Five Ways We Contribute to Rape Culture Without Realizing It

On Dec. 14th, 2013, six school officials at Steubenville High School plead not guilty to
charges that basically amounted to creating a path of least resistance for rape
culture to thrive: "allowing underage drinking," "contributing to delinquency of a minor,"
"obstructing justice," and "failure to report child abuse or neglect" are just some of the
few. Given the turned heads, and even the encouragement of adults, young male
athletes that represented the pride of their town were given free reign to drink their
inhibitions away and engage in date rape.
It is easy to see how this contributes to rape culture, but what are some everyday things
that other bystanders did to contribute? Should we hold the school officials accountable
without wondering if our own local heroes are doing the same thing, and we are, by our
attitudes, actions, and even inaction to our sisters, daughters, and mothers, contributing
to a climate where a girl blames herself or would not want to disclose she had been
raped? Serena Williams wondered aloud about the Steubenville girl's lack of
responsibility for "putting themselves in that situation." Does that sound like you? What
does that have to do with contributing to rape culture?
Rape culture is often a term associated with specific subcultures of America, such as
fraternities, athletic teams, and one that has gotten a lot of news coverage lately, the
armed forces. This serves a purpose, but can also serve to mask the fact that America
itself is a rape culture.
How could that be? Nobody is pro-rape. You do not sit around in front of the evening
news with a foam finger and leap up to celebrate every time a rape is mentioned; in fact,
the truth is likely to be quite the opposite. Most men surveyed in a study believe that
rape should be met with severe punishment.
Yet the conviction rate for rape is between two and four percent [1]. And this is
coming from the FBI, where the "F" does not stand for Feminist. Victims of sexual
assault are the least likely to get a conviction out of all victims of violence, and it has
nothing to do with women lying, but everything to do with our beliefs about the world.
1. You Want Rapists to Look a Certain Way

This appallingly low conviction rate is partly explained by the fact men believe the rape
myth that real rape is a man jumping out of the bushes and forcefully raping a
stranger, a belief which persists despite the fact that most rapists are acquainted with
their victims. If rape is evil and should be punished, but most rapists know their victim,
and, according to the Department of Justice, rape happens every two minutes, then
there is a large amount of friends, boyfriends, husbands, peers and co-workers out
there who are evil and should be put away for a long time.
But they are not, and that is the fault of ignorant and fearful men who do not believe that
most men accused of rape fit the profile of a rapist. Police officers were asked in a
study to take a survey called the victim credibility scale, and just about 20% said they
were unlikely to believe a married woman who claims she has been raped by her
husband [2]. Most men fear being unjustly accused or sending people like them to
prison if there is a chance they were wrongly accused, causing a discrepancy between
societal attitudes and actions on rape likened to a sexual schizophrenia. Thus, there is
enough cognitive dissonance, or contradictions, between our beliefs and actions as a
society about rape to keep a modern-day Socrates busy for the rest of his life.
2. You Believe That Women Lie About Rape
FOX News and law firms which defend alleged rapists have argued that a discussion of
alleged-Rape Culture needs to be balanced out by noting the rate of false accusations
of rape. These instigating attention whores are vindictive, they might argue, and while a
man might ruin a womans inner life by raping her, a woman can ruin a mans inner and
outer life (social life/career) merely by accusing a man of rape, forever tarring his image.
In other words, they argue "Those feminist apologists for such slander are wrong! They
are hiding from the fact that the FBI crime index counts 8% of rapes as unfounded,
compared to just 2% of other crimes that turn out to be unfounded."
Thank you for being so fair and balanced! This is big news!
Even scholarly reviews of the literature on false rape allegations note that most studies
average out to a count of between 2 and 8%. FOX News called the differences between
the conclusions of the different studies in literature reviews irreconcilable and said
because of this, we cannot learn anything from them. So, time to wipe off our hands and
walk away from irrelevant feminism while saying that the idea of Rape Culture is
questionable at best.

