Week 9: Dating Violence

This week we obviously talked about dating violence and whenever I think about dating violence anymore I think about Rape Culture.

We were talking in Soc of Gender last year about how women are always told not to drink to much or to watch what they wear and never walk alone at night or else they might get raped. These are really problematic ways of thinking about rape. Why should a woman have to worry about what she wears or how much she drinks among friends? People shouldn't rape. When we back up these methods of protecting oneself from rape we are putting a Band-Aid on a gun wound. We are backing up rape culture. We are basically saying as a society that rape is a normal concurrence and we just have to live with that fact. So instead of asking what a woman (although men are and can be raped as well!) "did wrong to protect herself against rape". We should ask "Why are rapist raping?".


However, I am not saying that we should not give women (and men) the skills to protect themselves now! That is important since this is a perverse social problem, that sadly, won't be eliminated overnight. I am just trying to point out where the cause is and where some of our efforts to elimiate this huge problem should look. 


Also, I had this female student in my class comment on my discussion and how she thought I was wrong to say this, that the US was not a rape culture and that women shouldn't be so "naive" and not drink to much at "frat" parties. However, I responded to her by pointing out she was clearly backing up my argument. Our culture, and other cultures around the world, normalize rape. We think it is a normal, and heaven-forbid, a natural occurance (usually by men) that can't be helped, that it's just a fact we live with. That is what makes a culture a rape culture. We normalize it with our speech and even give it a positive spin when we say something like "Oh, I'd rape that" or "I rapped that, shit" (which I have definitely been guilty of this and am seriously working on not saying that ever again). 


However, I was very happy to find that another gentleman and a lot more students sided with my argument and added some great insights and facts to my initial post. It really makes me hopefully that more people are on the right mind track about preventing rape culture just within themselves and as it sounds like, in other avenues of life. 


I could seriously have discussions about this all day, so if any of you have questions or comments send me a comment or e-mail! Or those of you on my facebook drop me a message or comment there as well!


-Alex