Rape Culture in America

Thank you for reading and responding. I wrote this almost a year ago and I'm glad it's still having an impact. I felt it was very important to share and I'm so happy to see other supporters as well. I hope all stereotypes of rape can be broken and men cannot be justified in their actions based on how the woman was dressed. I hope that male rape can be brought to light as well so people realize that they can be a victim just as easily as any woman.

This stuff really bothers me. I am really glad though that the term "rape culture" is starting to break into the mainstream. I don't think I realized, when I was younger, how rape is really a cultural issue--i.e. it's caused and facilitated and made worse by ways of thinking, by ideas, by things people are taught and behaviors people learn by watching others.

Thanks for sharing this and raising more awareness of these issues. I think that the more awareness we raise, the more quickly we can break down these problematic aspects of our culture, and this will hugely help to protect women (and men too, as they can also be raped and are often subjected to similar sorts of dismissive cultural ideas, like the idea that "men can't be raped" because "men always want sex" and ridiculous stuff like that).

Some years ago a female drugs dealer in Manchester, UK was convicted of rape on a victim, who owed her money. She could not do the raping herself, but she paid two thugs to rape the victim. The dealer was convicted because she organised the rape. The thugs also were sent to prison.

Horrifying but as Sheri_Oz says, not just confined to the US. We've had some awful cases recently reported in the UK and there is now a - maybe this terminology is wrong - some young girl gang members - who set up their so called friends to be raped by male gang members, so the girls doing the setting up can feel that they belong. And Frank is right about male rape too. I suspect it under-reported more than female rape.

The sad thing about our culture is that I'm not the least bit surprised by any of these comments. Assaults on college campuses or involving students seem to go completely unnoticed.

The governments view of women is still less than that of men. Women are still making less money than men for working the same job. This isn't quite a terror as Rape Culture but it just goes to show how even today, men are valued more than women.

I remember my ethics class a couple years ago where we too discussed whether certain acts are always wrong and if I remember correctly, abuse and rape were the only things we could think of. Male rape is so rarely reported that I only think of prisons or young males who are molested. I'm sure that it does occur under the same circumstances as female rape but there's such a stigma, you rarely hear of it.

It is difficult to know where to begin in my response to this article. It is ever timely and pertinent. I had a discussion with my advanced level philosophy class, when we were talking about the question of whether there are some acts that are always wrong. While we could find reasons to kill, we concluded that rape is always wrong in itself and never justifiable on utilitarian grounds. So rape was the one act that was always wrong.

The misbehaviour of teams arises from the fact they often are composed of young, morally under-developed, but high testosterone men, who together reinforce each others' moral inadequacies, and they often develope a team culture, which in some cases might be quite negative, as it was in the case of th college team that you cite. But while high testosterone levels explain the desire for sex, they do not excuse. There can be no excuses for rape. You are not forced to do it. It arises entirely from male energies, over which the victim has no control.

While rape is a feminist issue, it is not only a feminist issue, as it belongs to the broader issue of morality/ethics. There are cultural and political issues as well. How does a rape culture develop? What political structures can we put in place to address the problems.

Male rape should not be forgotten, for while rarer than female rape, it is damaging and generally inflicted on smaller and weaker men by larger and quite brutal males.

Of course, it is not just America. It is a world-wide problem. Great article.

Remember that this is a country where the national legislature refused to amend the constitution to say that women are equal. Even the black Civil Rights activist said in the Sixties that the only role of women in the movement was prone. We have never had a culture that respects the true value of women - and that has lead to a culture of abuse and rape.

Wow! And I have goosebumps at that last postcard too.

I read in the week about a woman in her first few weeks at university (in America), who was raped by the whole football team. It was done publicly, on a pool table in a bar. Photographs were taken. A friend was an eye-witness. He'd received a text message from her shortly before, which stated that she was scared. Then nothing. He came looking for her, and found her in that position. She had been given roofies, so she was passed out and wouldn't remember. A kit later proved what had happened to her.

She reported what had happened to the university administration. Which promptly circulated a letter to all its students, naming her and giving details of her accusations. Fellow students openly ridiculed her or attacked her for bringing the school into disrepute. The football team were not brought to task for it.

In the same state, not long before, a female student at another university was also sexually assaulted. She went to the police rather than the administration. But the chief of police was her university's main fund-raiser. For fear of tarnishing the university's education, he threw the case out.

So yes, I can see all that you're saying, and I'm appalled by it too.