Rape Culture - Part 1

I realise that outside of feminist circles, the idea of 'rape culture' is quite controversial. It's the idea that there are parts of our culture that can be seen to promote or accept rape. Some people say anything that 'objectifies' women can be seen as rape culture, but I'm not so sure on that one. What I'm going to talk about mainly is culture that dismisses or trivialises rape.

Some people deny rape culture exists. To me, this seems like a part of rape culture itself. We acknowledge that some places have a higher incidence of rape than others. South Africa has darkly been called 'the rape capital of the world'. Assuming more rape actually does happen there than other places, there must be cultural reasons for that. If part of their culture is responsible for rape, can we not say the same of ours?

I feel my life has always contained rape culture. It was in films I watched as a child. Grease was voted the number 1 greatest musical on some rubbish programme I watched recently. You all know Grease: that musical we all watched when we were too young to understand that it's all about sex. Where the girls are all chatting about love and the guys are chatting about sex, singing:
"Tell me more, tell me more! Did she put up a fight?"

When I got older, I watched a lot of other musicals, including Cabaret. On the whole I liked it, but there's a scene where Natalia tells Sally how Fritz 'pounced' on her. How at first she is shouting harsh words at him, but then she gives in and likes it. Sally then responds with 'He made love to you.' I couldn't believe I was watching something which suddenly seemed to imply that someone who is raped will eventually enjoy it. I know someone who watched Cabaret on a date. The guy then asked if this is when he should 'pounce'.

I realise Grease and Cabaret are pretty old, and Cabaret isn't even that popular. A little while back, I decided to read 50 Shades of Grey. That's pretty damn popular. It's the fastest selling paperback of all time. I stopped at the point where the main character wakes up in just her underwear in Mr Grey's home after a night of heavy drinking. She asks if they had sex, and he tells her no. She then thinks to herself

' Does he want me? He wouldn’t kiss me last week. ... You’ve slept in his bed all night, and he’s not touched you Ana.'

There we go. If a man doesn't touch you when you're unconscious, he clearly doesn't fancy you. It's totally okay though for him to take your clothes off when you're passed out though. Even if you barely know each other. That's an implicit message in a supposedly erotic novel that has been said to empower women with their sexuality.

Part of what disturbs me so much with all of these examples is that no one says the word 'rape'. The same with the 'Don't pick up the soap' jokes about prison rape, that aren't even considered the realm of 'dark' or 'edgy' humour. No one even points out that it's disturbing. It just masquerades as normal.

And I believe this doesn't end with fiction and distasteful jokes. Rape is common, and only a small minority of these rapes are reported*. A common thing in people who have been raped is that they believe it's their own fault. Those who are raped after they have been drinking are often blamed for what happened to them. I don't belive that messages in popular fiction that imply it's sometimes okay to rape people helps that any of that.

'The Steubenville case' has been frequently called an example of rape culture in reality. It's truly chilling. A group of teenage boys undressed and repeatedly sexually assaulted a girl of the same age, while she was too drunk to do anything. They then happily shared photos and videos of the incident online, joking about the rape. They believed their behaviour was not only acceptable, but hilarious. More disturbingly still, in both this and the Ched Evans case, many people's responses were in favour of the rapists. People seemed to believe it's acceptable to have sex with someone who's so drunk they're hardly conscious. I can only hope the sentencing in these proved otherwise.

The only thing I feel I can do about rape culture is to speak up like this. To not let it just pass by unnoticed or blending into the normal.  I wrote this blog post to say, and to encourage others to say, "I've noticed this, and it's not alright."

*I'm finding the exact statistics a little tricky here. The UK Home Office says that 15% of rape is reported to the police. When I'm less tired I will probably post some varying statistics in this footnote.