TRIGGER WARNING
Assault, abuse, sexual assault
Rape culture in The West is something commonly misunderstood. The act of rape does not have to be widely supported for a rape culture to exist. Though this is a widespread misconception. Yes, we have rape culture in The West.
No, it is not a myth and I will gladly explain in great detail why. Let’s take a closer look at common behaviors that are normalized in a rape culture. This mini series will look at five different behaviors in depth, along with multiple examples of each.
Sexual harassment vs assault
There is a different between sexual harassment and sexual assault. The legal definition may vary depending on where you live, for me, I’m working with the following Canadian legal definition.
Examples
Let’s consider some specific examples and reflect on whether or not they are normalized. Consider people you’ve observed in positions of power, a manager,a supervisor, etc. Have you ever observed them physically touching their subordinates in a way that made them uncomfortable?
Commonly this looks like a hand on the shoulder, waist and lower back of the employee. Have you ever known a subordinate to fear losing their job, or not receive a promotion if they objected?
Has there ever been a time you’ve known of a boss propositioning their employee. This often looks like asking their subordinate to dinner with a caveat.
The catch being that it’s implied or suggested the employee should agree. If they don’t, their work situation could be made difficult or even threatened.
How could this type of behaviour exist in a widespread fashion if we didn’t normalize and downplay sexual harassment?
The statistics
Perhaps you’ve never experienced or observed any of these things. Maybe you feel I’m exaggerating or fabricating an issue that just doesn’t exist. Statistics support the notion that sexual harassment in the workplace is a pervasive issues.
In a 2018 study in Canada 56% of men and 53% of women reported bearing witness to inappropriate sexual behaviour at work. In all workplaces almost 30% of women and 17% of men were subjected to inappropriate sexual behaviours.
However, the abuse rates are high for both men and women in workplaces that are dominantly male. 40% of women and 20% of men claim they have experienced inappropriate sexual behaviours at work.
In female dominated workplaces, the rates are 27% for women and 24% for men. The most common type of behaviour cited by both men and women was sexual jokes.
Normalizing behaviours
All of this information tells us that while we might not personally experience sexual harassment and we might not know anyone who has either, it is still an incredibly widespread problem that impacts a large portion of the population.
But how does this happen? How is it that people being harassed to the degree that it is generally ignored via normalization? Have you ever heard someone say boys will be boys to justify or defend a boy or man emulating toxic masculinity?
If you notice, this excuse is used whenever a boy or man does something violent, destructive, abusive, predatory or otherwise characterized by toxic masculinity.
Another common defense which normalized sexual harassment is to say, they didn’t mean anything by it. This is sometimes also a gaslighting tactic employed to make the person who raises concern about sexual harassment feel as though they’re overreacting or misreading a situation.
Language matters
The Canadian legislation and 2018 study I referred to both addressed the fact that inappropriate sexual jokes are a form of sexual harassment. While this seems obvious, I feel the need to be explicit. This means that rape jokes are indeed a form of sexual harassment.
Aside from the above mentioned reasons, they’re harassment because they make light of a specific form of traumatic assault that is sexual. Separately, they also make rape victims the butt of the joke, and can trigger rape survivors, unwittingly or not bears no relevance.
To this point, it’s important to recognize that language that normalizes sexual harassment, assault and rape. Have you ever heard you got raped or I raped you?
These two common phrases, along with variations of them are commonly used in gaming to illustrate a players domination over and humiliation of another player.
When we fail to appreciate that words have a meaning and that we internalize those meanings we remain unable to improve the reality we live in.
Cognitive dissonance
All of these behaviours make it possible for something as vile as revenge porn to exist. People who post revenge porn are demonstrating that they don’t value privacy within a relationship, but they’re also violating consent.
Consent to sex is one thing, consent to taping it is another, but consent to post the taped sex must be obtained before doing so. Otherwise it’s a violation of the other person, or people’s, privacy and sexuality.
Within a rape culture rape apologists are one of the biggest supporters and perpetrators of rape culture. This does not mean they don’t think rape is a crime or shouldn’t happen.
It simply means they justify things like predatory behaviour, or victim blame, or believe the victim maybe was confused, or misunderstood. In short, for a rape apologist, there’s always a reason why the rapist cannot be held responsible for their actions.
They choose not to see reality for what it is or choose to reap the perceived benefits they obtain because rape culture exists. Apologist behaviour can also look like viewing revenge porn other people have posted.
In this way you’re normalizing the dehumanizing sexual harassment of others and signalling to predators that this behaviour is acceptable to you.
Harassment online
Sending unwanted sexually suggestive texts, emails or messages, or sexually explicit images is another common form of sexual harassment that is normalized. Do stories of unsolicited dick pics sound familiar? Ever seen women’s social media bios that say no DMs?
Have you wondered why that is and why so many women take the time to write that they don’t want people sending them direct messages?
Ever wonder what could be in those messages that they would be so bothered by they would take up characters on their bio asking to have that behaviour stopped? Or does that just seem normal?
Girls are socialized to prioritize politeness and being nice over their instincts, feelings and thoughts. Why? Boys aren’t socialized to do the same and there’s no evidence to suggest that this conditioning serves any purpose. At least, other than to train girls to consider the feelings of others, namely boys and men, before they consider their own.
This results in women who are nervous to say no when they don’t want to consent and it also results in men who don’t know how to handle rejection due to a lack of experience.
Have you ever seen a man repeatedly ask a woman out on dates despite her saying no? Ever watched a movie with the she couldn’t stand him at first, but after harassing her for an extended period of time, he won her over trope?
Have you ever heard the advise dispensed, don’t take no for an answer, in relation to men being rejected? What impact do you suspect it has on society when we insist on teaching boys and men not to listen to women’s responses if they’re not positive? What do you think this says about how we value women as people?
Harassment in person
Speaking of women being people, cat calling is a form of sexual harassment that has been so normalized, when it intersects with pedophelia we don’t even question it. Don’t know what I’m talking about?
The average age of a girl when she is first cat called is 11. Why do we think it’s normal for grown men to say sexually explicit things to children? Why aren’t the other men around the cat caller intervening?
Again, this is often seen as a joke to male onlookers and we’ve already talked about the ways in which sexually inappropriate jokes are dehumanizing and only serve to normalize sexual harassment.
The fact that most women over the age of 25 don’t experience cat calling speaks volumes to the predatory nature of cat calling and indicate that it is not about attraction at all, but about power and control over someone else. Another hallmark of toxic masculinity.
On that note, perhaps one of the most offensive excuses given when it comes to sexual harassment is, “that’s just how men are.” It really isn’t and like other excuses that reduce men to mindless idiots, it’s offensive to even suggest it could be true.
I’ve already dug into why these specific types of excuses should enrage men who aren’t sexually harassing people, so there’s no need to repeat.
The Next Step
This is part three of a five part mini series. Click here to read on to part four.
