Rape culture isn’t the explicit acceptance, celebration, or approval of rape, like many critics of the phrase would have you believe. No one is saying our culture outwardly applauds rape. But our society does shrug off, normalize, and tolerate certain actions and beliefs — from locker room talk to rape jokes — that justify men mistreating women. Rape culture is the condoning of certain behaviors and attitudes from men toward women, as well as the dismissal of those behaviors and attitudes because “that’s just how men joke” or “boys will be boys” or “that’s just what men do” or “men just can’t control themselves” that excuse and exonerate men and lay the groundwork for the justification of violence toward women.
People, especially children, naturally have a tendency to test the waters and see what they can get away with. So when boys are growing up and they hear and see men violate, degrade, make unwanted sexual advances toward, joke about assaulting or raping, and talk down to women, and they notice that no one reprimands those men, and they watch people go as far as to excuse those men just because they’re men, then they assume they can mimic those behaviors without any type of repercussions. They also assume that’s how they’re supposed to act as men. Some boys test the waters more than others. But that behavior is learned. No one is born a rapist or a misogynist.
And when it comes to excusatory statements like “men can’t control themselves”, here’s what I want to know: what is it that men “can’t” control? An urge to degrade, abuse, rape, violate, attack, beat, kill and devalue women? They can’t control an urge to treat women like property and objects? They can’t control an urge to be the antithesis of a decent human being? Are you really exempting men from basic human decency because they have more testosterone in their bodies than women? Are you really holding men to a lower morality standard because they supposedly have a more intense sex drive than women? Do you really think that a man’s increased libido — and a woman’s outfit (even though it has been proven time and time again that men who rape will rape anything with a vagina, regardless of clothing) — is an excuse to violate someone in the most vile, despicable, inhumane, aggressive, and demeaning way?
And are you so stupid to believe that men “can’t” control themselves? Perhaps it’s not about a lack of control but a REFUSAL to control themselves because they’ve been enabled by a society that dismisses rape and pins it on the victims’ shoulders because “women should know better than to wear seductive clothing around men” or “women should know better than to walk alone” or “little girls should know better than to be alone with a grown man, even if that man is a dad, step-dad, teacher, babysitter, pastor, family member, etc. who they trust” or “women should know better than to go into their boss’s office alone” or “that’s just what men do” or “boys will be boys.”
STOP. ENABLING. PREDATORY. BEHAVIOR. There is NO EXCUSE for rape and sexual assault. NONE.
And another thing: if you feel a need to reinforce your “power” and “authority” over a woman to feel validated as a man, you are the furthest thing from a man.
