Does "rape culture" really exist?

[Okocha]

There is no rape culture, rapes have been happening since the beginning of time!

 

[Smoking With Cigarettes]

Thread inspired me to do some research... and I still don't quite understand

25 Everyday Examples of Rape Culture

That girl holding the sign got me real confused. She was drunk, flirted with the guy and he pumped and dumped or did he flirt with her then get it in while she was passed out. Something about that website gives me the vibe that they want everyone to accept without a shadow of a doubt that every person that claims they're raped is telling the truth.

But to answer you OP rape is prominent on television and films, but calling it a culture is a difficult thing to judge because according to this:

Rape culture is a term that was coined by feminists in the United States in the 1970's. It was designed to show the ways in which society blamed victims of sexual assault and normalized male sexual violence. Many feminists have provided great definitions of what rape culture is and how it plays out everyday.

I don't doubt folks out there think that a girl dressing like she ain't got self respect warrants them to do what they want, but there's a percentage of the population that whole a stupid belief in anything and everything. I can't cosign that definition I don't think society blames women for being raped, I think it's over-the-top folks on the internet that make it seem like girls bring rape on themselves.

Edit:
Found this next to the rape culture article
10 Types of Misogynist Men We All Need to Know About – And Then Call Out!
Giving unsolicited advice is misogynistic

 

[1 other person]

It supposedly exist in the military. Lots of info online about it.

 

[Geek Nasty]

No, "rape culture" is based on a BS stat that something like 1 in I think 3 or 4 college women would be raped. That also lead to a new definition of rape as "sex with a woman who's had any alcohol".

 

[philmonroe]

Nobody is saying there is a large group of people saying stupid shyt like "hey fellas lets go rape a chick tonight", that is not what is being discussed. If you think that's what people are talking about when referring to "rape culture" you're wrong.

You make it sound like some sort of club or some shyt. What people are getting at when they refer to "rape culture" are the customs and cultural practices that leads to complacency when it comes to sexualized violence of which most victims are women, now and throughout history. Not a traveling band of sex offenders...

Idgaf how you and @CinnaSlim wanna frame it that shyt y'all kicking on these is bullshyt online talk. Only people who seem to ever know these customs and practices are some cats online. Where are all these customs and cultural practices you and your crew partook in? All y'all talk could refer to any fukking crime that don't involve you or someone close but y'all making it some special shyt smdh. These people aka white folks out here pumping some buzzwords and get y'all cats hook, line, and sinker. Internet revolutionaries I tell ya.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Rape culture happens wherever people can brag about rape or can commit gang rapes and expect other people to go along with them.

It definitely exists in other countries, but in America I've only heard about it in isolated circumstances, like in certain frats or on certain high school/college sports teams.

But it probably exists in some hoods too, like that story about something like 30 dudes all going at a 12-year-old girl. That shyt doesn't happen unless you know your buds are all down with some just horrible stuff.

 

[Marc Spector]

The crux of what rape culture is (and how its a epidemic in our society) is this:

True or False: Our society objectifies women (and before I hear bullshyt about "well these women are out here showing their ass so their to blame" realize women are only SELLING what men/patriarchy is BUYING...also realize it aint women who own the media, making the tv shows, movies, magazines, etc. that create the "idea" of what a woman "should be")

Also True or False: Men in our society are conditioned into believing that sleeping with women (and obtaining high numbers in both partners and occasion) is what makes you a real man and the key to a successful life and you should get it with little to no consideration of your partners feelings (I mean seriously theColii and every board ive ever been on worships at the altar of this mindstate)

If you answer true to both statements (and if you don't, youre a liar or delusional), then maybe, JUST MAYBE its conceivable that a lot of everyday men (not monsters or bad people, but everyday guys) in the process of trying to obtain sex from women are going to overstep boundaries and not realize they've done anything wrong, AT ALL.

That's the frightening reality imo of what rape culture really is.

 

[LadySimone]

I say yes.

"Boys will be boys"
"She shouldnt have been dressed like that if she didnt want it."
"She was just playing hard-to-get."
"She fukked everyone guy in town. She couldn't have been raped. She wanted it."
"She's a whore. It wasn't rape, it was theft."
"She knew what she was doing when she went upstairs with him."

Obviously, like most things its complicated.

"She looks grown for a 15 year old."

I think black men should reexamine their flippants responses to rape culture and remember the pleas they were coping for R Kelly.

A black girl can never be a child in some men's eyes simply by virtue of having titts and ass. And if she isn't a child, they will green light sex with her.

 

[It is a mystery]

"She looks grown for a 15 year old."

I think black men should reexamine their flippants responses to rape culture and remember the pleas they were coping for R Kelly.

