What is "Rape Culture"?

I've actually talked to women about this very subject. Women, as I have been told, dress for themselves, not for men. And yes, I have been told that it does affect their self-esteem. Trying not to break the rules...again, I have been told, by women, that even their underwear has a bearing on their perception. Women, for the larger part, do not dress to be "sexy," they dress to be pretty. There is a difference, even though men do not interpret it the same way. A woman's perception of her body is probably very different than how men perceive them. If a woman dresses in shorts and a tube top, it's probably not because she's trying to attract men, but rather, she is proud of her body. And this doesn't speak for all women. Some dress for comfort, which is often the same garb.

I have no problem with it. It's just an observation that was verified by women I have known. As a personal observation, the women in my house have closets filled with clothing; whereas, I have three pairs of jeans, a stack of t-shirts, some boxers, and a pair of shoes--all of which can be stacked on my dresser.

Again, I hope I haven't broken the rules by responding to your post. I'm not trying to degrade woman, I just believe they are different creatures.

 

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Of course it is! Clothing manufacturers like to sell clothing, and thus they try to promote their products.

Depends on the woman, of course. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people (not just women) who dress the same when going to school, going to an interview, going to a bar and going to the store - and thus often those people DO dress for others.

That is often also true.

And in the 1950's, the gyrations of Elvis were used to support the same conclusion. Sex had become trivial; popular musicians were even "doing it" on stage.

 

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That's true of most of his posts. He is one of those people who sees the world in black and white - there are reasonable and intelligent conservatives like himself and insane, deluded, criminal liberals. Nothing in between.

 

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I am curious, in your mind, does a hooker have a right to decline a customer?

Does a hooker have a right to insist a customer use a condom?

Does a hooker have a right to say No Anal!?

How about a trollop? Are the rules different for loose women vs professional call girls?

 

This and That

As have I.

My charming story about this has to do with what I refer to as "cake frosting lingerie", and other such "sexy" intimate wear that just doesn't look comfortable. I've asked women about this, and received three general answers:

• For their partners.

• For themselves.

• For each other.​

I've never been certain just how dangeorus it is to psychoanalyze that. However, at some point it came to be that instead of trying to generalize it seemed quite obvious the real answer was to each their own.

However, the question of self-esteem only begs the question of metric.

That is to say, against what does anyone measure their self-esteem?

Or, more bluntly, why is sexy a standard?

Answering that question requires exploring how it works, and therein we tread near the heart of the problem. Self-esteem isn't just about sexy, it's also about not standing out in a negative way. And if part of the cultural affirmation is that women should be sexy, we're staring straight at the problem.

And, yes, a woman's sex appeal is part of the cultural standard for her validation and affirmation; that much is self-evident.

Yeah, that was a clerical error. Again, my apologies.

I know the feeling; but it's also part of the standard. Among my cohort I've known women who would love to be able to survive on a "men's style" wardrobe, but professional and societal expectations intervene. Women face higher expectations just to participate in society at the same level as men, and this is part of it.

To the other, I will tell you this: Yeah, I was happy to finally start wearing skirts, but one thing I didn't expect was the natural comfort. I swear unto you, I could easily spend the rest of my life in full-length "gypsy" skirts. So, yeah, it'll change your life, man. But it also complicates the hell out of your wardrobe. These days it's the same thing; I have four skirts, two pairs of full-length tights, and three pairs of calf-length leggings, and if I chose I could rotate between the same three button-down shirts, two turtlenecks, handful of t-shirts, and two flannels that make reasonable color matches. I'm a dude; I can actually get by like this, and where I live nobody is going to say a thing. A woman lives on this sort of wardrobe and she's usually looked at in some manner at least mildly notorious; you know, hippie, granola, feminist, ugly, &c.

But I also feel the itch; next up I intend to conquer autumn gold―oh, and I still haven't found a top to go with the gorgeous floral skirt my stepmother gave me. The upside of not having that much spare cash around is that I don't overturn my entire wardrobe with a manic shopping spree.

And as funny and queer as this all sounds, I still don't get to claim any real kinship with women, or even stereotypes thereof; at the end of the day, I'm still a dude. Insofar as we might consider the metrics of self-esteem, I'm willing to extrapolate from the small handful of explicit declarations I've heard and assert that most women would trade places with me in a heartbeat; in the De Beauvoir juxtaposition, I still answer the "human beings" (i.e., masculine) standard, not the unspeakably heavier and more complicated "women" standard.

It's one thing, sir, that we men should consider the differences in our drawers and closets compared to women, but the manner in which people measure self esteem is the functionally important distinction.

