Rape Culture in the Media Essay

“Rape is as American as apple pie,” says blogger Jessica Valenti. She and other feminists describe our society as a “rape culture” where violence against women is almost invisible. According to feminists, films, magazines, fashion, books, music, and humor cooperate in conveying the message that women are there to be used, abused and exploited.(Kitchens, 2015)

Rape culture includes jokes, TV music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable.

Ever hear someone say ‘She was asking for it,’ or ‘Boys will be boys,” after a news article about rape or sexual abuse? Per Southern Connecticut State University, “rape culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence is excused and normalized in the media and popular culture. People believe that everything is mostly the victims fault,” (Rape Culture par 1). Americans have created a rape culture. The people who mainly created this are the news stations and feminists. Feminists post their opinion all over the media. Creating society to be a rape culture. The feminist’s biggest argument creates rape culture; they use social media to make it seem like females are the only ones getting sexually harassed.

In the United States individuals of both genders are being sexually violated, yet way too often their offenders often get off scot free or with very little punishment. Rape culture exists because we don't believe it does. The first step to ending such culture is to name the real problem, which is victim-blaming. We treat victims like they’re responsible, which would be obscenely different for any other criminal charge. When a sexual assault is reported on the news the first questions the media asks are about the victim’s sobriety, clothes, or sexuality. The right question is, “What made the attacker think this was acceptable?” Changing a mind set that has been engraved in us for centuries is going to be strenous, yet not impossible. It starts

According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), approximately 207,500 rapes occur annually in the United States (“Statistics RAINN”). If we were to spread that out evenly over the 365 days of a year, that would equate to a sexual assault occurring every two minutes. Although the amount of rapes occurring annually has decreased by 60% since 1993 (“Statistics about Sexual Violence”), that’s still an incredible amount of sexual violence occurring yearly--- a facet of American culture that must be addressed. Although women are not the only victims of rape, and men are not the only perpetrators of rape, this essay will strictly refer to male-on-female cases of rape. The factors present in a society that naturalize or rationalize rape and sexual violence are known in Women’s Studies as ‘rape culture’. Many would deny its existence, but here in the United States, ‘rape culture’ is prevalent in the media, social roles, and in the way we educate our children about rape prevention. This gives rise to a society wherein rape is tolerated and even ignored, and it absolutely must be stopped. I will first outline the problematic facets of society that perpetuate rape culture, and then identify solutions to help eradicate the problem.

In today's society, the promotion of rape culture is heavily prevalent. Despite the world making massive headway in a multitude of social injustices, victim blaming and the willingness to ignore the truth in media are still major issues. Although one may not realize, both local and global media frequently create pieces that are biased - using prejudice in favor of one group or individual - to blindly sway public opinion.

I agree that this is another big factor in why people don't take it seriously or give much care to the matter. She states in her article, “We jokingly say things like “I just took a rape shower” or “my boss just rapped over my request for a raise.” This is showing that we as a society have made it so normal and not surprising to hear the word that when we hear a case of it we don't see it as a very big deal. One big reason that this happens is stated in the article, “Debating Rape Jokes vs. Rape Culture,” written by Raúl Pérez and Viveca S. Greene. In the article the authors state that people that have a big influence on society, such as comedians, are using jokes about rape. Doing this in hope of making the audience laugh is then lessening the importance of the topic. I think that because of all this, it makes being a female today more difficult than it is played out to be. This idea is displayed in the book Rape and Representation, written by Lynn Higgins and Brenda Silver. They say, “How is it that in spite (or perhaps because) of their erasure, rape and sexual violence have been so ingrained and so rationalized through their representations as to appear ‘natural’ and inevitable, to women as men?” This is basically asking, “How has society come to this?” As I shared above the answers are in the fact that the idea of rape as a whole is thrown around so freely and carelessly

Rape Culture is when society normalizes rape, supports it and claims that it is okay. Rape culture was created by American feminists around the 1970’s (“Rape Culture”). According to Transforming a Rape Culture, Rape culture is “ a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexually as violent. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm” (Buchwald, Emilie, Pamela R.

“In the minds of many high school boys, rape isn 't always wrong. A Patriot Ledger survey of 527 high school students conducted for this series found that 7 percent of boys said it was OK to force a girl to have sex on a date” (Eschbacher).The media needs to redefine and differently represent rape because it is portrayed as being too hard to define, the media has begun stereotyping the victims and rapists alike, and rape is not being reported because students are afraid of the stigma created by the media. Rape culture, or the media’s portrayal of rape is ridiculously inaccurate and overly pigeonholed. Rape needs to be redefined, as evidence by the staggering statistic stated. In the following paragraphs, the reasoning behind the thesis stated will be explained.