A black girl can never be a child in some men's eyes simply by virtue of having titts and ass. And if she isn't a child, they will green light sex with her.

look at this blatant race-baiting
there was nothing that implied race in the post she quoted

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

Sure it exists. One of our esteemed mods said, for example, a man cannot rape his wife and such allegations are ridiculous. In colleges everyone from white frat boys to black football players (remember that story in the @Walt tapes?) proudly disregards consent. And I'm not even going to get into the whole p*ssy entitlement thing. "I took this bytch out for coffee and am a 'nice guy'..... she needs to transfer ownership of that p*ssy to me now"

But shyt you don't even have to leave this board. When it comes to rape you nikkas sound like CACs (not white people, there is a difference) talking about racism. It's like a word association game. Someone says rape, your instinct is to deny. "What about the false accusations" "Its just a feminist myth" "Men get raped too"..... these are LITERALLY analogs for "what about black on black crime" "black people are racist too" etc. etc. People in power always want to deny any abuse of that power by anyone in their group and rape culture is no different. But yall nikkas never gave a fukk about women anyway. Word to the #HOH movement

 

[MarloStanTrill]

It seems like rapists are considered the worst human beings imaginable in society

Just a rape accusation can ruin your life

But I've heard feminists use this term a lot

Does it exist?

no doesnt exist. another way for women to have it both ways qhile still playing victim.

thot walks butt naked down street in a slut walk....then complains of rape culture and being objectified

have it both ways and dont take responsibility for your actions brehs

 

[HE_Pennypacker]

Rape culture is a highly overused term, but like any other horrible thing, it's going to attract morons who think there's nothing wrong with it. It's like women nowadays think what a few internet 'heroes' do online represents the majority of men. It doesn't, and it's condescending to think otherwise. Then I read about 1 in 5 women in American colleges being raped in their lifetimes; which is the same rate as war rapes in Congo....

Women are now treating men like white people treat minorities; we're now suddenly responsible for what every other male does and are having to defend our gender. This shyt started with white women turning against their men(interestingly enough, they've wiped all presence of women in America's negative history, but that's another story), and it's come to black folks now.

 

[King Kreole]

thot walks butt naked down street in a slut walk....then complains of rape culture and being objectified

"black man walks around with his pants sagging...then complains of racism and being profiled"

 

[Sk3ptical]

Of course the thread immediately turned to "white people".

stfu fakkit

 

[Verbal Kint]

Then I read about 1 in 5 women in American colleges being raped in their lifetimes; which is the same rate as war rapes in Congo....
.

You know that stat is false right

Campus Rape and Sexual Assault Researchers on 1-in-5

Christopher Krebs and Christine Lindquist are Senior Research Social Scientists at RTI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute. They are both in the Center for Justice, Safety, and Resilience at RTI, and they directed the Campus Sexual Assault Study, which was funded by the National Institute of Justice and completed in 2007.

There are caveats that make it inappropriate to use the number as a baseline when discussing rape and sexual assault on campus.
9 in 10 Colleges Reported No Sexual Assaults in 2014, Report Says1 in 4 College Women Are Victims of Unwanted Sexual Contact, Survey FindsHillary Clinton Calls for Fighting Sexual Assault on Campus

If you’ve followed the discussion about sexual assault on college campuses in America, it’s likely you’ve heard some variation of the claim that 1 in 5 women on college campuses in the United States has been sexually assaulted or raped. Or you may have heard the even more incorrect abbreviated version, that 1 in 5 women on campus has beenraped.

As two of the researchers who conducted the Campus Sexual Assault Study from which this number was derived, we feel we need to set the record straight. Although we used the best methodology available to us at the time, there are caveats that make it inappropriate to use the 1-in-5 number in the way it’s being used today, as a baseline or the only statistic when discussing our country’s problem with rape and sexual assault on campus.

First and foremost, the 1-in-5 statistic is not a nationally representative estimate of the prevalence of sexual assault, and we have never presented it as being representative of anything other than the population of senior undergraduate women at the two universities where data were collected—two large public universities, one in the South and one in the Midwest.

Second, the 1-in-5 statistic includes victims of both rape and other forms of sexual assault, such as forced kissing or unwanted groping of sexual body parts—acts that can legally constitute sexual battery and are crimes. To limit the statistic to include rape only, meaning unwanted sexual penetration, the prevalence for senior undergraduate women drops to 14.3%, or 1 in 7 (again, limited to the two universities we studied).

Third, despite what has been said in some media reports, the 1-in-5 statistic does not include victims who experienced only sexual-assault incidents that were attempted but not completed. The survey does attempt to measure attempted sexual assaults, but only victims of completed incidents are included in the 1-in-5 statistic.

