Rape Culture Is Real -TIME -Zerlina Maxell
Simply put, feminists want equality for everyone and that begins with physical safety.
Those were the first words that I heard when I went to someone I trusted for support after my roommate’s boyfriend raped me eight years ago. When I came forward to report what happened, instead of support, many well-meaning people close to me asked me questions about what I was wearing, if I had done something to cause the assault, or if I had been drinking. These questions about my choices the night of my assault — as opposed to the choices made by my rapist — were in some ways as painful as the violent act itself. I had stumbled upon rape culture: a culture in which sexual violence is the norm and victims are blamed for their own assaults.
Last week, in an essay here at Time, Caroline Kitchens wrote that rape culture as a theory over-hyped by “hysterical” feminists. Emboldened by a disappointing and out of touch statement by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), Kitchens writes, “Recently, rape-culture theory has migrated from the lonely corners of the feminist blogosphere into the mainstream. In January, the White House asserted that we need to combat campus rape by ‘[changing] a culture of passivity and tolerance in this country, which too often allows this type of violence to persist…’ Tolerance for rape? Rape is a horrific crime, and rapists are despised.”Kitchens goes on to downplay the problem of sexual violence saying, “Though rape is certainly a serious problem, there’s no evidence that it’s considered a cultural norm.”
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