† † †​

It seems worth recalling the 1999 film American Pie, which was in popular lore the Porky's of its generation. I came up in the '80s; the string of T&A comedies through the decade―Up the Creek, Hamburger: The Motion Picture, Police Academy, Revenge of the Nerds―are at the heart of my local cohort's coming of age in popular culture.

I actually made a weird joke about it yesterday after my daughter popped off with a random, ill-conceived marijuana punchline.

Because one of the things that gets me about some of these claims to have never witnessed, or to not recall, various elements of misogyny in our societal history that contribute to rape culture is that it really does seem impossible to not remember.

To wit, I ended up telling my daughter a brief story about a band called Muscial Youth. I referred to Madonna, who actually arrived two years later, but the point still holds; society was supposed to be outraged about Madonna singing about enjoying womanhood. It's not like these complaints were new, of course, especially recalling your point about Elvis. This strain is what my corner of the poltiical market derisively denounces as the Guardians of Female Chastity; Elvis was bad for tempting innocent young girls, and Madonna was bad for suggesting women could enjoy their own sexualities.

There was a lot of that stuff going on. And in the middle of this, well, frankly I just don't remember a huge public fracas―then again, I was nine, and only a couple of years politically aware―over the idea of a bunch of kids singing about smoking pot as a counterpoint to living in poverty↱.

Seriously; that was Musical Youth's big hit in the U.S.

But it might also be that we've seen the slow death of certain tropes. American Pie is poignantly funny to me because it is essentially a satirical compilation of what my generation learned about sex, sexuality, and society. Well, all but the piehumping; that was innovative.

In the early nineties, for instance, I worked pizza. Consider a big steel bowl full of pizza dough made from fifty pounds of flour. You dump it onto a steel table in a massive blob. Now, it's not a good joke, but I remember the first time I saw a guy stab a knife straight into the blob and withdraw it, make a vagina joke, and then proceed to two-finger the hole. Eight years later, humping a pie is blessedly lighthearted.

American Pie was a century's-end tribute to a generation of T&A comedies.

And, you know, I also think about this one particular bit on Family Guy, circa 2000, when Quagmire hides in order to peep on a slumber party of high school girls.

Honestly, I knew exactly what that bit was about. And this is what puzzles me: Among my age peers and cultural cohort, how in the world does it happen that this makes me somehow unusual?

I was just thinking about that in terms of self-esteem and trying to not psychoanalyze the bit about women and their underwear. You know, is there solidarity? Competition? I mean, what's going on in that guys' fantasy about girls' sleepovers? And yet, I'm not at all certain the question makes sense to men of my generation anymore. Because it's not just Bowser or Milkweed; there are plenty of men I know in life who ought to be able to remember their own experiences, but apparently have no idea.

It really is a toxic nostalgia, though; perhaps I ought to be more understanding. But I swear, it is really unnatural to hear someone laugh and say, "Yeah, but who really acts like that?" when the answer is, "Dude, that was us twenty-five years ago."

It's kind of like I have this one friend who pretends he never masturbates. I don't know, it's been over twenty years since that weird conversation, but come on, nobody believed him. Nor does it really matter, in the end, but it offers a functional juxtapostion to a bit I noted at the outset↑―

It seems strange, in the age of #NotAllMen and #JustNotMe, how many of my peers seem a bit cloudy on the issue of how important it was for guys to get laid―by a girl!―when we were younger. And it’s one thing to invoke ego defense, but, really, what drives such suppression? Can self-indictment really be so powerful? Because, I swear, they’re not all running from memories of evils committed. And just how many self-inflicted wounds, such as it is, could they possibly visit upon themselves? Or is it possible that we really have been wandering so catastrophically astray for so long without even knowing it? The proposition seems unrealistic for both magnitude and necessary complexity. Yet one point at least remains occulted: How can we possibly forget?​

―because it is such a difficult pretense to believe.

For so much of what I need to tell my daughter about the world, I would be lying if I told her I didn't know the reason why I know what I know about what I need to tell her.

Yeah, a bunch of this shit I loathe? That was me. That was my generation. That was my friends and peers. That was our culture. And a lot of people, apparently, have forgotten; or, at least, so I am apparently expected to believe.

Part of what puzzles me about this whole discussion is the square-zero demand to remind people of history they lived through. I mean, sure, if one was born in '94, they might not know what a bunch of this stuff means. But, you know, the thirtysomethings and older? Oh, come on. How can they not remember?

