This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at USF chapter.
Rape culture is everywhere and affects everything that we see. Despite this fact, we tend to not realize the sheer magnitude of rape culture because of how normalized it is in our society. From comedy shows, cartoons, movies, advertisements, and clothing, to school, the workplace, and the law, rape culture is everywhere and constantly perpetuated. But before we start this conversation, ask yourself “What is Rape Culture?”. Rape culture is the normalized perpetuation of rape and violence against women in society, pop culture, and media. It is both subtle and blatant ever-present, and inescapable. How does this morph our views on everyday people that we see?
Television shows, movies, advertisements, music videos, and etc. are more than often an illustration of contemporary pop culture and common ideologies within our society. These entities play a large role in influencing what we see and what we think because of how often we are all exposed to them (Huffington post, 2014). According to UC San Diego News Center, the average rate of media consumption in 2015 was predicted to be 15.5 hours per day, “that volume is equal to 6.9 million-million gigabytes of information, or a daily consumption of nine DVDs worth of data per person per day”. This is extremely dangerous when considering the strong presence of rape culture in almost everything that we see on a daily basis. Every day we are exposed to images of hypersexualized women, violence against women, and hypermasculine men, which in turn morph our views of everyday people in society. Seeing these images every day, at some point in time in the day, normalizes the idea that boys and men need to be aggressive and hypermasculine, while girls and women are sexual objects whose sole existence relies on the pleasure of boys and men. This toxic domino affect not only perpetuates harmful views on men and women; it encourages violent crimes against men and women, while also desensitizing us to the reality of the epidemic of rape culture.
In a society where rape culture is normalized, high rates of sexual crimes is as well. According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), 44% of victims are under the age of 18, which coincides with society’s hypersexualization of young girls. Every 107 seconds another American is sexually assaulted, 68% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police, and 98% of rapists will never spend a single day in jail or prison, and almost 50% of rapes are committed by someone that the victim knew. Rape culture also has a profound effect on violence against members of the LGBTQ community and the way society views the LGBTQ community. Members of the LGBTQ community are extremely hypersexualized, and also demonized because they do not conform to heteronormative and cisgender societal standards. According to the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Disease Control, 44% of lesbians and 61% of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. Nearly half (48 percent) of bisexual women who are rape survivors experienced their first rape between ages 11 and 17. 26% of gay men and 37% of bisexual men experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. According to the Human Rights Campaign, bisexual women and transgender people face the most alarming rates of sexual violence within the LGBTQ community.
Why is it so important to acknowledge rape culture? It is imperative that we acknowledge rape culture because of the harmful effects that it has on every aspect of our lives. It is a normalized ideology that ultimately harms all members of our society across the globe, as well as our views. Although destroying rape culture is not a task that will be simple or quick in our society, it is something that we can and need to accomplish over time. The first step to destroying rape culture is understanding it and why it is so harmful.