In a 1983 study by Malamuth regarding attitudes toward women, 30 percent of college men interviewed said they would rape a women if they could be assured they would never be caught. In 1989, Pirog-Good and Stets reported that 39 percent of male students interviewed believed it was "all right" to force sex if a girl was "stoned" or "drunk."
In the 1995 documentary "Dream Worlds 2," the narrator Sut Jhally references a survey that reveals 60 percent of men believe women provoke rape by provocative or suggestive dress. According to the same survey, 40 percent of women shared the same belief.
The dates change, but the mindset remains the same. As the United States parades the globe attempting to address the violations of women, it completely ignores the culture of violation that exists in its own backyard -- the Rape Culture.
"Rape culture is a culture that accepts gender-motivated attacks as normal, natural and even sexy -- a culture whose models of masculinity, femininity and sexuality sustain and rationalize men's violence against women," Martha McCaughey writes in "Just Sex."
In the book, a collection of essays edited by Judi Gold and Susan Villari, students assume the tough task of rewriting the "rules on sex, violence, activism and equality." In the preface, Gold says the book is part of "a movement that believes in Just Sex -- consensual responsible, equitable, inclusive and free of sexual violence."
Working against this "Just Sex" movement is the socialization of men as aggressive and women as passive, which perpetuates a system of male violence. Therefore, "rape is not aberrant behavior, but a natural extension of a system that must maintain male dominance," Gold and Villari write.
In this culture, men learn to express any type of feeling as aggression. When threatened, men do anything to pose a larger threat, Stephen Montagna writes in one of the book's essays. "In such an arena, women become both targets of criticism and objects we use; the stories we tell each other about what we do with women on dates (or claim to have done) become tools used to maintain status among our circle of men," Montagna says.
Images in movies and music videos work to perpetuate this culture of violence against women.
Music videos -- "Tip Drill," "Girls on Film" and "P-Poppin'" for example -- display women as nymphomaniacs anxious to participate in a sexual orgy. Songs -- for example, "Back That Thang Up" -- emphasize a woman's body part as her sole worth.
Further, the images of violence against women in pornography reaffirm male aggressiveness and female passiveness.
Sadly, "one-dimensional women placed in powerless and vulnerable positions, devoid of thoughts and feelings," rampant in pornographic magazines, becomes the first sexual experience for many adolescent boys, Krista Jacob writes.
By all these images, men are taught to see women as objects waiting to be played with. In the book, Nate Barnett with Michael Disabato ask what message is sent about our society when former Indiana University and current Texas Tech head basketball coach Bobby Knight says, "If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it."
Rape culture needs to be a political issue in the United States, as it is in other countries. We need a feminist analysis of rape culture that "requires that we understand violence against women in terms of the social, political and economic factors that engender a male-dominated patriarchal culture and perpetuate the subordinate status of women," according to Jacobs.
Despite the aberrant depictions of sexuality, we must refrain from taking the easy way out with censorship of media outlets. As a society, we need to overcome this censorship impulse we have at the current moment and work to create a more expansive discussion about sex and violence to better inform the adults and, most importantly, the children of our society.
Kurt Davis is a Health & Sexuality columnist. Kurt can be reached at kurt@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
U.Va. students and physicians team up for another year of free kidney screenings
By Merrill Hart | November 5, 2024Saturday’s screening marked the first by KDSAP at Portico Church, near IX Art Park.
U.Va. Health sees a spike in COVID-19 cases
By Emily Horn | September 4, 2023U.Va. Health ended their vaccination requirements in August, and masks were made optional in most hospital areas in early April.
U.Va. Cancer Center harnesses $12 million grant to support opportunities for undergraduates, ongoing research and new center
By Ellen Wu | January 12, 2023The grant provides an opportunity to establish the Center for Systems Analysis of Stress-Adapted Cancer Organelles, which seeks to find the cause of cancer in individual organelles.