Lauren Nelson, an author on rape culture, criticized this perception and proceeded to
lay the smackdown. Essentially saying, Okay lets go with the conservative estimate of
8% false rape accusations and go from there, she proceeded to remind us how many
flaws there are with using this number. [3] For instance, it does not take into account the
fact that 8% of *reported* rapes are false accusations, not 8% of *all* rapes.
The FBI says that rape is seriously underreported. Nelson takes a conservative FBI
estimate of reported rapes at 37 percent of the real number, and then computes that
into the equation of unfounded rape reports. This shows that 3% of rapists are actually
falsely accused, more in line with the average of other falsely reported crimes listed in
the FBI crime index.

Not finished, she then went further and looked at how most rapists get freed before a
conviction is made [4], and also how some police departments who are giving the FBI
their data use unrealistic standards for rape victims. For example, given the fact
that some police documented a rape report as "false" if the victim did not appear
disheveled [5], this is not unwarranted. Nelson concluded that 1.5% of all rapes, then,
are false reports.

The reality is that because most rape victims are acquainted with their attacker, the
attacker can rely more on psychological control, such as intimidation, rather than force.
If a victim knows their attacker, they might be unaware of the fact it was rape, have very
complex emotions to process, and very complex decisions to make about getting out of
their attackers lives before they tell on them due to fear of retaliation. The lack of
physical evidence of force and the fact that a woman waited a long time to disclose and
report the rape might damn her in the face of family, friends, police, prosecutors, judges,
and juries who are afraid to convict an innocent man.

3. You Believe that the World is Predictable and Just
One of the first things a person might do when someone tells them about rape is feel
confused and want to make sense of it, or/as well as horrified and want to stop thinking
about it because it is too heavy.
But be careful- when someone discloses a rape to you, do not minimize, downplay,
deny, or imply that the women did something to provoke it. This is not the time to play
Devils Advocate or pseudo-marriage counselor, suggesting I think you both made a
mistake. This is not the time to think about the sanctity of marriage or your familys
reputation if this ends in divorce. But chances are, you might end up thinking This
would have never happened to me, I did the right things to avoid a situation like this.
We take for granted certain things about the world: random acts of violence do not just
happen, and good things happen to good people. Researchers call this Just World
Theory, and attribute belief in it to explain much of the victim-blaming that goes on in
cases of rape [6].
So rape victims break some kind of predictable rule of safety in order to get raped. Yet a
vast amount of women would all have to have been acting like bad people if that were
the case- remember, one woman is raped every two minutes. The notion that these
women were acting out of some bounds is likely easier for men (and women) to believe
than the notion that bad things could happen to anyone at any time, outside of our
control. Yet the comfort people get from this core belief happens at the expense of the
women whose reputations are put on trial when they charge their attackers with rape.
Studies have reported that men believe rape myths at higher rates than women [7],
though some womenwho have disclosed rape to their own mothers have been told to
stop being such a nag and be a better wife to your husband [8]. It is hard enough for
women to press charges against men, knowing chances of getting a conviction are slim
and that their character will likely be questioned. Family and friends should not make
things worse by making it seem like if only you had done this differently, you wouldnt
have gotten raped. Loved ones may not even realize that by asking certain suggestive
questions that they are interrogating or criticizing the victim.

