Essay On Rape Culture
Rape culture is a term that was coined by feminists in the United States in the 1970’s. It was designed to show the ways in which society blamed victims of sexual assault and normalized male sexual violence. It can also be defined as a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. Rape culture includes the images, language, laws and other everyday phenomena that we see and hear everyday that validate and perpetuate rape. Rape culture is the jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery, that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem normal. Research has shown that violent media encourages youth to be very tolerant of aggression towards a romantic partner and
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Media outlets and pornography have so much engrained sexual violence into our society, that our language has become just as degrading. Even when used with a casual, harmless intent, the language our society invokes on a daily basis perpetuates sexual violence and our rape culture. We tell people to “go f*ck themselves” when we’re angry. We’ll “tear you a new one” when we’re insulting. So often we hear people in sports talk about winning as making their opponent “their b**ch” or losing as getting “totally raped” by their opponent. “When we consider the fact that 1-in-3 women and 1-in-6 men will be victims of sexual violence, it’s not surprising that it is a massive focal point in our speech. It’s not surprising that threatening sexual assault is the primary way that we engage in verbal warfare (EverydayFeminism 2014).”
Language acts as a catalyst for sexual violence in other ways. On a college campus, sexually degrading terms are used as frequently as a beer bong on game day – excessively and without question. By deeming women sluts, whores or bitches in both sexual and not sexual contexts, our society normalizes patriarchal values and gender inequality. When a woman is called a “slut,” she is dehumanized and objectified – two of the driving forces behind sexual
Media outlets and pornography have so much engrained sexual violence into our society, that our language has become just as degrading. Even when used with a casual, harmless intent, the language our society invokes on a daily basis perpetuates sexual violence and our rape culture. We tell people to “go f*ck themselves” when we’re angry. We’ll “tear you a new one” when we’re insulting. So often we hear people in sports talk about winning as making their opponent “their b**ch” or losing as getting “totally raped” by their opponent. “When we consider the fact that 1-in-3 women and 1-in-6 men will be victims of sexual violence, it’s not surprising that it is a massive focal point in our speech. It’s not surprising that threatening sexual assault is the primary way that we engage in verbal warfare (EverydayFeminism 2014).”
Language acts as a catalyst for sexual violence in other ways. On a college campus, sexually degrading terms are used as frequently as a beer bong on game day – excessively and without question. By deeming women sluts, whores or bitches in both sexual and not sexual contexts, our society normalizes patriarchal values and gender inequality. When a woman is called a “slut,” she is dehumanized and objectified – two of the driving forces behind sexual