 

Yet they won't promote what they cannot sell. And much of the fashion industry is aimed at woman, so that appears to be the bulk of the market.

Yes, many men take pride in their attire, but we also need question their motive for such. I do believe women, in general, place more importance on clothing than do men. And, having talked with women about the subject, I find that it does reflect on their sense of self-esteem. I think a woman is more likely to accentuate her form through her clothing than are men, in my opinion. But I also believe women take more pride in their physical form--what a man considers "hot," a woman would probably considers "cute." The perception that men and woman hold are most likely miles apart.

But we've gone from a man shaking his hips on stage to a woman grinding her ass in a mans groin on television. You do see where it's going? Mentioning my daughter's school dance was just an example. It was so risque that she and her boyfriend were shocked. My understanding is that it provoked a quick response from the school.

 

Right - but often they sell what they promote. They do not make decisions on what to sell based purely on what women want; they often make decisions on what to sell based on what they think they can MAKE women want.

The market is divided almost perfectly 50/50, since that's the ratio of men to women. Women's clothing generally costs more which is why they spend more money on marketing it. (The higher prices support higher expenditures in marketing and sales.)

?? Are you honestly saying that if a man is seen in public a well tailored suit, the rest of the people on the subway will question his motives for wearing it? That does not seem to be the case in my observations on clothing worn in public.

On the other hand, women are often questioned about whether or not what they are wearing "sends the wrong message."

Agreed. That happens with both sexes (in my experience) but seems to be more prevalent in women.

Often true.

Yep. And the next generation will do something else; maybe they'll use hand signals that simulate intercourse. And the parents of that era (i.e. this generation's kids) will say "but we've gone from people just bumping into each other to children actually simulating intercourse using their fingers as penises and vaginas! Things have gotten so much worse than when I was a kid." This cycle repeats every generation. Yet we survive, and this generation's twerkers will be the parents of the next generation who will be shocked - shocked! - by what "kids nowadays" are doing.

 

Is it possible to make someone want something? Sounds like an oxymoron. Albeit, an interesting one.

I think women like what they like and the industry markets to those desires.

I'm not sure where you shop, but women's clothing shops are cheap compared to mens. Waaaaay cheaper. I think they have a much much higher turnover due to fashion changes whereas men buy something and wear it until it falls apart. But, again, I don't think it's advertising that's doing this, it's women who want to buy new fashion - mainly to show off to other women. I'm not saying that there aren't high-fashion that's expensive. But, for most women, they go to the mall and clothing is relatively cheap. Or so it seems to me. A decent shirt and pants would be 3 x a decent blouse?

** Oh gods, I hope that didn't sound sexist :/

I see where you're going. I don't like the thought of some dude plowing a goat-bot in the arse on my way to the hover carpool, but, that's just my aesthetic.

A good question could be, what is virtuous and does it differ from an aesthetic?

 

I'm willing to hazard a guess that there is some market research and an observance of trends that they use when developing their products. Obviously a bikini wouldn't sell in the market of the 20's. You can't force anyone to buy your product. Either there is a demand for your product or there isn't.

I couldn't find any statistics regarding this, but I'm willing to visit any link you can offer. The best I could find is the following. Apparently men and women do have dramatic shopping habits...
http://www.moneycrashers.com/men-vs-women-shopping-habits-buying-decisions/

Is that all men wear, tailored suits? What if he had returned from Hollywood wearing a skintight body suit, would that turn a few heads? Again, men generally don't accentuate their form in the same as do women, but that's not to say they don't.

Not certain how often that question is asked.

This is the only link I could find on the subject within a quick search, but I'm willing to look at any you might have.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2792686/[/QUOTE]

 

But far beyond that, you think you know what the differences are, what the nature of these different creatures is. And you don't. You mistake cultural idiosyncrasy for fundamental biology, for starters, and attach a monstrous edifice of long rebuked moral assessments and coercive expectations to these idiosyncrasies in such a way as to imprison both your own thinking and other people's bodies and lives.

 

Right. But bikinis did eventually sell - and consumers did not make them themselves. They were made by a garment manufacturer. At one point, a marketing expert stood up and said "if we advertise bikinis heavily we can convince people to buy them" - and they did so, even though there were no bikinis on the market.

Do they take into account the general mood? Absolutely. But they also make a strong effort to convince people who wouldn't otherwise buy a bikini that they need one.

Nonsense. Was their pent-up demand for pet rocks? Beanie babies? Star Wars figurines? Those products were created and pushed without any demand being there - the demand was created by clever marketing and advertising.

