Errr, sorry what? It may be because its my third language, but I could not really read that as coherent english.
If you are saying that most rapes are not prosecuted sucessfully or at all, well yes thats an argument that can be made. But then most thefts aren’t prosecuted either and so do you have a theft culture?
(Incidentally, please do define what you think as rape culture and why you think that it is an accurate term? Because if you start definitional exercises, then there really is no limit; you could define attraction between magnets as gravity, but that would not make it true).
Your conclusion doesn’t follow at all from what preceded it unless we inject a healthy dose of sensitivity and defensiveness into the equation. Yes, broadly speaking it would be fair to say that all cultures historically have excused and minimized and normalized sexual assaults, with the effect that it was easier to get away with than it would be in a culture that didn’t do that. “Meaningless and semantically aggressive…” absolutely not. This is like suggesting that prior to the abolition of slavery by any known civilization, an abolitionist would be engaging in some kind of rhetorical terrorism (which also was somehow without meaning) by saying “you know, we could work on ending this culture of enslavement.” The fact that it is universal in varying degrees doesn’t mean it’s futile to give it a name or to talk about alternatives.
Whatever, honestly. It’s like, one side says “this is what I mean by this,” and the other side says “this is meaningless and useless and we’re wasting our time being stupid you’re stupid” without ever once addressing the actual thing that’s being pointed out. The fuck would the world like for us to call it so that it can express an opinion on the thing instead of the name?
I’ve already defined it, so I’m not sure what you’re looking for from me.
What I’m saying is not just that most rapes are not prosecuted successfully. What I’m saying is that you have already said that most of the pieces of what we’re calling rape culture do exist. Rapes aren’t prosecuted, even though there’s no excuse for them, and nobody ever makes a good excuse for them, and when they try to make excuses it’s transparent and inane and everyone can see through it if they have a brain in their head. So why aren’t they prosecuted again?
You’re just saying “that’s not rape culture, rape culture is what I think it is and doesn’t exist.” OK. But the thing we’re talking about exists?
Ok.
By that definition every culture on Earth that has ever existed and that ever will exist.
Since, you are never going to eliminate rape, or murder, or theft. Every culture ever has accepted a certain amount of crime, with the emphasis being on punishment, prevention only getting traction when the problem is perceived to be getting out of hand.
I don’t think you could achieve that if you remove every humans sexual organs after birth and reproduce in Krypton style birthing matrixes.
Are you like Merlin and living your life backward through time, or have you just not read any of the posts in the thread, or what. Rape isn’t going to stop existing entirely, obviously. That’s not what anyone is talking about.
I don’t think that reading is accurate or supportable, particularly in light of the large amounts of press that campus rape has received recently. The signs are clearly saying “We are going to fuck your women.” Frankly, any other interpretation strikes me as wishful thinking.
By now we may want to reestablish what IS the “actual issue”, wouldn’t we Jimmy?
The OP, last seen 50+ posts back, seemed to be arguing that “we’re defining rape too loosely” and for the discredited “women will cry rape when it’s just hindsight remorse” hazard. I think that was dealt with.
In a thread some years back I commented that the affirmation or denial or refutation of “rape culture” depends on how the heck do you define it, but as was pointed out to the OP in this thread, merely not understanding what something means does not make it not exist. Differring definitions are however debatable. It would help if someone who objects to Jimmy Chitwood’s definition of “rape culture” would offer a well structured alternative definition. And in either case, we should not take any given definition or refutation as a General Article Of Faith; not reacting to being informed of something with road-to-Damascus unconditional adherence is not the same thing as being a counter-apologist.
ISTM the reality is we do NOT know what is, or IF there is, some “natural baseline” of sexual violence or sexual aggressions that happens no matter what the effort. But what we can do through law and cultural evolution is to eradicate as much of it as is actually in our power to eradicate and we should do that.
Whether that includes making it so a “we’ll fuck your daughter” joke becomes simply unspeakable and maybe even unthinkable, as opposed to rude and crude, is part of what has to be dealt with as to what steps are taken in what order.
You’ve never heard the term “culture of violence” before? It’s pretty common, and used to describe permissive attitudes towards violent assault in much the same way “rape culture” is used to describe permissive attitudes towards sexual assault. There’s also terms like “drug culture,” “gang culture,” even “greed culture” for white collar crimes. This kind of vocabulary is exceedingly common when discussing criminality on a social level, and I’m genuinely surprised that you’ve never seen it before.
Because the real problem here isn’t the amount of sexual violence occurring here and around the world - violence which you admit exists. The real problem is the terminology we use to describe it!
