Rape culture in the media

An article from ScienceDirect journal entitled “Exploring rape culture in social media forums” defines rape culture as, “a society that fosters and encourages rape by teaching males and females that it is natural and normal for sexual relations to involve aggressive behavior on the part of males.”

Rape culture is obviously present in today’s society and has shown no signs of going away anytime soon. One of the most prominent components of rape culture is victim blaming.

Victim blaming is especially present when men get raped and sexually assaulted. Examples of victim blaming include expressing things like: “It was okay because she had alcohol,” “He probably loved it. All men love getting lucky,” “They were passed out, so they were fair game.”

A good example of rape culture in the media is when rape culture and mentions of rape are hidden in songs.The song “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke is a popular example. In the music video, Thicke and the other two singers on the track, Pharell and T.I., are featured staring at girls in ‘provocative clothing.’ The song also features lyrics such as “I know you want it” and “The way you grab me/must wanna get nasty.”

Both of these lyrics feed into the rape culture belief that women who dress a certain way must want to have sex. Also, the second one slightly brings up the idea that someone cannot change their mind about a sexual act at any point in time before or during, which is not true. The way that rapists are portrayed in the news media is another thing that promotes rape culture and also decreases the number of victims who are debating on coming forward or not.

For example, according to Meg Dalton of the Columbia Journalism Review, when an athlete is convicted of rape, sexual assault, or even accused, the media portrays them as “good, young men with such bright futures ahead of them.” They are never portrayed as what they actually are: abusers and rapists.

A huge component of society that feeds into rape culture are gender stereotypes.

Men are often stereotyped as being hypersexual and sometimes even violent and aggressive. Women are often stereotyped as being meek, gentle and family-oriented. According to a Weebly article entitled Rape Culture in Media, “Stereotypical femininity generally depicts women as sex objects that are young, thin, and smaller than men. Women tend to be categorized as housewives, sidekicks, martyrs, and victims in films and T.V programs, emphasizing their stereotypes by demonstrating passive and dependent roles.”

“There’s this whole thing with men bringing up how boys get raped too, but only bring it up when they feel threatened by women/females presenting people talking about how bad rape culture is,” said freshmen sociology major Andy Jones.

“And men who have been sexually assaulted feel like they can’t speak up because of the whole ridiculous outdated notion of men having to be strong.”

“Often times rape is portrayed as happening to just an unlucky or out of place girl by this random stranger of a man and the incident happened on the flick of a dime,” said freshmen musical theatre major Evan Overton. “But in reality, it’s men and women, being assaulted by people they know, and may even trust.”

Rape culture is something that has become increasingly present in our society. Therefore, it has become increasingly present in the media as well. To put a stop to this, we must break the stigma of rape culture.

Photo by Tate Walden