Living in a Rape Culture
So what is a rape culture?
It seems that it is a term that was coined from the days when being a Feminist wasn't a dirty word. It actually defines the current world we live in fairly accurately in my opinion, as it relates to being a woman in today's world.
The definition of a "rape culture" is,
A 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 sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.
Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to "cure" queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and "the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms."
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. Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem to change, people in a rape culture think about the persistence of rape as “just the way things are.http://upsettingrapeculture.tumblr.com/
How it Began
You may think that this is something that is a problem of the past few decades or maybe that it started in the good old days of the Twentieth Century, but it did not. This way of thinking about women and the feminine began thousands of years ago, even before the Judaeo Christian religions were born. The struggle for power and dominance over the feminine, the Goddess, nature and women started when men began to feel that they wanted to be more powerful than women. They wanted to feel that their role was just as important as giving birth was. For you see in these cultures, it was the women who could give life, who inherited property and passed it down to their female children. It was a culture where everyone had the same rights, each having their roles to play and everyone was essential to the survival of the tribe. The feminine, the Goddess and women were revered, respected and honored,
But these were agrarian based cultures that had no weapons to speak of, that did not make war on others for the most part. They lived in peace and harmony with nature and with all their neighbors. But their came a time when the Nomadic hordes from the East came over the Russian Steppes to "turn the world on it's head" and conquer those peaceful agrarian based cultures. (Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler)
There are always multiple reasons why anything happens and it took thousands of years to shift from goddess based cultures to change to a male dominated and warring based cultures. As you can see the beginnings of a "rape culture" had it's roots from this shift from cultures where the feminine, the Goddess was honored to honoring a male God of war... and where power over others, the acquisition of property became the way of life. Pillaging and rape had always been part of this new way of seeing the world. Women and children were the property of men and therefore men could do whatever they wanted to them. Of course male children had more rights and were treated better but they were still the property of men.
When men discovered that it was their seed that was needed for life to be created they fostered the belief that a woman was really only an incubator for the child and that it was man that created life not woman. The belief that raping a woman or girl was the right of her father or husband was accepted and condoned because they were his property, not people of their own right. It has always been a dance of power over others and with that came fighting over property, whatever that might be. Basically, when power over others not the power from within, became the model for living life. Having property and acquiring things including women and children began to take root as a new way of seeing the world.
When men discovered that it was their seed that was needed for life to be created they fostered the belief that a woman was really only an incubator for the child and that it was man that created life not woman. The belief that raping a woman or girl was the right of her father or husband was accepted and condoned because they were his property, not people of their own right. It has always been a dance of power over others and with that came fighting over property, whatever that might be. Basically, when power over others not the power from within, became the model for living life. Having property and acquiring things including women and children began to take root as a new way of seeing the world.
What You Can Do
Today, women and children are no longer considered a man's property but women are still objectified as sex objects to be used for the pleasure and entertainment of men. We have created a society where rape is an accepted way of life and where women have to learn to live on the defensive it they wish to feel safe.
The only way in which we can change living in a "rape culture" to living in a culture where the feminine is respected and end the violence against women is by:
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- Pulling the issue out of the shadows so that a meaningful conversation can be curated. We then can leverage the opportunity to build capacity, educate stakeholders and the general public, and demand an end to sexual violence.
- Naming the real problems; a culture that condones violent masculinity and victim blaming.
- Educating yourself and others on the facts of non-consensual sex, and violence against women.
- Getting media literate. Media, like everything else we consume, is a product some imagined, someone created and implemented it.
- Speaking out when you hear, see or experience attitudes or behaviors that condone rape and the objectification of women.
- Globalize your awareness of the rape culture beyond the U.S.
- Taking a stand for the kind of world you want to live in and taking action when you feel inspired to do so.
- Supporting local efforts to stop the violence and lobby your community.
Rape and other forms of violence are never consensual acts, no matter what excuses the perpetrator may make. I recently came across a video which I have shared here, it is funny and sad all at the same time. The fact that it had to be made at all is the sad part, the funny well you can see that for yourself.
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Tea and Consent
"It is not enough to bring individual perpetrators of rape and sexual violence to justice. Since the problem lies in a culture that is entertained by degrading acts and images of women, the solution is to look at the individual acts as a symptom of rape culture and solve it holistically. We all have a part to play in allowing rape culture to exist—so, we can all do something to eradicate it." ~ Walter Moseley
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