Addressing Rape Culture and the Way it Thrives in Our Daily Lives—Including Yours

During a track meet in high school, I walked outside the women’s bathroom with my spikes hanging from my hands — and ran abruptly into a group of high school boys that crowded the water fountain, the divider between the women’s and girl’s bathroom stalls. The boys swivelled their heads to me, and despite the scorching heat of the sun in Southern California, I shivered as their eyes skimmed over the skin of my legs and settled on my socks.

“Wanna take those [my socks] off and show us your feet?” one of them said, smiling so innocently. “We’ll pay you $20.”

One of his friends nodded, as if to emphasize that they really would pay me and keep their word if I showed them my feet. Another boy chimed in to add, “We shouldn’t even be buying snacks anyways, so the money for the pics are worth it because we can just keep using them, you know?”

My first thought was to say, Well, if you can jerk off to my feet forever, then pay me at least $100. But as I took a step back into the bathroom, I thought, “Why was I even considering selling a piece of my body that would be used for the pleasure of these boys who had no emotional connection to me? Why was I considering cutting myself up into pixels for them to think disgusting thoughts of me?”

However, my third set of thoughts rebutted myself: I was overreacting. It was just money, and I should be touched and grateful they found me attractive in the first place.

However, it wasn’t me they were attracted to, but the specific part of my body that they had never seen before—one that they clearly stated that they would use, like an object, for their own pleasure. This is where dehumanization begins. Women are seen as sexualized objects or creatures, never human beings, only worthy of conversing with in order to treat like a thing.

I didn’t realize how much I had internalized rape culture until I realized that I would never, ever want anyone to ask the same of my younger sister as the boys had asked me. I would never want them to eye her, to jack off to a part of her body, or to commodify her body. Most of all, I would never want my sister to think of herself the way my third set of thoughts had.

I used to think catcalling was a compliment. Now, I just feel sick in my own body, I walk faster on the sidewalk, and I tell myself that maybe I shouldn’t have worn shorts. But even if I’m wearing a hoodie and sweats, I’ll still be eyed up and down and hear the occasional whistles or car honks. Because under rape culture, no matter what you wear or what you look like you are seen as a desirable object for predators. After all, rape culture is beyond the surface level assumption of sexiness and beauty and about power and control.

When I told the track boys “no,” they rolled their eyes, said I was a “prude bitch,” and “probably a slut shamer.” This last phrase they spewed confused me. So I was either a slut or a slut shamer? Back then, I often wondered why I never heard a guy be called a slut, which I realized I associated exclusively with women. Being labelled a “slut” carries intense shame and degradation and yet whether you have had multiple partners, one partner, or none at all, this word is weaponized against women. Conversely, the word playboy — which has an entire magazine dedicated to this label — carries a swaggering association and is a hallmark for a popular heterosexual cis man.

If women do not conform to the male gaze, challenge patriarchal values and situations, and push back and unpack internalized misogny and rape culture, we are described being morally annoying, haughty, or judgemental. Women are not allowed to be critical of the institutions and systems that keep us subjugated, so challenging the status quo means being condemned.

We are generally familiar with the emphasized rhetoric that men are dominant and women are submissive. This perception is dangerous for a variety of reasons. If women do not fit these patriarchal categories, they face violent retaliation from verbal shaming to physical abuse. If men do not fit the dominant category and/or have experienced sexual violence, they are emasculated, mocked, and made fun of. They are seen as not “man enough.” But the very people who tell men to “man up” are the ones who need to human up.

Running cross country and track introduced me firsthand to those infamous stories of locker room talk. My very own teammates — the boys — would talk about which girls had the thickest ass, who they wanted to get with, and they proclaimed proudly when they “hit that,” claimed “that” ass, or scored “that” body. These conversations objectified and sexualized their very own teammates. But boys and men do this all the time with women they know and don’t know. This moment was when I became acutely aware of the way we live in rape culture.

What is rape culture? Rape culture is a culture that produces and protects rapists

— including all forms of predatory behaviors (ie. stalking, grooming, harassing, etc)

Rape culture doesn’t just produce and protect rapists (and therefore encourage predatory behaviors), but it also romanticizes these actions. Books, fanfiction, movies, comics, and other forms of consumption portray the brooding, misogynistic lead male as hot and handsome. Radio stations play music from rappers who glorify pimp culture with songs that sexualize and demean women. Pornography, the marketing industry for the sex trade, is the main form of sex education in the United States and it portrays women who “want” or “enjoy” the sexual violence inflicted on them. The Super Bowl sees skyrocketing numbers of women and girls who are bought and sold. Columbus Day, celebrated by the US public education system with a day off, enshrines a man who sold indigenous girls— some as young as 9 years old—to his men. At the end of the day, our society grooms our generation to normalize hypersexualization and aggressive behaviors.