Recently, there has been controversy in the media about Serena Williams
comment on the Steubenville Rape Case [9]. She had implied that the rape had been a
mix of boys acting stupid, bad parenting and girls who should have known better.
Even though she said the bulk of the blame should go to the men, she spent some time
chastising the rape victims for putting themselves in a vulnerable position. This is
something which women are who are sexually assaulted are often familiar with: a
counterfactual thought.
Counterfactual thoughts routinely begin with If only I and end with this event
wouldnt have happened. Women who go this route with their thoughts after a rape
tend to blame themselves, and this often leads to depression. The problem with these
kinds of thoughts is that rape is assumed to be a predictable and unchanging part of the
background of everyday life, while womens actions are seen as changeable (especially
in hindsight). [10]
But what Serena and others downplay is the fact that both men and womens actions
are mutable. There is no threshold of sexual arousal beyond which men cannot control
themselves. Both genders are capable of change, and yet women are forced to do all
the work. One third of women in a study reported that fear of being raped was ever-
present, and another third reported altering their lives to take precautions [11]. In
essence, the big double standard of our Rape Culture is that women are asked to
accommodate for rapists, while men feel little to no push to organize against rape.
4. You Believe that Rape is a Womans Issue
Rape is part of everyday background, and women must accommodate rapists.
Everyday men have no responsibility. These are typical assumptions that play out in
places like college campuses. Even though 25% of college women have reported
surviving a rape or attempted rape, and 99% of incidents at college are involve men
raping women, sexual assault prevention has typically focused on ways for women to
prevent rape [12]. Has any university really asked why sexual assault prevention has
focused on women instead of men? Even asking the question of why women are the
targets of rape in most cases, as opposed to men being the targets, asks the question
of what many men must be thinking about women. If our actions are the results of our
thoughts, then rape is the product of mens mental content.
Why is rape a womans issue, then? If attacks on the United States lead to the United
States sending soldiers and spies into the Middle East to fight terrorists, then why are
attacks on women seen as the victims issue, with all the resources devoted to
educating and training women rather then sending resources to the battlefield of mens
minds? And what little resources women get at best: violence against women is
prosecuted at the lowest rate compared to other forms of violence, and rape is
prosecuted at a rate of 2 to 4 percent.
Terrorism works by making people afraid to go out and participate in daily activities of
society. Rape is sexual terrorism. Women worry about being in the wrong place at the
wrong time, but the essence of sexual (or any) terrorism is that you never know when
that is. [13]
Rape is sexual terrorism because women are left feeling less free than men to do the
same exact things that men do, such as do things alone at night. And some of these
women have internalized notions that rape is not random but happens to certain kinds
of women. Rape myths like this, and myths that good things happen to good people so
if women get raped they must have done something wrong, create a path of resistance
toward women who try and come forward after having been raped. The path of least
resistance becomes to know her place, and accept the inevitability of rape or some
failure on her part to prevent it, and so in resignation women silence themselves
before their family, friends, and the court system get a chance to silence them.
5. You Get Defensive for Your Tribe
It may be especially hard to identify yourself as part of Rape Culture if you are in a
historically oppressed group. Jewel Woods, a black feminist, writes that when he
engages people in conversation about items on the Male Privilege Checklist (see part
1 of 3 in this blog series), he encountered the most resistance from black and brown
men. Indeed, he says, some items on the Male Privilege Checklist did not apply to men
of color. He created the Black Male Privilege Checklist, which is here:
http://jewelwoods.com/node/9

Note number 75: I do not have to worry about being considered a traitor to my race if I
call the police on a member of the opposite sex, and number 1: I dont have to choose
my race over my sex in political matters.
Whether you are black, brown, LGBT, Muslim, or Jewish, you might know and respect
the person a woman is accusing of rape- maybe he is even a community leader or a
symbol of strength and you dont get how they could rape anyone. Maybe you are a
black or brown person who figures that the criminal justice will do so much worse to the
accused rapist than they deserve, so you dont want to involve white people in our
business. Maybe you do not wish for her to air our dirty laundry, and reinforce
negative stereotypes because many white people simply attribute a tendency to rape to
a persons race or ethnicity. But Male Privilege and Sexism wins every time a woman is
silenced because she feels as though she has to choose her minority group over her
sex.
The straight white Christian majority is in on this, too, and have the media as a powerful
psychological tool. Nearly everyone loves athletes and soldiers, which is why so many
people are quick to defend them, and may be why rape is so extraordinarily prevalent in
college sports fraternities, school and professional sports teams, and the armed forces:
no one wants to believe anything bad about their tribal heroes, whether that tribe is
Duke University, Steubenville High School, or America itself.
At the outbreak of the Kobe Bryant alleged-rape case, a team of researchers at Aurora
University in Illinois counted the number of online articles from ESPN and CNN to local
and regional newspapers (156 in total) and counted how many articles presented rape
myths without challenging them, and how many presented them and then challenged
them. The alleged victim in this case might have guessed it: the majority of the articles
(102) contained at least one unchallenged myth-endorsing statement. The researchers
also counted that the media made more positive comments about the athlete ("the boy
next-door") than about the victim, and more negative comments about the victim than
about the athlete. Kobe Bryant got out of hot water when his alleged victim dropped the
charges. The alleged victim's attorneys said "that she believed she could not get a fair
trial after all of the leaks and errors in this case." [14] This influential media bias is the
kind of resistance we give to people who go after our favorite athletes, our symbols of
strength and hope.
===========
Whoever we are, internalized myths and male privilege push as along the path of least
resistance that keeps the Monopoly game of sexism operating. In essence, by
assuming women are lying, or by trying to explain away their rapes as something that
could have been prevented if they had done something differently, we are acting as
gender police who keep women as a group down below men in societys hierarchy. This
is because you are discouraging women from blaming the attacker and pursuing
charges against him, maintaining the status quo of 97% of rapists not going to jail.
You do not need a law to dictate how women should dress to still pressure women to
conform. All you need are the unwritten laws of the game of Male Privilege to create
resistance. All you need is the smug thought "I never would have put myself in that
position," and for that attitude to show and be read loud and clear.
For the final part in my series, I will be posting about how every man and women are
police officers in this game who have the choice to enforce its sexist rules or not, and
how you can make it easier for people to break the rules. It will discuss how to be a
mirror to the police officers, allowing them to realize their badges and the power they
wield (as opposed to becoming a police officer yourself, walking around and yelling at
people for being sexist); in essence, to wake other people up to this invisible game. See
you then.


