"Rape Culture is Real"

Read the article here. Another great article is this one, Rape Culture is When...

Finally, see this, which looks at a study that finds that girls view sexual violence as normal.


Tl;dr (first linked article)"Last week, in an essay, Caroline Kitchens wrote that rape culture as a theory over-hyped by 'hysterical' feminists. Emboldened by a disappointing and out of touch statement by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), Kitchens writes, 'Recently, rape-culture theory has migrated from the lonely corners of the feminist blogosphere into the mainstream. In January, the White House asserted that we need to combat campus rape by ‘[changing] a culture of passivity and tolerance in this country, which too often allows this type of violence to persist…’ Tolerance for rape? Rape is a horrific crime, and rapists are despised.'"

"'If so many millions of women were getting carjacked or kidnapped, we’d call it a public crisis. That we accept [rape] as normal, even inevitable, is all the evidence I need,' Jacyln Friedman, author Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape told me, in response to Kitchens’ piece. 'If we already despise rapists, why are they so rarely held accountable in any way?,' Friedman asks. An analysis by RAINN found that 97% of rapists never spend a single day in jail for their crimes. 'What we really despise is the idea of rapists: a terrifying monster lurking in the bushes, waiting to pounce on an innocent girl as she walks by,' Friedman says. 'But actual rapists, men who are usually known to (and often loved by) their victims? Men who are sometimes our sports heroes, political leaders, buddies, boyfriends and fathers? Evidence suggests we don’t despise them nearly as much as we should.'"


Tl;dr (second linked article)

" The rape culture frame has helped me explain feminist ideas about sexual assault to lots of non-feminist types over the years. For instance, the entire social expectation that women are supposed to reluctantly “give” sex to men who aggressively demand it is a big facet of rape culture. I always note that norms like that one encourage all sorts of bad phenomena beyond assault, like the sexualization of younger women, the damaging myth that men can’t be rape victims, and even false rape accusations (which remain rare). 
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