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 - (which also reminded me that it's possible to be a creep to your girlfriend)
“Meet the Predators,” from the fantastic Yes Means Yes, cited in the Captain Awkward article but worth a read on its own well-researched merits.

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