What is "Rape Culture"?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Bowser, Nov 8, 2015.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Which rape culture? The real one, or the fallacy you invented in order to help rapists improve their odds by obscuring the issues?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. milkweed Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,654
    lol - There is no rape culture, thats why you have to resort to posting individual crimes committed across the globe with no connection to anything but rape itself. You cant find a culture to point to. Your fallacy.

    Football didnt make them do it.
    Music didnt make them do it.
    Movies didnt make them do it.
    Magazine ads didnt make them do it.

    Individuals making wrong decisions. And a few animals among us (serial rapists) not unlike serial killers. I dont obscure the issue with garbage like "its all Quiverfull's fault". You do.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    264
    Throw me in with the undecideds. I’m coming down with a bad case of cognitive dissonance. It’s uncomfortable and that’s why I want to talk about it. So, help me out, will you, milkweed?

    The studies that I find interesting are looking at patriarchy and male sexual coercion for solutions. Is rape an issue where feminism is in lock step with patriarchy?

    We cry, they respond. Are we damseling? Are we tapping into the female privilege to command help? What if we’re not fighting sexism but instead just using it for propaganda? Are we being hypocrites by demonizing men and their maleness? I love their maleness, their sexuality, the hunger, and their strength, don’t you?

    Here’s a few excerpts from an article. When you get the time, will you read the whole article and tell me if you agree with it?

    How Feminism Creates Rape Culture

    The term “rape apologist” is the primary tool used by feminists to protect their “rape culture.” Anyone who questions feminist assumptions or pronunciations about rape is doing so out of support for rape itself. The fear of being labeled a rape apologist keeps feminism’s critics in line, but it is hypocritical. It is so powerful only because of the “patriarchal” taboo against rape that feminists deny.

    But they all seem to say the same thing: women should be fearful of men. Of all men.

    Young men, creepy old men, your brother, your father, your friend, your boyfriend, every stranger, men walking on the street, men minding their own business, men who catcall you, men who don’t catcall–all men are Schroedinger’s Rapist and to be feared. Your son is just a future rapist.

    People naturally joke about topics they fear or that make them uncomfortable. Those jokes in no way promote their subject matter. Rape is one of those uncomfortable topics, but to feminists any rape joke is evidence of a vast rape conspiracy. Any common sense suggestion that women take steps to protect themselves, like they would against any other crime or misfortune, is called victim blaming and is part of the vast rape culture conspiracy. The rape culture conspiracy that all males are complicit in, like the rapists themselves, is inescapable.

    “Rape culture” is mass hysteria, a full-blown moral panic, complete with torches and pitchforks.

    Through their rape culture rhetoric, feminists are the ones who normalize rape. All men are rapists, even nice guys, and all women are victims. This is actually counterproductive to helping real victims because it minimizes their experience as “normal.”

    http://www.reasonobeysitself.com/blog/feminism/feminism-erases-real-rape-culture/
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Individual crimes do not define a culture. What defines a culture is the sum total of everyone's experience - what happens to them, what they read, what they hear, what they see on TV.

    As pertains to sexual assault:
    It is sung about in popular songs.
    It is depicted on TV.
    It is often joked about. And everyone laughs.
    1 of 6 women have been sexually assaulted.

    And THOSE are the reasons we have a rape culture.
    Exactly. That is separate from the culture. But enough of those wrong decisions together - and that MAKES the culture.

    If you have a guy who drinks himself to death on campus? That doesn't mean you have a binge drinking culture at that college.

    But if 1 in 6 people there has been hospitalized because of drinking? If "happy hour" or "blowout" or "kegger" or "open bar" is in every flyer plastered to the wall? If people have to plan their nights to avoid drunks? If "who has a car so they can pick up beer" is one of the most common memes there? If hangovers are the rule on Sundays? Then you have a binge drinking culture there.
     
  8. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    264
    We discussed the numbers earlier. Is the proof in the numbers? Is it 1-6?
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    To reiterate↑: "I just don't agree with you assigning your opinion to other people in order to criticize them. It's fundamentally dishonest."

    Enough with your vapid rape advocacy↑; you don't get to replace other people's words with your own and then try to hold them accountable for your straw man.
     
  10. milkweed Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,654
    LOL - You are such a fake. Its not my strawman, its yours. Thats why you cant do anything but name call. You HAVENT a culture to point to. You have individuals from every different culture, religion, race, age, music preference, sport preference/or not, art, etc. There is no Rape Culture, there are individuals who commit crimes against people. There is no one or two things you can ban that will stop rape. It has to be applied on an individual level across ALL spectrums because it is an individual choice made regardless of age, religion, nationality, political alignment, type of car, type of music, branch of military service.
     
