Around two weeks ago, I saw something disturbing on Instagram that has been haunting me. A female Instagram user live-streamed another girl getting raped. Yes, you read that right. Someone stood by and live-streamed while another person was being raped. I happened to watch the video and to say the least, I was scarred.
But this is just one example. Bystanders have always been one of the things that perpetuate rape culture. This concept is effectively talked about in a video by comedian Trevor Noah. Noah talks about the cases of Nassar and Weinstein, and how sexual violence has been increasing. Noah talks about ‘enablers’, the people who facilitate and allow the crime to continue. “It’s not the people who don’t know that worry me. It’s the people that do know and do nothing,” Noah says. Noah talks about how those who ‘willfully ignore’ such crimes should get a part of the sentence, as their silence and ignorance enabled the crimes to continue. The issue of bystanders is very important to understand if we as a society intend to end rape culture. A person is sexually assaulted every 98 seconds in the USA. Ever wonder why such an atrocious crime occurs repeatedly in a matter of seconds? Bystanders make it seem like the crime is okay to commit and thus preserve rape culture. And this applies to other issues like racism, sexism, LGBT+ hate crimes etc.
We as a society need to start noticing the problems, rather than just glancing at them and pushing them away. Enabling one crime makes it seem okay to commit thousands of others. If we don’t start seeing societal issues like they really are, we will never progress. We can call ourselves a developed society all we want, but we won’t really progress until we start admitting that we have a long way to go. Change can’t occur if we don’t see that there is need for change.
