‘’She asked for it’’ An article about Rape Culture

Rape Culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.

It affects every woman. The rape of one woman is a degradation, terror, and limitation to all women. Most women and girls limit their behavior because of the existence of rape. Most women and girls live in fear of rape. Men, in general, do not. That’s how rape functions as a powerful means by which the whole female population is held in a subordinate position to the whole male population, even though many men don’t rape, and many women are never victims of rape. This cycle of fear is the legacy of Rape Culture.

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 every day. Emilie Buchwald, author of Transforming a Rape Culture, describes that when society normalizes sexualized violence, it accepts and creates rape culture. In her book she defines rape culture as

‘’a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm . . . In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable . . . However . . . much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change. ‘’

The main problem is that we live in a society that teaches kids ‘’don’t get raped’’ instead of ‘’don’t rape’’ . We have justified the act of rape and we blame the victim with disgraceful statements as ‘’she/he asked for it’’.

The statistics in Greece that show the percentage of rape in the criminal activities reveal that in the last decade it has been a drop of almost 50% considering sexual crimes. Even though the streets are much safer than they were in 2003, and the sexual attack numbers have gone down, there is still room from improvement.

That’s the main reason behind the start up idea we had with my colleagues (Danai Lyratzi, Asimina Christodoulatou, Martha Davari, Christos Daniilidis, Frossini Drakouli) called ‘’Safe ‘n Sound’’ . It will be an app that will provide the user with the safest way to his destination. We will discuss more of our project in future articles.

{Our mentor and coordinator for this project Betty Tsakarestou}