Rape Culture Stalks Me And I Cannot Escape

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.”. - Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Defn. 1: A buzzword that gained in popularity in the last decade, and which people don't use that often anymore because it was simultaneously completely understood and also completely misunderstood. 

Defn. 2: Rape culture is a sociological concept for a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality. (Source)

Defn. 3: A society or culture that really doesn't value women as anything more than their bodies, and which values their bodies not at all, except for their utility. 

Defn. 4: A reason for useless manbois to jump down your throat, both on the internet and in real life. 

Rape culture quickly became a loaded word because it seemed to imply a culture where nothing but rape happened (which is accurate.) Apparently, it's just not polite to use words to describe life as it happens around us. 

But where does an entire culture that normalizes and turns a blind eye to rape come from? It doesn't just come from thin air. That larger social structure is what the concept of rape culture is meant to show. 

What is rape culture?

Simplistically, a society that, through its actions and norms, paves the way for, and forgives, a high frequency of the crime of rape.

But to get there, we need to connect a few dots.

Rape isn’t – as popular rape culture would have us believe – a crime of passion. It isn’t a loss of control, and it isn’t something someone can’t help. Rape is, essentially, about power.

Anyone can commit a crime like this, as long as they hold a position of power over someone else.

Anyone.

But how do you get to a point where a person thinks they can commit a crime like rape and get away with it? Or even live a blissful life ignorant of what they've done to another person? 

You get to it by normalizing the objectification of people
    – by holding them out as objects to be used for personal gratification. As trophies. As creatures existing to serve functional purposes, rather than full blooded beings whose personalities throng with dimensions.

We see rape culture in action all the time, all around us.

We see it when the clothing of small AFAB children is policed for “modesty” related reasons. We see it in college-going women who have to rally around their abuser for the sake of his future. We see it when leaked nudes and revenge porn destroy literal lives. And we see it in honour killings. In girls put under “house arrest” for talking to boys. In the fact that a woman’s value in the marriage market reduces in inverse proportion to her age and education.

Rape culture is all these things and more. It’s also the non-criminalization of rape within marriage. It’s also the stigmatization of same-sex relationships because relationships without procreation are useless to society. It’s in the demonization of women who choose to be sexually active, and in the belittling of women who choose otherwise.

Rape culture is the first guy I ever kissed, who, when I told him we were moving too fast for me, said “I can do anything… except that.” [That meaning penetrative peno-vaginal sex.]

(He apologized years later, when confronted with this.)

Rape culture is the first guy I ever loved, who, years later, insisted on sexting me the most graphic, explicit things despite me telling him over and over not to. We were just friends who were supposed to be having a friendly conversation.

(He still denies doing this, and sometimes admits he did it, but that he was drunk. He also thinks he’s a prime example of the kind of good men there are out there in the world, so I guess delusions are just part of his schtick.)

Rape culture is the guy who raped me, and then later told me that he couldn’t have, because he prides himself on being a protector of women.

(He apologized too, after a very intense conversation.)

Rape culture is having to learn the very difficult lesson that anyone can be a rapist, even the love of your life.

Rape culture doesn’t spare anyone. It has taken from me every single person that has mattered to me. And even now, years after I thought I was finally rid of its touch, it still stalks me, lying in wait.

(To be continued)