Robot Heart: Sex, Religion, and Politics →
And these two observations together constitute our first lesson in Rape Culture: Males are entitled to aggression; female boundary-setting is “wrong” because it’s “aggressive” and under no circumstances may a woman show anger. In short, men and boys are culturally entitled to force, violence, and anger, while women and girls who display the same traits, even in diluted quantities, are branded pathologically un-feminine.
Lesson number two: Because males are entitled to aggression, Rape Culture places the onus for preventing rape on victims, who must vigilantly limit and monitor their every daily activity, rather than on those in the class of persons who are most often perpetrators- men. If we look at many Rape Prevention lists, they ignore the elephant in the room. Namely, the one common denominator in every rape, despite everything women are and are not doing to “prevent” such an assault, is the presence of the rapist.Just as articles about rapes tend to hide the perpetrator in the passive voice, as though women Get Themselves Raped rather than the fact that it is men, usually, who rape them, these lists focus on what women should be doing in order to Not Get Raped, rather than on what men should be doing to not rape people or on how our culture encourages the violation of women’s boundaries.
And yes, the “tips” themselves are often commonsensical. That’s not the issue. For instance: Be aware of your surroundings? Duh. Women don’t need their intelligence insulted with statements of the obvious, they need a society that collectively teaches men to respect other people’s boundaries. And, they need to live in a society where they can set and enforce boundaries without men, or other women, calling them unladylike bitches. One tangible and more meaningful step a college could take than printing a Rape Prevention tipsheet? Requiring all students to attend a sexual violence education program that made it clear that sexual violence is unacceptable, is never justified, and is a Big Deal.
Lesson #3 in Rape Culture: It’s okay to expect women to restrict their lives to an absurd degree so as to not get raped (oh, by a man), because men are entitled to move in this world like full human beings and women are not.
For instance, another tip:
“DON’T be walking alone in an alley, or driving in a bad neighborhood at night.”Yes, but what if a woman lives in a “bad neighborhood” and cannot afford to live in a “good neighborhood”? I have a better idea. How about we encourage men not to walk in alleys and “bad neighborhoods at night” since they are more “at risk” of raping somebody. That would certainly make me feel safer. Another tidbit:
“If you are walking alone in the dark (which you shouldn’t be) and you find him following/chasing you…”So, women should never walk alone in the dark? Ever. I walk alone in the dark every single day of the year, as many women do. Since I don’t follow this rule, should
I get rapeda man rape me, I would know that it would not be my fault. But, in how many ways, by how many implications, would others tell me that it was *sort of really* my fault because I knew the risk I was taking by walking alone as a woman at night like how people get to walk alone at night?
And yes, men are also sometimes victims of assault and it’s a good idea for everyone be aware of one’s surroundings. But that argument ignores the fact that the experiences of men and women are different in Rape Culture. A good flip-flop comparison would be to imagine a world in which women routinely kicked men in the balls really hard for no reason at all, so much so that men wore protective cups on their genitals at all times and, if they didn’t, they knew full well what they were asking for. One wonders, how would men react if the ball-kicking led to the formation of Ball-Kicking Prevention Tips that advised men to never walk alone at night, to avoid dangerous neighborhoods (especially where groups of women congregated), and blamed men for Getting Their Balls Kicked if they chose to move in the world like how people got to move?Fannie’s Room: Average Joe Fails To See Rape Culture, Doesn’t Like “Tone” of Women Who Do
