Rape Culture

As a woman, I have been told countless times that it isn’t safe to walk alone at night. It isn’t safe to go to a bar alone or walk through a parking garage. If you really think about it, these things seem insane; however, it is a part of a woman’s every day truth. And, in fact, we have become completely desensitized to that truth. I don’t think twice about the fact that I need to constantly have another companion with me. The reason for this is because of the obsession in our culture with domination and anger. Humans are inherently aggressive creatures, who naturally believe in survival of the fittest. We have been this way since the beginning of time, when cavemen had to survive off of being the most fit and the most healthy in order to survive in the wild, and it has stemmed further from there.  This has simply been amplified by the use of media, which shows men the way that they “need” to be, so that they can be “real men”. By use of video games, movies, tv, and just ads in general, the social norm is to rape and take what is yours. Unfortunately, not only is this a United States problem, but also seems to be a world problem. All of these things support the idea of rape culture; or the set of beliefs that encourages males to rape, and tells women that this is a normal thing to accept.

Rape has always been around, however, Rape Culture itself did not come to light until the 1970s, when feminists decided to take a stand against this growing problem. Rape culture is one of the most prevalent themes everywhere in the world. Rape culture, in  my opinion, stems from this domination. This idea that for men (although, yes, men can be raped too), the ultimate form of showing your masculinity and full reign over someone is to take full control, regardless of whether or not they want you to. This is only propelled by media; where in games & tv shows constantly are made to make rape the normal. If you are to flip through your television, you will find countless examples of women who are sexualized and abused. In video games, take grand theft auto for example, it is very common for women to be seen as objects that you can beat up and sexualize.

Rape culture has also become very highlighted recently in the media due to the increasing number of sexual assaults on college campuses. I recently watched the movie “It Happened Here”, which is about the stories of female college students who were raped and then treated very poorly by the school’s administration after the fact. In this documentary, the female students said that they believe that the main reason rape culture was so prevalent at their schools was because of the huge sports culture also co-existing. For example, at UConn, many instances of severe violence on female students by the football players frequently goes unpunished by the school board because of the need for success in the sports season. These female students claimed that the schools cared more about the statistics for sports then they did about the downside of this severe masculine energy. And it just makes sense. When you constantly are telling men they can get away with incredibly aggressive acts, as long as they “dominate” and “destroy” the other teams, they are going to be much more inclined to rape and hurt women because it’s all part of this dominating that is so ingrained in them. Greek life has played a major part in rape on college campus’s as well. At university of Canada, a fraternity created this student chant; “Y is for your sister. O is for oh-so-tight. U is for underage. N is for no consent. G is for grab that ass.” This chant was used during student orientation at a fraternity. Seemingly a gross injustice, and a superbly distasteful lyric, it is jsut a thing that had been accepted at that school until female students became uncomfortable and it circulated around the media.

Women are raped every day, yet struggle to tell people because they know that they will probably not be taken seriously. That the most detrimental thing to ever happen to them will not be seen as real or true by the people that they tell. Unfortunately, this is often the harsh reality of being a woman in a society that mainly focuses on male aggression.