Let's Talk About...

13. The rape culture: if sex happened, that's consent

In 2014 Vanderbilt University student Gregory Bernstein wrote a great post on his blog. Entitled "Destroying a Rape Culture," it was written when a Dartmouth student was raped after being mentioned by name in a "rape guide" posted online by students at the college. That "guide" was one more addition to college "rape literature," along with the collection of rape jokes published at Miami University and the rape chants by students at Yale and Saint Mary's.

Yet many people still deny rape culture is pervasive in our society.

Seriously?

I'll borrow Bernstein's spot-on definition of rape culture: "It isn't a feminist narrative used to make campuses 'treacherous places for falsely accused men' (you can thank U.S. News and World Report for that description). Nor is it a term used to 'aggressively paint men as dangerous and as the root of evil' as the Wisconsin-Madison's student newspaper put it. Rape culture is a culture in which we allow responsibility for sexual violence to be shifted from the rapist to the victim. Rape culture is a culture in which our first reaction upon learning about an alleged assault is to doubt victims, to ask what they were wearing, or what they were drinking. Rape culture is a culture in which myths and misconceptions about rape are allowed to be taught as truth."

In her TED Talk "Your Vagina is Not a Car," writer and public speaker Clementine Ford adds that rape culture is a society that normalizes or diminishes rape through the bombardment of images, language, laws and social attitudes. Rape is reduced to "an alcohol-fueled situation" or a bad date that the victim is blamed for, which doesn't constitute an actual assault. When a woman in his audience didn't enjoy his joke about rape, Australian comedian Daniel Tosh responded and was backed up by his friends: 'Wouldn't it be funny if five guys just came down and raped this woman right now? Wouldn't that be hilarious?"

That's rape culture. And it's all over the world. In the West, it happens as illegal punishment behind the curtains. In the East it's no different:. I remember a petition to stop a gang rape in India that would be imposed on two young girls as punishment for a crime committed by their brother. Unfortunately, it's not an isolated or uncommon case.

Not only do they suffer physically and emotionally, carrying with them trauma and scars, but women sentenced to rape have their lives ruined because a woman is only valuable for her body and her virginity. So if someone else does something bad, there may be retaliation for you in the form of rape. If a country defeats another in war, you bet there will be rape for humiliating the defeated. Let's not forget religious institutions, of course—take, for example, Catholic priests and Buddhist involved in scandals of sexual abuse.

It just happened in Brazil, May 2016. I received a petition demanding punishment for 30 men who gang-raped a 16-year old girl. They filmed it and posted it on social media along with horrible comments and jokes. The petition wants them brought to court and charged with attempted murder, and penalties for those who shared the video on social media. According to the petition, 11 women are raped every minute in Brazil—and that's only in one country.

Not even the virtual world is free of rape, and women naturally are the main targets. Take RapeLay, a game where the user plays a stalker raping a mother and her two daughters—one of them underage. There's more, though. In a brilliant article, Kat Stoeffel mentions a hacker including a rapist in Great Theft Auto in 2014, in what The Huffington Post described as "a disturbing new trend": modifying games to rape players. That same year, Kim Correa was virtually raped by two male gamers in DayZ.

"One of them said he wanted 'to rape my dead body,' and then he shot me." Correa received reproachful comments for her blog post about it. Note the victim blaming by a female player: "You were waiting for this to happen, practically seeking it out actively and now you've got your article to write. But by God, is it hyperbole and a half." Another blamed Correa for making women look bad and weak; after all, "It was just a dumb joke."