The more we put rape in the media, making it a common thing in lives, and desensitize it, the more we lose sympathy for the subject. We quickly become apathetic to the subject. We become numb and lose will to change. Conversely, if not aware of something, it is hard to make improvements. Preventing rape starts with reporting ones that have already happened. As a society we need to have a healthier outlook about victims coming forward and reporting rape. Reporting and prosecuting are different things. The rapist can still be taken off the streets. Also, reporting helps the emotional wounds of the rape (Daniels-Booher 85-86). In order to have a better future we need to get rid of those that are holding us back. We need to stop attacking each other. People’s attitude towards rape, that it is the victim’s fault, is not going to change without effort. We have to work to make sure that surroundings are safer for us (Daniels-Booher 123). Rape is absolutely not the victim’s fault and we need to change outlook on that. For instance,

Rape happens and has become a culture because there is no set identity of what a rapist looks like in the same way we can identify a person by race, gender, and such. Although major efforts have been made to have an open discussion about rape culture, there is still a negative stigma for survivors and no real discussion on how to prevent rape. I will be exploring passive attitudes towards rape in media and how that attitude negatively affects other discussions of sexual assault, such as child molestation.

Not just morally but also legally. Women are often stereotyped and degraded in mainstream media and this impacts all women and their lived experiences. Of the 1,494,000 women aged 18 years and over who had been sexually assaulted since the age of 15, an estimated 1,310,900 women (15% of all women) had been sexually assaulted by a known person compared to 335,000 women (3.8% of all women) who had been sexually assaulted by a stranger. Rape Culture isn’t something made up by feminists. Feminists invented the phrase as a description of an active culture of abuse and exploitation occurring every hour, every minute and every second of every day. Rape Culture is an extension of a very real culture of privilege and entitlement men use to exploit, objectify, control and ultimately rape (or kill) women and children. Rape Culture is women being belittled and shamed into silence. It’s a media, political and legal fraternity that would telegraph to the world that what a woman wears, where she walks at night, whether or not she’s alone or how much alcohol she’s imbibed somehow correlates with her asking for it. Rape Culture is the culture of underreporting that exists with regards to rape due to the victim shame

    In today’s society, rape is acceptable. Sounds appalling, but it is the truth. There is an entire culture devoted to covering up the knowledge about rape and any type of sexual violence. This has become the norm because rape culture numbs people of the idea of rape in American society. When people bring up rape, it can cause uneasiness, and for those who have been a victim, it can cause a lifetime of suffering. Rape culture exists in many things including tv, media, music, music videos, and the music videos that go with them. To completely know everything there is to know about rape culture, you must know all of the things that influence its existence.    The first reason is objectification. This is the treatment of human beings as commodities. This is the practice of putting extreme value on individuals physical attributes while ignoring everything else about them. Women have now become objects, being depicted as always ready for sex, and always wanting sex. Women have become the representation of sex, and this is what sells. Sadly for women, they have to pay this price and only be seen as a hot commodity.Sut Jhally who has a Ph.D. in communication at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a media critic, has produced a film called “Dreamworld: How the Media Abuses Women”. In this film it goes over 150 images of women taken right from MTV’s first ten years. Jhally, and many teachers around the world, use this

Someone close to me once said, “If you let them get away with it once, they will keep thinking they can do it.” Think on this statement for a minute. Many of you might assume this subject is about cheating or stealing, but this is on rape. Rape is a topic people do not take seriously enough. Some may argue that it is taken too seriously or that rape is an irrelevant subject, but this is simply not the case. Many victims feel afraid to report rape because they are terrified of being judged by people, labeled by society, or even harmed by their rapists. Also, the media distorts the idea of rape. Many of the jokes we make and the slang we use across social media reflect rape and rape culture. Although, not only do the people disregard rape,

Rape myths are an extremely active concept in society. Over time, the same rape myths have been recurrently applied when the concept of sexual assault arises. In John Hamlin’s (2001) study he defines rape myths as prejudicial outlooks on sexual assault which effectively downplay its severity and discredits the complainant. Hamlin states that “[rape] myths exist for many historic reasons which include inherited structural conditions, gender role expectations, and the fundamental exercise of power in a patriarchal society” (Hamlin, 2001). Rape myths are put on display in the Supreme Court case of R. v. Ewanchuk (1999), as the case revolves around several assumptions and misconceptions regarding sexual assault. This paper will illustrate how rape myths are extremely negative by analyzing the Ewanchuk case along with R. v. Ghomeshi (2016), racism in societal assumptions regarding women who are raped, and the notion of masculinity.