All of these creates a society that disregards women’s rights and safety. We live in a deeply embedded rape culture because our society teaches women to avoid rape, instead of teaching men not to rape. Therefore, we don’t actually get to the root of the problem. So, there is a need to reframe and unlearn rape culture and what fuels it.

Women don’t take walks at night. Women carry their keys in their hands in the parking lot. Women check the backseat of their car and lock their doors immediately. Women share their locations with friends, carry pepper spray in their purses or lanyards, and take self defense classes if they can afford them.  Sometimes women choose to dress modestly when they want to dress up. Sometimes women refrain from drinking in a public place or must ask someone to check their drinks or cover them. Women cannot travel alone and they go to the bathroom together. Women give out fake numbers. Women feel pressure to say they have a boyfriend in order to be left alone in public places. Women bond over these stories of survival, of their forced, sharpened intuitions, of repeated scary situations, and of all the painful memories of assault and the trauma that lives on. 

One of the most common ways  rape culture exists is by turning attention toward the survivor, and referring to false rape accusations — when the actual statistics show that false allegations are miniscule. When a survivor speaks up, some people will call their action slander, inconsiderate towards the rapist’s family and friends, and shameful. How can someone’s story, their truth, be considered harmful when they have been wronged and hurt? We must not forget that it is not only rapists that cause harm, but the people that defend them and therefore uphold the status quo of rape culture. Victim blaming not only perpetuates the cycle of violence and abuse because the rapist does not face accountability, but also silences the survivor—and silence is a slow but sure spiritual and emotional death. Silence means turning our stories of survival into forgotten ones, rendering our sufferings more invisible in a society that does not uplift survivors. Silence is a literal unspeakable form of violence. 

When the media does choose to focus on the rapist, they focus on their “good” background and potential future. We saw this with Brock Turner—whose name is more familiar than Chanel Miller’s. It is a societal gaslighting, exacerbated by the idea of the “perfect victim” who reported, who didn’t wear “skimpy, revealing clothing”, who was in the right place at the right time. Why must there be conditions for rape to not occur? Rape does not occur in a vacuum. 

Rape culture presents itself and is perpetuated through the use of:

• Misogynistic language: 

  • Using words such as bitch, hoe, whore

  • Defining manhood as dominant and sexually aggressive

  • Defining womanhood as submissive

• Excusing inappropriate behavior and actions

  • Trivializing and excusing sexual assault by saying “boys will be boys” 

  • We see this also being perpetuated by media and pop culture where there is:

• Objectification and commodification of women’s bodies

  • Seeing women’s bodies as an object of sexual gratification 

  • This can be fed by porn culture, which dictates how a woman’s body should look like

• Glamorization of sexual violence

  • Exemplified through media seen in lyrics, rap, music videos, movies, etc

  • This also is seen in porn culture in which sexual violence is made to seem desirable and also excuses sexual violence

To actively combat rape culture, the hardest thing we may have to do is turn inwards to acknowledge the ways we have internalized misogyny and rape culture—meaning unpacking the ways we may do or allow all of the above to thrive. 

To quote Judy Herman: “It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain.”

Therefore, we must ask ourselves: Do our thoughts cement a certain power dynamic and hierarchy? Do our words solidify and not deconstruct gender stereotypes? Do our actions uphold the male gaze? 

That being said, here are some examples to combat rape culture: 

• Avoid using language that objectifies or degrades women (including yourself!)

• Be an upstander, not a bystander

  • Intervene directly

  • Reach out to the victim/survivor to offer support

• “I believe you”

  • Saying this when someone tells you about experiencing sexual violence is powerful because there is a fear of telling someone about an individual experience because of rape culture: “You deserved it”, “it’s because of what you wore”, etc

• Think critically about media’s messages

  • The media has a huge influence on how we may perceive the world

  • One such example that we brought up is the porn industry and how it dictates how a woman should look, act, or be treated

To reconcile and call out these behaviors is a continuous process that sharpens our internal moral compass, which may hurt in the process. However, these growing pains means we will have the tools to build a better world where no one will have to be a survivor in the first place.