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    No, the proof is not in the numbers; they are just one part of the story.

    The 1 in 6 is not important because that means that 14.8% of American women have been raped, and that's over the "official" threshold of 14% for it being a culture or something. What it does mean is that almost every woman in America knows another woman who has been raped. And THAT tends to make it a cultural issue rather than a rare crime no one thinks about.

    And per earlier comments - yes, there is undoubtedly some error in that number. It might be 1 in 8. It might be 1 in 5. In all those cases, though, it will be someone you know. In my life, I know one woman who was raped and two who were sexually assaulted, and in all three cases it changed their lives. And that legacy of changed lives is a big reason why there is a rape culture.

    Note that "rape culture" does NOT mean that "we have a culture that likes to rape." It means we have a culture where women have had their lives changed by sexual assault. It means that we see it in the movies and on TV. It means we hear jokes about it. It means we read about it. It means we have to deal with it when it happens to our friends. All those things together are lumped under the larger heading of "culture."
     
  12. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    The boldfaced portion is another reiteration of your straw man.

    My definition of rape culture↑ is on record, and was when you started asserting your own definition↑; you do not get to hold me to your fallacious definition that even you can't help but invalidate with your indictment of men. Just because you don't want to answer your own self-contradiction doesn't mean it isn't on the record; I've pointed to it repeatedly, and even offered you a chance to dig yourself out of that rhetorical pit↑.

    You have chosen to dig deeper. That is what it is, but you really need to come up with something better than a flood of dishonesty aiming to obscure and confuse issues about rape culture.
     
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Meanwhile, Back on Topic (The Unsurprising Spectre)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Via The Stranger:

    I doubt you remember me, but I am the 20-year-old girl who came up to you crying because a man tried to grab me from behind earlier that day. I was terrified and embarrassed. And you guys laughed at me. You pretended to write down the description I gave you. You pretended that you were going to keep an eye out for him while you stood inside the movie theater. A friend asked me later what I expected from you guys. I expected you to not be assholes. I expected you to give two shits about my safety. But congratulations, SPD, you did it. You made me feel humiliated about almost being attacked. Thanks, I will remember to not try again.

    And all of a week later↱:

    I was standing on a chair at the back of Chop Suey trying to see the band when you grabbed my ass without invitation. You are fucking lucky you chose me because I was just intoxicated enough to try and let you off with a warning: "Don't grab my ass again." But what would a perfectly entitled douchebag like yourself say to someone with enough audacity to politely request you not physically assault her? "Don't make it so presentable." You then grabbed my ass a second time for good measure before quickly disappearing into the crowd. Let me tell you something, you piece of shit: What you did is third-degree sexual assault. I will never again politely request to not be assaulted, but I will give a boot to the balls of you or anyone else who crosses the line. You are rape culture, you dickwad.

    Or, hey, let's check in with Christine Clarridge and Jennifer Sullivan↱ of the Seattle Times and recall the occasion, about ten months later, the Seattle Police Department decided to brush off a sexual assault report including a photograph of the offender, only to be publicly shamed via social media until they dealt with it, whereupon the cops figured out their indifference allowed a known probation-violating Level 3 sex offender to continue assaulting people.

    Go a little north of Seattle, to a small city called Lynnwood, and ask if maybe, just maybe had the local police acted on a rape report instead of arresting the victim and forcing her to recant↗, accused rapist Marc O'Leary would not have been able to rape four more women in Colorado.

    These are just a few vignettes of rape culture from right here in my beloved Puget Sound region. It is of no comfort that these behaviors aren't exclusively local. I mean, really, what is anybody supposed to say about the Nevada judge who ordered a woman to jail↑ for being sexually assaulted by an officer of the court?

    If there are no beliefs and behaviors within our culture contributing to rape, then how does this keep happening?
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Anonymous. "I, Anonymous". The Stranger. 1 January 2014. TheStranger.com. 3 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1QWAbwP

    Anonymous. "I, Anonymous". The Stranger. 8 January 2014. TheStranger.com. 3 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1XKrEvO

    Carter, Mike. "Woman sues after Lynnwood police didn't believe she was raped". The Seattle Times. 11 June 2013. SeattleTimes.com. 3 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1TAXjPY

    Clarridge, Christine and Jennifer Sullivan. "Sex offender now called suspect in Westlake groping". The Seattle Times. 16 October 2014. SeattleTimes.com. 3 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1lZJXS8
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Regardless? Regardless of age, or nationality, or type of music?

    Regardless of membership in a fraternity? Regardless of relative social status?

    Are female supervisors and bosses in the US as vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault on the job as lower level female employees? The only difference is culture.