Fourth, another limitation of our study—inherent to web-based surveys—is that the response rate was relatively low (42%). We conducted an analysis of this nonresponse rate and found that respondents were not significantly different from nonrespondents in terms of age, race/ethnicity or year of study. Even so, it is possible that nonresponse bias had an impact on our prevalence estimates, positive or negative. We simply have no way of knowing whether sexual-assault victims were more or less likely to participate in our study. Face-to-face interviewing tends to get higher response rates but is considerably more expensive and time-consuming. That said, given the sensitive nature of the questions, the anonymity and privacy we afforded respondents may have made women comfortable with responding honestly. Overall, we believe that the trade-offs associated with low response rates were overcome by the benefits of cost-efficiency and data quality.

To back up, it makes sense to explain exactly how a woman responding to our web-based survey—conducted in 2007 and funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice—would get counted as a victim in the 1-in-5 statistic. In the survey, all 5,446 randomly sampled undergraduate women who participated were presented with a prompt explaining that subsequent questions would ask them about “nonconsensual or unwanted sexual contact” including:

* forced touching of a sexual nature (forced kissing, touching of private parts, grabbing, fondling, rubbing up against you in a sexual way, even if it is over your clothes)

* oral sex (someone’s mouth or tongue making contact with your genitals or your mouth or tongue making contact with someone else’s genitals)

* sexual intercourse (someone’s penis being put in your vagina)

* anal sex (someone’s penis being put in your anus)

* sexual penetration with a finger or object (someone putting their finger or an object like a bottle or a candle in your vagina or anus).

Among other items, the students, after being told they were going to be asked about their experiences with unwanted sexual contact, were asked these two key questions:

Since you began college, has anyone had sexual contact with you by using physical force or threatening to physically harm you?

and

Since you began college, has someone had sexual contact with you when you were unable to provide consent or stop what was happening because you were passed out, drugged, drunk, incapacitated, or asleep? This question asks about incidents that you are certain happened.

To be counted as a victim of sexual assault or rape and included in the 1-in-5 statistic (19.8%), a woman would have to be a senior and answer “Yes” to one or both of those questions.

In our reports, sexual-assault victims who selected only “Forced touching of a sexual nature” in a follow-up question asking about the type of contact that happened were classified as victims of sexual battery only, whereas victims who selected any of the other response options (oral sex, sexual intercourse, anal sex, or sexual penetration with a finger or object) were classified as victims of rape.

Our survey had limitations, as outlined above. However, we believe the results have value for several reasons.

First, all research of this kind faces methodological and logistical challenges, but we approached the study objectively and implemented it with as much methodological rigor as possible given the budget we were given and the state of the field at that time.

Second, our results are not inconsistent with other studies that surveyed undergraduate students about their sexual-assault experiences, and surveying students directly about their sexual-assault experiences using behaviorally specific language remains the most scientifically valid way to measure the prevalence of sexual assault. Survey data have limitations, but they are universally believed to be more accurate than official law-enforcement or campus crime data on sexual assault. A large majority of sexual-assault victims do not report their experiences to law enforcement or other authorities, so official crime statistics dramatically underestimate the prevalence of sexual assault.

Third, the study results are helping fuel a conversation about sexual assault on college campuses, a problem that likely exists at most colleges—not just the two with which we collaborated—and it negatively impacts many thousands of students every year. We are pleased to be part of this conversation and to see attention being paid to this issue, especially since there seems to be ample room for improvement in terms of how universities, service providers, law enforcement and the justice system go about trying to prevent victimization, encourage reporting, meet the needs of survivors and respond to reported incidents.

What we are perhaps most excited about is that additional research is currently being conducted that will build and improve upon what has been done to date. For example, at RTI, we are working on a new study with the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Violence Against Women, and the White House to develop a survey instrument and methodology for collecting valid and reliable data on campus climate and sexual assault.

Although there will never be a definitive estimate of the prevalence of sexual assault, these new research efforts are larger in scale and are employing scientific best practices, which will result in methodological improvements that should increase the validity and utility of the findings. With these methods and the knowledge we gain along the way, we can begin to envision a meaningful research agenda, which could involve collecting data from students at many universities, perhaps on an annual or ongoing basis, creating nationally representative as well as university-specific estimates.

Christopher Krebs and Christine Lindquist are Senior Research Social Scientists at RTI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute. They are both in the Center for Justice, Safety, and Resilience at RTI, and they directed the Campus Sexual Assault Study, which was funded by the National Institute of Justice and completed in 2007.