Can the Rape Culture in the West be Reduced with Guns?

[Jaicee]

Jumpin said:

On the concept of "rape culture" - I am not so certain that exists in the West - unless you go by a looser Swedish-type definition.

If you go to some countries, and some specific areas of countries, there definitely is a sort of a culture where men are encouraged to manipulate, dehumanize, and harass women, and this is deemed "just being a man." It's a belief that men (or masculine men) are inherently uncontrollable around women and should be expected to be always trying to get in every woman's pants. Ironically, you see this sort of stuff in the socially-conservative regions where sex is considered more shameful.

I don't know if that is quite "rape culture," but it is definitely a normalization and encouragement of some very toxic behaviour in the name of masculinity. Masculinity is different in different areas - so, to Germans, the Latin American idea of masculinity is VEEEERRRY different from ours; neither is right or wrong, just different. In some cultures, it is seen as masculine to beat up women and establish dominance; and in the vast majority of the west (sadly not all) of the west, this is seen as reprehensible or animal-like, and the opposite of masculine behaviour.

 

 

Then there is râpé culture, which is also bad!

Rape is so funny.

In my view of it, rape culture is any environment wherein predatory sexual behavior is treated as normal or trivial. I trust you'll forgive me for embracing this broad, intolerant definition thereof.

I am conversely not a liberal when it comes to gender definitions. Masculine and feminine, in my view of it, are just gendered ways of saying dominant and submissive respectively. For a man to want to be a "manly" man is for him to want to be a controlling man, and for a woman to want to be a "feminine" woman is for her to want to be controlled and demeaned. I don't view it as more complicated than that. An egalitarian society features no such concepts, in my opinion.

Liberals love to speak in careful nuances. "Mainstream" porn. "Toxic" masculinity. Etc. In reality, there is no other kind of masculinity, but only different strategies and degrees to which it is tolerated by a given society. That is why, despite all these different forms and expressions of masculinity existing around the world that you highlight, there is not a single country that treats women as the equals of men overall. Not even one. And it also why rape is a particular crime committed almost exclusively by men in each case.