As seen in the Steubenville case, many places around the world are perfectly ok with rape, and even go so far as to normalize it. In Ohio, where this case takes place, you can already begin to see the trend of talking about rape over social media such as Twitter. Mainly the boys, where saying crude things about the victim, Jane, among many other girls. It became completely normal to talk about rape like a running gag- as if it wasn't ruining girls lives. Even Jane's "friends" were saying this such as, "she should take responsibility for going to the party", and "she should've taken responsibility for drinking". This is an example of victim-blaming. By that logic, every girl at that party deserved to get raped, and it would be their fault because they wanted to show up and drink. It is culture to talk about rape as if the girls deserved it because of rumors of her just being at a slut or a whore. The boys even went so far as to make videos talking about how they raped her. They even took photos of her passed out and shared it with their friends to further dehumanize her.
This isn't just the case in Steubenville Ohio, we can find rape culture in many parts of the world. Rape culture can be defined as blaming the victim, defending the perpetrator, sexually explicit jokes that normalize rape, and therefore forcing girls to tolerate sexual harassment. Not to say that men aren't affected by rape, although 90% of rape is done to females. Young girls especially (highschool, college-age) are being targeted by these perpetrators. When someone grows up in rape culture they tolerate sexual harassment, but that does not mean they agree to rape. It is common for a perpetrator to believe that if the girl is tolerating me sexually dehumanizing her, that must mean she wants to have sex. This mindset is the core of rape culture, and it must be stopped.
Sources:
https://www.marshall.edu/wcenter/sexual-assault/rape-culture/
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/steubenville-victim-testimony/317302/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steubenville_High_School_rape_case
I liked how you showed why the "logic" that victim blaming has is just ridiculous with your comparison. It is so sad to see that this happens all the time around the world. I agree with you that growing up and seeing that it is common to be ramped and that it is ok, is extremely dehumanizing. This mindset is sometimes taken as a joke which is just not ok. I watched the Michael Nodianos video in whole and the documentary didn't include some of the worst he has said; "They peed on her. That's how you know she's dead, because someone pissed on her.", "Her puss is about as dry as the sun right now.", and finally "It isn't really rape because you don't know if she wanted to or not."
ReplyDeleteI agree that in many situations like this one, other people normalize it and try to ignore what is happening. These boys knew what they were doing when they were posting about it all over the internet, so they were bound to receive some kind of consequence. Especially in situations like this, it is difficult to understand who is at fault because they were both under the influence, but it is crazy how so many community members jump to conclusions and immediately say that the girl should have seen it coming. Yes, sometimes males are also raped, but like you said, the majority are females. The perpetrator should put themselves in the victims shoes and realize maybe they just like the clothes they wear. Just because they are in a crop top, doesn't mean that they are asking to get sexually assaulted. It would be the same thing as a male wearing shorter shorts and others thinking that he wants to get raped. Rape culture is still prominent today and more actions are taken place.
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