I told the dorm party story on another website, and there was one woman who replied, “As a survivor of a kidnapping and gang rape, the idea that a woman would offer herself for sexual abuse completely boggles my mind.”
I agree.
This woman had many of the hallmarks of sexual abuse; whether she was or not, I don’t know but it wouldn’t surprise me.
As for a true “rape culture”, what about Pitcairn Island?
Those terms are used to describe cultures which display a marketed and comparable excess of a given vice, not just to reference the fact that some people in those cultures are violent, abuse drugs, or commit white-collar crimes. People don’t say that feminism is a culture of violence because of Valerie Solanas. (OK, per the recent kerfluffle-thread, most people don’t do that.)
There is no “rape culture” in the US. If there was a rape culture, that would mean - at minimum - that people were OK with rape. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Rape is one of the worst crimes, both in terms of legal punishment and social consequences, that a person can commit. Even being accused of rape can ruin a person’s life. What we have is closer to rape hysteria than rape culture:
Mattress Girl: Emma Sulkowicz accused Paul Nungesser of raping her at Columbia University. Columbia cleared Paul - using their very low standards, and while preventing him from presenting exculpatory evidence. But it didn’t matter. Emma went on to complete her Senior thesis by carrying a mattress around, and became a minor national celebrity. Paul was ostracized and became the subject of death threats. You can read this story to see why Emma’s allegation was plainly false. Emma herself declined to talk to the police, because it would be too much of a burden.
Duke LaCrosse Team: Crystal Gail Mangum alleged she’d been raped by some number of men at a party at Duke. (Her initial statement ranged from 2 to 20). Three men were indicted, based on “tainted” lineups. Eventually the men were declared “innocent” in an extraordinary statement made by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, but not before being arrested, indicted, and nationally shamed. The Lacrosse team itself was punished, and their coach was forced to resign. No charges were brought against Mangum.
Mark Weiner: In a less famous story, Mark Weiner was convicted, and spent two and a half years in prison, before he was finally vindicated. From Slate:
The case started when 20-year-old Chelsea Steiniger was walking home after an argument with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend then received the following string of texts:
Despite a mountain of evidence contradicting her story (much of which never made it into court), the jury believed her, and he was convicted. After two and a half years:
Mark Weiner was eventually released because amount of evidence that he was innocent became so overwhelming that (eventually) even the prosecutor couldn’t believe Steiniger anymore.
The Innocence Project: According to the Innocence Project, they people they’ve helped, served an average of 14 years in prison, before exoneration and release. According to their website, their work is proof that wrongful convictions are not “isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects.”
The innocence project does not break down exoneration by type of conviction. However, if you look at the first page (people exonerated by DNA evidence), every one of them was convicted of rape or sexual assault.
Many people are okay with rape – many people are okay with raping intoxicated people; with date-rape; with spousal-rape; with prison rape; with the rape of prostitutes; with raping someone who has not clearly assented to sex; and many other things.
In other words, many people don’t think of these things (some or all) as actual rape, and the only kind of rape that they are not okay with is stranger-jumping-out-of-an-alley rape.
Sulkowicz was a date-rape case. She dating him at the time she claimed the rape occurred. Although it’s true she was no longer dating him months later when she made the accusation - he’d told her “let’s just be friends”.
Mangum was a prostitute.
“Jackie” alleged the assault happened at a fraternity party, after midnight. The original story is gone. But if she was at a fraternity party after midnight… chances are she’d been drinking.
So at least two of them, and possible three, fit into the categories you say people are OK with: date rape, prostitute rape, and (possibly) drunk rape.
I agree many people are fine with prison rape.
But otherwise, if the victim is a woman, people are not OK with rape, period.
Whether or not you found examples in which these sorts of rape were prosecuted, there are still people who are okay with it. Not everyone everywhere, but some people in some places, and enough such that many people are afraid to report their rapes, and many reported rapes are ignored.
Which is exactly how the term “rape culture” is used, and has been defined in this thread. “American culture” isn’t a rape culture, but it contains a rape culture - just as it contains a drug culture, a violent culture, a gang culture - as well as an African American culture, a Christian culture, a gay culture, and so forth. And those cultures contain their own subcultures, some of which are shared across the larger cultures.
Which part of that do you think was unfair to you? You’re not denying that there’s a problem with sexual violence in this country. You’re not denying that portions of the population of this country display attitudes that range from disinterested to actively encouraging some forms of this violence. But you object to the term “rape culture” to describe it. How was my previous paraphrase inaccurate?
(My autocorrect keeps trying to change “culture” into “vulture.” Any references I missed to rape vultures are purely accidental.)