[11] Carole Sheffield's "Sexual
Terrorism"http://web.pdx.edu/~matg/Sociology/Gender_&_Sexualities_files/Sexual
%20T...
[12] Barone, R.P., Wolgemuth, J.R., & Linder, C. (2007). Preventing sexual assault
through engaging college men. Journal of College Student Development, 48(5), pp.
585-
594.http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/240961/original/preventing_through_..
.
[13] Summary of Carole Sheffield's "Sexual
Terrorism"http://web.pdx.edu/~matg/Sociology/Gender_&_Sexualities_files/Sexual
%20T...
[14] Franiuk. "Prevalence and Effects of Rape Myths in Print Journalism: The Kobe
Bryant Case"
http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/14/3/287.abstract
and http://web.aurora.edu/~rfraniuk/franiuk_rapemythheadlines_sexroles.pdfht...

[1] Laura Nelson http://cogentcomment.com/2013/03/20/why-i-wont-publish-your-comments-about-false-
rape-accusations-2/
[2] Page, A. (2008). Judging women and defining crime: Police officers attitudes toward women and rape.
Sociological Spectrum, 28(3), pp. 389-411.
http://soc.appstate.edu/sites/soc.appstate.edu/files/Page_2008_Judging_women.pdf
[3] Laura Nelson http://cogentcomment.com/2013/03/20/why-i-wont-publish-your-comments-about-false-
rape-accusations-2/
[4] http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
[5] A literature review of false reports of rape and so-called false reports of
rape http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1366225
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis#Violence
[7] Franiuk. "Prevalence and Effects of Rape Myths in Print Journalism: The Kobe Bryant Case"
http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/14/3/287.abstract
[8] Beaulaurier. "External Barriers to Help Seeking for Older Women Who Experience Intimate Partner
Violence"
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/26530139/external-barriers-help-seeking-older-women-who-
experience-intimate-partner-violence
[9] Serena William's comments http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/06/serena-williams-steubenville-rape/
[10] Miller. "Deconstructing self-blame following sexual assault: the critical roles of cognitive content and
process."
http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/deconstructing-self-blame-following-sexual-assault-the-critical-roles-
Uyqq0hmjLQ/1
[11] Carole Sheffield's "Sexual Terrorism"
http://web.pdx.edu/~matg/Sociology/Gender_&_Sexualities_files/Sexual%20Terrorism%209.2.pdf
[12] Barone, R.P., Wolgemuth, J.R., & Linder, C. (2007). Preventing sexual assault through engaging
college men. Journal of College Student Development, 48(5), pp. 585-594.
http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/240961/original/preventing_through_engaging_men.pdf
[13] Summary of Carole Sheffield's "Sexual
Terrorism" http://web.pdx.edu/~matg/Sociology/Gender_&_Sexualities_files/Sexual%20Terrorism%209.2.
pdf
[11] Franiuk. "Prevalence and Effects of Rape Myths in Print Journalism: The Kobe Bryant Case"
http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/14/3/287.abstract
and
http://web.aurora.edu/~rfraniuk/franiuk_rapemythheadlines_sexroles.pdfhttp://web.aurora.edu/~rfraniuk/fr
aniuk_rapemythheadlines_sexroles.pdf

By William Shep Glennon