| Jaicee said: Since many of our members seem to have reached the disingenuous conclusion that there is no such thing as a rape-positive climate in the Western world, I have a few challenges for those individuals. The first challenge is how you explain the fact that #MeToo originated in the United States. What was that a response to, would you say? The second challenge is how you explain the fact that Donald Trump is my president right now, being as he won election shortly AFTER being caught on video boasting about sexually attacking women on a routine basis. Would you say that his election signaled public disapproval of such actions? As a third challenge, how does one explain the testimony of the public itself concerning the commonality of sexual harassment and violence in America? According to a recent, comprehensive national survey on the subject: -81% of women and 43% of men surveyed say that they have experienced sexual harassment before. I will add that both of those statistics include me personally. In fact, wittingly or otherwise, you (any given individual) in all likelihood actively participate in rape-positive culture on a daily basis. Here's a particularly obvious example of how: demographically speaking, the average member of this message board consumes online pornography routinely. What are the social roles that one is thereby feeding their brains? The essential thing that one inescapably learns from pornography is that, supposedly, women derive pleasure from any and all dominant behavior that a man can possibly exhibit, up to and frequently including the violation of basic consent. Hell, even being mutilated in a sexual context is commonly portrayed as pleasurable for the female party or parties! You don't think that might have any cumulative impact on what sort of behavior one is willing to let slide in the real world? My point is that the evidence of what many feminists refer to as rape-positive culture is right in front of your faces! It's frankly hard to miss. One has to try to miss it anymore. The fact that there are more extreme expressions thereof to be found in some other countries (such as the fact that women who speak out against sexual harassment and violence are actively censored in China, for instance) does not preclude this reality or render it okay in my mind. I regard the "Third World women have it worse, so you can't complain" line of argument to be an opportunistic one used predominantly by First World men to strategically divide women against each other so that we do not think about inconvenient things like what we have in common and the shared source of these oppressions. |
This is what is so tiring with the rape-culture argument. It is basically made up of three parts and it often used when people within politics try to justify generalizations that has no basis in reality:
1. Make bizzare conclusions from statistics based on your opinion, not on what the statistics actually show.
2. Try to delegitimize those that disagree with you by invalidating their opinion simply because they belong to the group you wish to generalizes about.
3. End with an emotional statement "it is right in front of your eyes and you are blind if you don´t see it!"
No, there is no rape culture in most of the world. If you can show that laws, governmental entities or the public as a whole legitmize rape than yes, we can talk about a rape culture. People experiencing harrassment and being sexualized is not examples of rape, they are examples of people being victims of harrassment and sexualization.
No, porn does not promote rape culture unless it is that kind of porn. And even when it is that kind of porn, a rational person understands that for the vast majority that consumes it, they understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
The reason why the feminists on the left use the term "rape culture" is likely because it gives the biggest impact politically, not because it is an accurate description of reality. It´s the same reasoning the radical right uses when it comes to violence in video games and movies and their attempts to connect violence in media to mass shootings: they make a false equivalency that has no basis in actual facts.
Fact: during most of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, men and women has been treated as equals by the law in more and more countries. The view on a womans (or mans) right to their own body has becomes stronger and large parts of society has a norm that noone whould be violated against their will. Are there countries that still has a long way to go? Absolutely. Do we, who live in countries with strong protection from being violated, still has a long way to go? Yes, most definitely. But does that mean the very culture, the fabric of our society promotes rape? Absolutely not and there is no statistics that I know of that support a view of existing "rape culture".
And what I hate most about the whole term "rape culture" is that it doesn´t aid in the progress of equality, but instead make it worse since it thrives on painting society in a destructive way, placing people in opposing "groups" and not working towards improving our lives.
