The “R” word
Moments before the panelists commenced on Nov.9 at The Centre for Free Expression at Ryerson University, Hillary Clinton was giving her concession speech after what had been a distressing and divisive election.
Brenda Cossman, a law professor at the University of Toronto began her portion by acknowledging the impact of the results we were all learning about that morning.
“An alleged rapist, an admitted serial sexual assaulter, has just been elected to be the president of the United States of America,” Cossman said.
Cossman defined rape culture as the pervasiveness and normalization of sexual violence which consists of victim blaming, sexual explicit jokes, tolerating sexual harassment, publicly scrutinizing victims, and refusing to take rape accusations seriously insisting that women lie.
Cossman stated that Trump threatens everything that many of us hold dear: democracy. She said Trump has incorporated these examples of rape culture in his campaign strategy, referring to how he responded to both the “grab her by the pussy” video and the sexual accusations against him.
“He has denied, mocked and commented on their appearances. He’s literally performed these examples of rape culture I think at a Shakespearian level that I’m not sure yet if it’s a tragedy or a comedy,” Cossman said.
Panelist Ummni Khan, Associate Professor at Carleton University, gave her critique on rape culture and stated that rape culture is not a reality, it is a concept.
“Conversations that I’ve had where I’ve tried to problematized the concept of rape culture have been for some people very upsetting” she said. “I want to problematize this term, I have a lot of resistance with the way this term is being used.”
Khan said she is curious as to why we use the world rape culture rather than sexual assault culture, when the term sexual assault was given in 1983 by feminists who wanted to challenge the archaic thinking of what rape included. According to Khan, rape was the ultimate crime against a woman, but was only fixated on the penetration of what a man can do to a woman. Feminists said the term sexual assault was a better term because it incorporated the ways that people can violate each other through sexual violence and doesn’t just limit to penetration.
“The term rape culture is problematic, and when we mobilize it, we are reinforcing that archaic way of thinking,” Khan said.
Panelist Lara Karaian professor of criminology at Carleton University stated that she believed the term rape culture is not serving its fight against sexual violence and has issues with how it is mobilized, similar to Khan’s concerns.
Both Karaian and Khan also both believe that the term rape culture lacks intersectionality and that it is mono-focused on white privilege.
“It prioritizes sex and gender and tends not to think of racial class and overlooks vulnerable people,” Karaian said.
Cossman said she finds it difficult now to engage in academic and political conversation in a new era of what she refers to as “post factual and post empathy politics-where facts don’t matter and people don’t matter.”
