Written by Melanie
Let’s talk about rape.
First what is rape? I could provide a dictionary definition, but as colloquial language will prove, the dictionary doesn’t do a very good job of really telling you what something actually means. I could also tell you that rape doesn’t have one definition. Rape means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To a victim, rape means abuse. Rape means dehumanization and trauma. Rape means “I will never be the same again.” To a rapist, rape means power. Rape means control. Rape means, “there is nothing you can do to stop me.” To a police officer, rape means bad choices. Rape means you had too much to drink. Rape means, “what were you wearing?” To the frat boy in his second year of college rape means, “this is what college is about.” To the woman with 3 kids and no where to go rape means, “what kind of wife would I be?” And to the 14-year old who just laughed along with his classmates after hearing a boy tell his rape joke, rape is funny. Rape means absolutely nothing.
Now let’s talk about rape culture.
When discussing rape culture there are a few things you need to understand, the first being that we as a culture have done whatever we can to shift the blame from abuser to victim. One way we do that is microaggressions. Phrases like “I raped that guy in Call of Duty last night!” Or, “Dude, I totally raped that math test,” are examples of microaggressions. They have three distinct repercussions: first, they normalize rape. Rape is now an everyday part of life, and no longer about dominance and abuse. We have now distanced ourselves slightly from the victim’s narrative of rape. Second, they relay to rapists that their actions are okay. By telling a rape joke in public, or using ‘rape’ in a lax way, you have just identified with a rapist that may have heard you. The rapist now thinks his actions are normal. We have now traveled even further from the victim’s definition of rape. And lastly, microaggressions communicate to victims that their experience with rape is invalid. You have now told a victim that their rape was normal, and that their reaction to it is not practical. We have now completely rejected the victim’s point of view. Is your rape joke still funny?
Another way that rape culture works to protect the abuser is through victim blaming. We constantly tell women to cover up.
That showing their bodies is an open invitation for sexual intercourse. We do this in a couple different ways. The first is through slut-shaming. We tell women that wearing minimal clothing makes you promiscuous. We tell them that having multiple partners means that their body is no longer theirs, and that they must be willing to have sex with anyone and everyone. We also outright victim-blame, or we tell victims of rape that they somehow played a part in their own rape. They had too much to drink. They went out too late at night. They shouldn’t have worn that crop top and shorts because we all know every woman has the words “Rape me!” permanently etched on their stomach and thighs. We tell women that they have a helping hand in their own sexual abuse. We have now told the rapist that they are not to blame. We have communicated to the rapist that sex is theirs to take whenever THEY feel it is being offered to them despite, whether the victim vocally gives consent and that consent is on going. So, are you still laughing at that rape joke?
Society even portrays rape in an exclusionary way in an attempt to make victims believe that they haven’t even been raped. In movies, rape is aggressive, involves a struggle, maybe the victim is even bound and gagged. The victims is usually crying, screaming, fighting back in some way. We teach people that rape is always violent, and this isn’t the case. Rape can be your husband convincing you to have sex even though you’re tired and not in the mood. Rape can be your partner insisting that you keep going, even though you’ve changed your mind. Rape can be a friend driving you home because you’re drunk and taking advantage of you. By painting a picture of rape as involving physical force and screaming and calling out for help, it invalidates all other forms of rape. Victims of rape are now left to struggle to decipher if their feelings are real. Victims can’t decide if they were actually raped, so they don’t report it. They don’t tell friends or family, and they internalize their trauma. Now, when they come forward 5 years later after finally coming to terms with what happened to them, they must be lying right? If rape is so bad they would’ve reported it as soon as it happened, right? Wrong. We’ve now made that impossible for the victim to do, and their rapist has walked away feeling on top of the world. They just got away with rape, and rape culture made that happen. How funny is your rape joke now?
We also sympathize with the rapist over the victim. It’s common, and it’s extremely dangerous. Take Cosby for example. Bill Cosby raped more than 35 women, one being as young as 17. News articles use words like “accusers” and “sex”, instead of “victims” and “rape”, to connotate the message and make us think it was consensual sex that these women now regret. Using language to tell the reader how they should feel is how the media contributes to rape culture, the same way that mainstream media feeds into racism by calling Mike Brown a “thug” and a “grown man” while Dylan Roof “was a loner” and a “teen”. The media protects the abuser and tries to lighten their actions by using certain words to take away from the negative reality. Bill Cosby has talked about rape several times over the years, but people refused to believe he was a serial rapist until HE HIMSELF admitted it. And even then there were people still coming to his rescue, and rape culture is to blame.
So, to the boy in his freshman year of high school, telling rape jokes to fit in and make friends, I didn’t laugh. Neither did the girl sitting in the back of class who was raped when she was 12. She didn’t laugh, and neither should you.
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