The first of many things wrong with the column in Time magazine by Caroline Kitchens is its title: “It’s Time to End ‘Rape Culture’ Hysteria.”
Scare quotes are quotation marks that are used to cast doubt on a word or phrase, and they are being used here to question the existence of rape culture. However, rape culture is very real and should stand alone without quotations. Using “hysteria” to qualify the general reaction to rape culture trivializes this serious issue as another thing women have blown out of proportion with their overly dramatic and unpredictable emotions.
Kitchens, the writer, is a research assistant at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
Kitchens’ argument in the Time column is that the actions of a small number of individuals, rather than American culture, are responsible for rape, and, “Twenty-first century America does not have a rape culture.”
Kitchens says that “rapists are despised,” so there must not be a cultural issue with rape in America. It’s easy to believe that just bad guys rape — that rapists jump out from bushes at night with a knife or gun. That kind of rape is easy to label as “wrong.”
But people start to divide on rape when the victim was wearing scant clothing, was promiscuous or was dating the alleged rapist. However, 73 percent of sexual assaults are committed by nonstrangers, and more than 50 percent take place within one mile of the victim’s home or even at the victim’s home, according to Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the U.S.
Marital rape accounts for 25 percent of all rapes, according to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. Though American culture may not outwardly promote rape, its exploitation of women passively tolerates rape culture.
Kitchens questions activists who say, “Films, magazines, fashion, books, music, humor, even Barbie … cooperate in conveying the message that women are there to be used, abused and exploited,” as if these are absolutely ludicrous ideas.
But women are continually portrayed as objects, and as a former copy editor, I can tell you that objects are meant to be acted upon by the subject. This dehumanizing attitude that is fostered toward women is rape culture.
Our body parts are splayed on magazine pages, commercials, billboards and TV shows, advertising everything from cars to perfumes to jeans to, “You’re not really sure what they are trying to sell, but you’re pretty sure it is not actually women.”
Rape culture is school dress codes that tell girls their knees are too provocative and distracting to boys at school. Rape culture is jokes about sexual assault. Rape culture is women being taught to avoid rape and men not being taught to not rape. Rape culture is holding your pepper spray in one hand and your keys between your knuckles in the other as you walk back to your car at night. Rape culture is victim-blaming, cat-calling and slut-shaming.
Rape culture is Fox journalists talking about the Steubenville rapists’ ruined bright futures when that is irrelevant to their crimes. Rape culture is asking the victim what he or she was wearing or how much he or she was drinking. Rape culture is the demand for anti-rape underwear. It is the presence of gender stereotypes. The use of words like “dependent,” “emotional,” “passive,” “weak,” “flirtatious” and “sexually submissive” to describe femininity and words like “aggressive,” “strong” and “sexually aggressive” to describe masculinity. It is the popularity of songs like “Blurred Lines,” with lyrics like “I know you want it” and “I’ll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two.”
No, America may not be explicitly accepting of rape, but it passively condones it.
Rape culture is where we have to defend the existence of rape culture because the objectification of women is so normal that it is practically invisible.
Rape-culture theory educates women to be empowered about their bodies and men to have greater respect for women. And though rape accusations are very serious and can have damaging effects on a person’s future, people falsely report being sexually assaulted only 3 percent of the time.
Women are not hysterical about the issue of rape. We simply are aware that we live in a world that sexualizes and objectifies us, and we realize that this kind of atmosphere cannot be removed from the rape conversation.
[Lauren Adamson is a UF journalism junior. Her columns appear on Tuesdays. A version of this column ran on page 7 on 4/1/2014 under the headline "America passively condones rape culture"]
