I have an announcement to make, I am not a rapist.
Wow! Aren’t you glad to hear that?
How about you? Are you a rapist?
“Heck no!” I hear you say, indignantly.
Oh you’re just saying that. Maybe you even believe it’s true, but you’re a rapist and just don’t know it.
“I’ve never raped anyone!”
You were socialized in a rape culture, didn’t you know that?
Well as a matter of fact, neither did I.
“Don’t teach women how to be safe – teach men not to rape!” we are told.
Where are men taught to rape, may I ask?
Well, as it happens in certain cultures yes, men are taught to rape – often by their mothers. But please show me where in the U.S. little boys are taught to rape women who dress immodestly, go out alone, or just get uppity.
Oh yes, in certain third world immigrant communities. But let’s not go there because if you do you’re a racist.
Well we are told it’s a subtle thing in our culture that teaches boys unconsciously without anyone ever actually saying it’s OK to rape. We are nonetheless assured it shapes our society.
In the abstract to “Dismantling Rape Culture around the World: A Social Justice Imperative,” Pamela R. Fletcher, Associate Professor of English and Women Studies, St.Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota writes, “Many object to the term rape culture, deeming it an overstatement. Some even consider it an oxymoron, for how does rape and culture really connect? In speaking of culture, we editors of “Transforming A Rape Culture” (Buchwald, Fletcher and Roth 1993, 1995 and 2005) refer to the way in which a society operates formally and informally, based on attitudes, beliefs, customs, and rituals that its members sanction as acceptable and normal. Based on our research and analysis of the high incidence of sexual violence perpetrated around the world, we contend that the term encompasses widespread anti-female attitudes and values, and the resultant oppressive conditions women and children encounter in the global institution of patriarchy. Misogyny and sexism are the cornerstones of patriarchy that enable a rape culture to flourish.”
No, “rape culture” referring to the United States is neither an overstatement nor an oxymoron (the author doesn’t seem to know what an oxymoron is). It’s a lie at best, a sick fantasy at worst.
No, there are no attitudes, beliefs, customs, nor rituals, formal or informal, in the culture I was raised in that give even the slightest hint rape is OK. In fact not all that long ago the specter of rape invoked outrage enough to sanction a temporary set-aside of the taboo against murder.
The author goes on to quote rape statistics from the U.S. compared to third world hell holes and war zones, as if the data collection methods were consistent in each country.
“Women in the U.S. reported that they were raped at an early age: 17.6% said they had been victims of an attempted or a completed rape, 21.6% were younger than age 12, and 32.4% were between the ages 12 and 17. (Buchwald, Fletcher and Roth 2005, 7).”
Not according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The rate of rape for persons 12 years and older was 28.4 per 1,000 in 2005, 23.2 per 1,000 in 2013, and 20.1 per 1,000 in 2014, according to the DOJ. That’s roughly three percent in 2005, declining to two percent in 2014.
Oh but they must be using a different and biased set of statistics!
Funny thing though, earlier in the same paper they do cite DOJ stats.
“Although rape is underreported to the police, U.S. Department of Justice studies show that when rape survivors do report, more than 50% of them state that they knew the rapist (Ibid).”
That last fact is not news, but note when they did cite the DOJ they did not use their data for how many rapes occur in the U.S. Instead they got them from a source more to their liking.
I’ve been having a bit of fun with this, but when it comes down to it, it’s not funny at all. Psychologists with degrees from respectable schools insist this invisible force makes all men in America suspect – though rape has always been rare in this country and according to DOJ statistics getting rarer, in spite of a lessening of the stigma involved in reporting a rape to law enforcement which should result in reported rates getting higher.
This paper airily generalizes data from vastly different cultures into a world-wide phenomenon, fudges stats when it suits the author’s purpose and ignores data inconvenient to the narrative such as figures that show men and women in intimate relationships physically assault each other at roughly equal rates, though of course the consequences of a male striking a female are usually far more serious than the reverse, absent a weapon. And though it’s harder for a woman to rape a man, rates of male rape may very well exceed female rape when prisons are factored in. (Now that’s an under-reported statistic!)
The author appears to conclude that the U.S. belongs on the roll of shame because we were late giving women the vote and failed to pass the ERA!
Now where have we seen this before? Subtle forces causing great social ills, with chains of causality invisible to all but a few gifted with a special insight?
“These our poor Afflicted Neighbors, quickly after they become Infected and Infested with these Daemons, arrive to a Capacity of Discerning those which they conceive the Shapes of their Troublers; and notwithstanding the Great and Just Suspicion, that the Daemons might Impose the Shapes of Innocent Persons in their Spectral Exhibitions upon the Sufferers, (which may perhaps prove no small part of the Witch-Plot in the issue) yet many of the Persons thus Represented, being Examined, several of them have been Convicted of a very Damnable Witchcraft: yea more than on Twenty have Confessed, that they have Signed unto a Book, which the Devil show’d them, and Engaged in his Hellish Design of Bewitching and Ruining our Land.”
-On Witchcraft: Being the Wonders of the Invisible World, Cotton Mather, 1692
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