Sfdebris.net

Fuzzy Necromancer wrote: ↑Wed Jun 20, 2018 6:06 pm The answer is Rape Culture.

In a lot of ways, society normalizes rape and pushes the burden on the victim to not get raped. It's nothing as gross or simple as "Rape is good!" (well, not normally...I've seen some alt-righters..)

Let's start with the classic mental image of the rapist, as a violent stranger attacking a woman in a dark ally. Most rapists are somebody you know, an uncle, an ex-boyfriend, a teacher. Rapists aren't slavering, easily-recognizable monsters. They know how to order the correct wine. They actively cultivate support among the community, invest in local businesses, and work up-front to be known as a Pillar of the Community, a Decent Guy or Gal, somebody you should defend, so that when it comes down to he said she said, they have all this weight of Reputation and Respectability to bring down on their victims.

Society paints rapists as slavering monsters because then it's easier to pretend that they aren't people we know and love, work and do business with, every day. It's easier to pretend that Dave, who got me this job, or Mary who covered my shift and comforted me when I got dumped, would never do something horrible like that, because they aren't some drooling creep in the shadowed streets.

When I was a little kid, in preschool, I ran around trying to kiss girls and they ran away from me (obviously). When I was reprimanded for it, I said "but I thought they wanted to be kissed". I'm really glad now that my teacher didn't just say "oh boys will be boys" or think it was cute, because that's how it starts.

Young men are taught that "no" doesn't really mean "no". Children are taught that consent isn't really important and that their bodies aren't exclusively their own. "No, you have to hug Aunt Mildred or you're Bad."

There's a lot more I could go into, but that's the start of it. It's an interlocking, overwhelming social narrative that says "No, it doesn't happen that way, that doesn't count".