploitation,
+intoxication and other forms of coercion are interchangeable and equally vile.
+
+However, when the public idea of rape is limited to rapes with overt violence,
+it's really easy to excuse non-violent coerced sex as "not really rape". After
+all, you didn't hit her, did you? She never said _no_ and _meant it_, right?
+
+I don't know what I'm going to do with this insight, yet, but I think it's an
+important piece towards educating the next generation to be more awesome and
+less dangerous to each other and un-learning any bad habits and beliefs I
+already have.
+
+Relevant reading:
+
+* ["My friend group has a case of Creepy Dude", by Captain
+  Awkward](http://captainawkward.com/2012/08/07/322-323-my-friend-group-has-a-case-of-the-creepy-dude-how-do-we-clear-that-up/)
+  (which also reminded me that it's possible to be a creep to your girlfriend)
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