?? No. Where did you get that from what I said?

You bet. And if a woman wore a similar suit, she'd turn a lot _more_ heads.

Growing up in a house with two younger sisters - it got asked at least once a week.

 

Okay, enough of this stuff about apparel. Let's get back to "Rape Culture." So many have pointed out the prevalence of rape in our media, which I just don't see for the larger part. I certainly haven't seen it given a positive light in media. I do see sex, in general, highlighted in popular music. Now, we all have seen Miley Cyrus strut her stuff on stage with a smile on her face, what would our reaction be if she came on stage with a black eye and bloody lip, and sang a song about sexual assault? Would that be glorification of rape?

 

This is typical. The proponents of free market capitalism in the US generally, normally, have no clue how marketing works. It's all around them, and invisible to them.

And in a similar vein:

The defenders of the rape culture in the US have no clue how it is established, how it works. It's all around them, and invisible to them.

 

there is a reason billions is spent on advertising and its not because it doesn't work. are likes and interests can be manipulated easier than one might think. it has to do with the short cuts built into the human brain.

 

Just did a quick survey of what's on the free, no ads channels on the TV here right now - of 44 different programs, some of them documentaries, shows, Spanish language versions, etc, not double counting anything, not exploring in detail, at least 9 include at least one rape or immediate threat of rape in the hour's content. 9/44.

 

Depends on the song.

Depends on each audience member.

In the 1970s, the band Styx actually endured haranguing from the California legislature because someone thought there were Satanic messages on the albums. The band, to this day, likes to remind everyone about this episode before playing "Snowblind"↱, a song about the evils of cocaine.

Does Peter Gabriel↱ sound Satanic? "Lord, here comes the Flood when we will say good-bye to flesh and blood. In the end, when the seas are silent, if any are still alive it will be those who gave their islands to survive."

How about Savatage↱? "Hey there, Lord, it's me. I wondered if you're free, and not asleep; things just won't keep. It seems I just don't see why all the things we ask have gone unheard like silent words that slip into the past."

You'd be amazed at where people find the Devil.

Here's one: A Wrinkle in Time. The complaint these days centers on three points; magick, lesbianism, and communism. The magick is a miracle from God, unquestionably the same God we find in the Bible, yet Christians are offended that He should will miracles to occur. Communism? It's an anti-communist novel, long acknowledged as such. You know why the flip? Because the villain's name, "IT", can only mean Information Technologies. That's why they think it's communist advocacy, because once upon a time the righteous capitalists feared a bland, mechanical, bureaucratic Hell mapped out in labyrinthes of cubicles. I mean, I know you don't remember the chauvinism of prior decades, but tell me, please, you at least remember the Cold War.

The thing about lesbianism is just creepy, though. They are three aged women, a Shakespeare joke. To be specific, they are angels sent by God.

Naturally, the pious Christian mind decides they must be having sex with one another.

More to the point: Did Suzanne Vega↱ glorify domestic violence? Or maybe Toad the Wet Sprocket↱ glorified rape? Sometime in between, did The Pursuit of Happiness↱ glorify murder?

To the other, speaking of Styx, it's true that I adore Tommy Shaw's songwriting; looking back at the eighties, I can only wonder about some of the solo work in which "romance" was a pathetic dude harassing a woman↱, or trying to politely refuse to leave↱. The redemption is that he knows it, too, and only ever revives a couple tracks from that period, like the one about addiction where he's singing to a girlfriend about their bad relationship↗. To a certain degree, relationship songs are expected. But some of this was just godawful cheese. I can't tell whether "Are You Ready for Me"↱ is just mundane cheese of its period or extraordinarily scary cheese. I mean, the guy wasn't aiming for chauvinism, but that's part of the point. This was the context of the times. I mentioned Mummy Calls, earlier; one of the best tracks from the eighties, "Kiss Me"↱ is hardly the creepiest of songs, but one piece of advice would have to do with calling a female lover "Sister". More directly, though, what stands out about this song is a not-uncommon theme from the time, an idealization of the patient woman enduring insensitivity and betrayal for the sake of love.

Don't ask about "Sexual Desire"↱; it's a fun song, but pretty damn pathetic.

If you go back at least to my time in the seventies and eighties, the overlap between love, romance, and sex really does stand out; I can only reiterate, though, that instead of listening to the people who were telling us the score, society generally vilified feminists and attacked the art in order to reinforce the subjugation of women.

