The existence of rape culture should not be debated
Especially on a national radio show that’s the highest rated in the country.
A few months ago, on the radio show Q hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, there was a “debate” about the existence of rape culture. This segment sparked a firestorm on Twitter and many other social media platforms. An overwhelming majority of people were disgusted and taken aback that such a “debate” was aired on the highest rated radio show on CBC.
I was one of those people. In a series of angry tweets at Ghomeshi, I expressed my outrage as I listened to a playback of the show. During that time one of my fellow journalism students (full disclosure, he was male) asked me, “Wait, this might sound like a dumb question but what is rape culture? Are you promoting rape? I’m confused.”
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a young woman, but I feel like I’ve become super aware when comments or jokes about rape occur in a conversation. I’m not sure when I learned that the formal term is “rape culture,” but I can’t remember not being aware of it or sensitive to it. It came as a surprise for me that someone wouldn’t know what it was, very much less why this “debate” was even given a platform on a show like Q.
So I’m here to explain just some of the ideas and behaviours that rape culture encompasses, hoping that this will make it clear why the views of people like Heather MacDonald, the woman who denied the existence of rape culture on the Q segment, are harmful to our society.
Rape culture is what we call attitudes that joke about, excuse, dismiss, and tolerate sexual assault like it’s not a big deal.
Rape culture is victim blaming and slut shaming — beliefs that sexual assault victims had it coming because of how they acted or what they wore, instead of placing the responsibility on the rapist or the people who carry out the assault.
Even more troubling is that some victims “deserved” the assault more than others because they’re sex workers, because they were drunk, because they were wearing revealing clothing, and other reasons that state that sexual assault victims were somehow “asking for it.”
Rape culture is the belief that men cannot be rape victims because they are always the sexual aggressors. It is also the belief that men have animalistic instincts that render them incapable of rational thought or judgment in the presence of a woman provocatively clothed, walking around on her own in a shady part of town past midnight.
Rape culture is the idea that we need to constantly teach women and girls protective measures they need to take so that they don’t “get raped,” as if it’s somehow at all their fault if they get assaulted.
If you’ve ever been a student at a post-secondary institution, high school or maybe even middle school, you don’t need studies and figures to know that these attitudes and beliefs exist, and therefore rape culture not only indisputably exists, but is also prevalent. It’s the reason why I’ve been called too sensitive when I speak about rape jokes. Rape culture is the reason why people think it’s okay to ask what a victim was wearing or if he or she was drunk to determine if the assault was somehow justified.
As I listened to the rape culture segment on Q, my eyes widened because I just couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of MacDonald’s mouth. I was shocked that I was listening to a show on CBC Radio One, and not some crazed, right-wing radio show aired fifty years ago. Her comments included advice to female students about how they shouldn’t drink until they’re blacked out or extremely intoxicated.
She also said women should stop flocking to frat houses because if they stopped doing this, it “could wipe out what is being called campus sexual assault overnight.”
Even more dumbfounding was MacDonald’s suggestion that women boycott drinking, frat houses and sex so that men would start courting them properly with flowers, and on bended knee. Never mind the abundance of evidence that the overwhelming majority of sexual assault cases are when the perpetrator is someone the victim knows — not strangers at parties or serial rapists jumping out of the bushes.
MacDonald’s idea is if women simply just close our whore legs and abandon the existence of our sex drives, we’ll go back to the days of chivalry, suits and romantic courting. Yes, because we want men to do nice things for us just because we’re depriving them of sex. Not.
As Lisa Gotell, a professor at the University of Alberta and the defender of the existence of rape culture on Q’s segment, stated perfectly, “Binge drinking doesn’t cause rape, victims don’t cause rape. It’s the decisions of the rapists that cause rape.”
