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Comments
Just here to throw in my two cents about the death penalty.
While I think rape is one of the worst things you can do to someone, I don't believe that rapists deserve to be killed either. I don't think there's some fixed line, and once you cross it, you've lost the potential to better yourself as a person. And I don't think that acknowledging this is in any way apologizing for rapists and what they do; believing that evil people can learn to better themselves is not the same thing as saying that their actions are acceptable. As others have said, killing them once they've already been put behind bars where they won't be able to hurt anyone else just satisfies the cathartic desire to see them punished.
Having never experienced sexual assault, of course, it's probably not my place to say whether or not rapists should be forgiven for their actions. I personally wouldn't be able to look at a person the same way if I knew that they had raped someone--at least not for a very long time. But if there was even a chance that they could one day become a different person, I wouldn't want to take that away.
What is this whole "rape culture" thing anyway, guys? Is it when you say "thank you" after raping someone?
Rape culture is basically the idea that society enables rape through things like rape jokes, "she was asking for it" comments, shaming victims who press charges because it will ruin someone's reputation, etc etc.
I'm probably going to sound ignorant, but how do rape jokes enable rape? I can plainly see how all the other things do, because they promote the mindset that rape is excusable or that it's the victim's fault, but normally people who joke about it don't truly believe that rape is justifiable and wouldn't laugh about it in serious situations. At least, in my experience. I'm not sure about everyone else's.
It minimizes rape as it treats as a matter worthy of mockery.
@AXavierB: The idea is that the one guy in the room who actually would rape someone feels validated by the jokes. Or something. I've seen more in-depth arguments but I don't feel like searching it up.
The idea is basically. Normal people doing rape jokes know that rape is bad and are merely indulging in black humor. Rapists, on the other hand, feel that other people making rape jokes means that it is on some level excusable or okay. At least that's what I've been told.
Ninja.
^How I parsed the argument is that they feel that the environment is more tolerant towards their shenanigans because it's policed as strongly as an environment in which rape jokes are faux-pas. According to that Meet The Predators post, most rapes are committed by serial rapists who know damn well that what they do is wrong, and thus attempt to operate in scenarios which are still considered a grey area by society at large.
Is it a specific characteristic of rape jokes, or, for example, dead baby jokes also have an encouraging effect?
^It's true for racial jokes too, in the sense that they enforce racial stereotypes. Hence why Dave Chappelle had that breakdown.
There's also research that shows sexist jokes nuke a woman's workplace performance: http://www.afr.com/p/national/work_space/sexist_jokes_hurt_women_resilience_zOTASX3xOhsUo6xSowpR4H
And, just like with studies on rape culture, there's always a nitpicking problem with the methodology, and whether or not being on the safe side by not making taboo jokes is worth losing humour as a coping mechanism, or using it to actually make a point.
For me, what applies to taboo topics in fiction also applies to jokes about it: most of the time used for shock (laughs), so if you're going to joke about it, it better be a sharp one.
how does that square with the "most rape is done by people the victim knows" truism, though?
Full thingie: http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
Also handy for context: http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/pervocracy-the-missing-stair-analogy/
As visible, that doesn't need to clash at all. 'Grey' areas such as a 24/7 sloshed environment and social circles that accept a lot of 'transgressive' behaviour(geeks, kink communities, party scenes) allow for plenty of socializing and grooming beforehand.
Wicked: Don't think Ted Bundy kind of serial rapist, think "that creep at the party is actually a rapist". Everyone who goes to parties that Creepy Dude attends is his acquaintance, right? And if it's not a party but some more confined social group, they might instead consider themselves his friend, right? So if Creepy Dude is going through his list of friends for women to rape, all his victims are his friends.
It would, actually, be very difficult for Creepy Dude to rape a total stranger; he has no way of knowing that stranger even exists.
Tangentially relevant article on "Not Rape".
^ I would upvote your post if I could.
^^ Wow.
@Not Rape: dammit, where do I live that I've never seen or heard of anything like that near here? I've heard of sexual exploitation, of lack of teenage sex ed, whatever, but never on anything approaching that scale. "No one escaped – all my friends had some kind of experience with it during their teen years." I somehow fucking did. Am I that oblivious? Guys, tell me I'm just that oblivious. Otherwise, I don't know, I totally see myself agreeing with the right-wing, that we were spared by not yet being so liberal and enlightened as the West. C'mon. I don't really wish to endorse them.
I'm not sure how to parse that post, except that I was under the impression that Poland was more or less Western.
But then again I go by lol medieval history first and foremost so
Well, not every woman has been in those situations by any means; to the contrary, most women probably have not. But the problem that the article brings up is that so many girls and woman are so unforthcoming about such situations and so often in denial about their nature that it's hard to gauge just how many have.
As for "not escaping," I think that doesn't necessarily mean that every girl that she knows was in such a situation, but that everyone that she knows knows someone that has. This applies to most people.
So I guess... oblivious?
...I can believe that. Not that it'd be a good case. You know. I can't wrap my head around the idea that an eleven year-old trades sex for favours and nobody save for an occasional blogger sees a problem with it. The other of the options I had (obliviousness vs. difference) at least protects my sanity.
By the way I'm not dissing the article, it deserves wider spread. I guess I'm gonna ask around a bit. Hope it won't turn out you were right.
@Alex: it's right in the middle. Counts as West against the East, counts as East against the West. West is generally the default.
Victims do gravitate towards those blogs. On the other hand, statistics probably suffer a tad from underreporting. Try to dig up a local survey, perhaps?
@lrdgck:
I can't imagine either the eleven-year-old who did that or the person who had sex with an eleven-year-old is likely to tell many people about it. I'm sure most of the world would in fact consider it a problem.