I think one of my favorites, though, was censorship advocate Bob Larson, who sold books to Christians who fretted about the decline of pious civilization. In one of his books he took on the song "Misery Loves Company"↱, by Anthrax. Warning parents of an attempt to stir children to a mass-murdering frenzy, Mr. Larson did his best to obscure the fact that the song is a musical interpretation of the novel Misery, by Stephen King. He also transformed a warning about pied pipers↱ into an attempt to recruit children for a demonic cult, and only had to alter the lyrics in order to do so.

Miley Cyrus? Yeah, she could surprise me, I guess, but I honestly wouldn't expect much good to come from a stunt like that. Still, though, I can't automatically condemn it. Even if her execution is terrible, as I would expect, I could not guarantee the song would be wholly without merit on that count.

And, you know, there's one around here at Sciforums, somewhere, about some song in which a female pop star sings about all the stupid, dangerous, even violent stuff she did when she was pissed off at her boyfriend, and then sings about her regret for behaving that way, and how did I end up trying to explain to someone that this is not a glorification of domestic or intimate violence?

Bottom line: Depends on the song; depends on the audience.

Hell, it probably depends on the zeitgeist, but that also seems otherwise subsumed.

 

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​

If I say, "What a world, what a world," I really am talking about the world around her.

If I say, "Not surprising," it really has nothing to do with her, because the problem is in the world around her.

If I say, "Imagine that!" well, there really is no good way to deliver the line, but come on, in a world where it's a "male prerogative to try", and the proposition that it's none of their business↱ is somehow so extraordinary that one simply cannot repeat the point often enough, there really should be no question about the object of my mockery.

You can spare the couple of minutes to scroll through the photos; via Taylor Pittman↱ of HuffPo:

The Rhode Island School of Design Feminists Organization recently hosted its third "Why I Need Feminism" photoshoot. Moriah Benton, the organization's president, told The Huffington Post that seeing the members' responses evolve over time has been "a phenomenal experience."

"Participants have always responded with statements that are relevant and meaningful, but what's most impactful to me is seeing how more people are taking their individual experiences and having a more developed conversation about them through the lens of intersectional feminism," she said.​

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Notes:

Pittman, Taylor. "15 Essential Reasons We All Need Feminism". The Huffington Post. 23 November 2015. HuffingtonPost.com. 29 November 2015. http://huff.to/1QNeKy3

 

Sociobiological Theories of Rape

You didn’t put any effort at all into listening to me or understanding the paper. You keep bringing up egocentrism but you’re the only one looking for a spot in the conversation where you can jump in and gain attention for yourself. You immediately directed the conversation back to you, and what you know, butt fucking. Go figure.

You do realize that this is the direction you’re heading now, don’t you?

No one seems to have a problem with sociobiological theories of altruism, but if you mention it in terms of aggression, you’re immediately shut down. Why is that, Tiassa? An attempt to understand the behavior of men and patriarchy does not in any way absolve them of their responsibility.

What is so wrong at looking at the sociobiological theories of rape, patriarchy, or sexual coercion?

“Evolutionary explanations are often misinterpreted as ascribing biological influence on a behavior to genetically determined inevitability, or even as an excuse for that behavior. The nature/nurture dichotomy is no longer tenable at this stage of our understanding of genetics. Nonetheless, theorists on both sides of the debate often slip into arguments that dichotomize the influence of biology versus culture on our behavior.

Evolutionarily derived traits are inherently shaped by the environment of the organism, and from the very anatomy of the organism to its behavior, the environment is critical in shaping each trait during an individual’s life.”​

SEXUAL COERCION IN PRIMATES AND HUMANS: An Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression against Females. Edited by Martin N. Muller and Richard W. Wrangham. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Here is another male perspective on patriarchal sex.

How much pressure is there on males to be masculine, to drink, to be athletic, and to get laid? So much so that they’re falling behind academically.

I think we all can agree that rape is not an inherent tendency of male nature that’s only kept in check by social institutions. Nor can we say it is simply a learned behavior that only occurs in societies where it is encouraged, such as the United States. Both are red herrings for the nature vs. nurture debate, which is outdated. It is generally realized now the innate and environmental factors are involved in all behavior and rape happens to be present in all societies. I don’t think you can pinpoint the cause by examining certain types of behavior that may or may not encourage rape. We should focus more on the behaviors that are efficient in discouraging rape.

 

Are you saying there's no difference between convincing someone they want something and making them want it? A McDonald's commercial cancels out free-will? I don't think so.

I'm not sure about these short-cuts in the brain? Don't recall reading about short-cuts in the neuroscience texts.

 

What might those behaviors be? I'm curious.