    Or is it possible that "individual choices" that follow culturally characteristic patterns are choices from among culturally presented alternatives - that is, characteristic patterns of individual choice are constituents of culture, not separate and distinct aspects of reality.

    Decisions didn't make them do it.

    Nothing made them do anything, in your sense. Unless they fell out of a tree, and gravity made them travel toward the center of the planet's mass for a while. Cause and effect isn't what we are dealing with, here.
     
  15. milkweed Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,654
    Needless to say, parts I agree with, parts I dont.

    I do agree with this:

    rape and its victims cynically exploited for “rape culture” propaganda.

    I taught my kid All dogs bite. Its a safety issue. But the reality is, most dogs she encounters will not bite her (she didnt give them reason to). But clearly there are things a kid can do to reduce the chance of being bitten. Most of the time. Then you get those asshole dogs who pack up, or are not trained, or are trained and get loose. Outliers for most peoples dog experience.

    I dont know what it is like to be a man. I dont know how over-powering being sexually aroused is for a man/youth or how that changes with years. And then there is stranger rape, which is predatory behavior.

    And I do feel sorry for those high school/college kids who fuck up their lives via rape. Being convicted of rape is supposed to fuck up the rest of your life, but are Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond (stuebenville) the same kind of animal as this guy, gary Irving?

    http://bangordailynews.com/2014/07/...-34-years-sentenced-for-crimes-as-a-fugitive/

    And if he lived there for 34 years without raping again, why did he stop? Was it a developmental issue, where his raging hormones overpowered his humanity for a couple of years and then he became 'normal' again?

    You asked another a question of "do we have to teach not to rape or do we teach them to rape"

    My answer? We have to teach them not to rape. The drive to procreate is inherent.
     
  16. milkweed Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,654
    Your definition is so vague, the wind blowing on my step dads legs in 1940 was a symptom of rape culture. Its not my dishonesty, it is your lack of substance.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    There are people in the US who encourage their dogs to bite, arrange for that tendency to be reinforced and rewarded, etc. There are regions, areas, entire cultures, in which a child is far more likely to be bitten by any given dog - keeping mean dogs, dangerous dogs, unstable dogs, is a cultural characteristic. The dogs of the northern Reds in North America, for example, were accepted hazards - an older child (say, four years and up) mauled by them was at fault for carelessness. That was their culture - it was structured around the prevalence of that kind of dog. Mine isn't. In my culture a dog that mauls a child for no good reason is killed, the child held blameless; the owner of a dog that even credibly threatens to maul innocent and normally behaving children is restricted, requirements imposed on them, legal action threatened.
    Human males have no drive to procreate. They are driven to sex. This drive like all others in humans is culturally mediated, its expression culturally structured. Rape as a culturally normal expression of the sexual drive is not biologically "inherent".
     
  18. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    264
    So, would it be safe to say that we produce them? Is the United States a factory that produces rapists? What are your odds of becoming a rapist if you grew up here in the states? Does anyone know?
     
  19. birch Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,077
    Considering that most females have been or will be a victim of sexual assault (molestation), there is a general problem. So women do need protection and representation as do males who are also susceptible but to a lesser degree
     
  20. birch Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,077
    What the heck is this? Asserting women's rights isn't a pity party ploy or propaganda for fighting maleness. Just overblown, cross-the-line privilege. Women shouldn't have to further hide, cower or be invisible for men to control themselves. That's just further engendering male weakness and entitlement.

    Just like fighting slavery or social disparity or ill, it takes everyones raising of conscience and help in the matter. That would include males as well as females. That's not 'damseling'. That's pretty sexist.
     
  21. birch Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,077
    Realistically its been estimated to be 1 in 3 but probably closer to 1 in 2. Most go unreported. This means just about every other female you encounter has been at some point at least the victim of some form of sexual violation that includes forced intimate fondling either mild to severe by a male. Usually when younger and powerless. usually an extended family member (like uncle), stepparent, family friend, babysitter, neighbor, clergy etc.
     
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2015
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    If those are the numbers for sexual assaults (rather than solely rapes) I'd believe it. It jibes with what I've seen in the population in general.

    I find it sad that most of those came from someone they knew well. It seems like a lot of people out there would like to believe that seuxal assault is a very rare occurrence that happens to other people, and usually at the hands of a psychopathic loner who is far outside societal norms; someone who would be easy to identify if they just put the effort into it. The sad truth is that if a father goes to a Sunday mass with his children, he is looking at the group of people most likely to sexually assault his daughter.
     
  23. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    264
    You're saying that it's closer to 33% of the female population? Roughly 5,181,000 million women, is that right? Sexually assaulted or raped? Where did you get those numbers? Do you have a link?
     

Share This Page