Rape Culture - Feminist Theory

Feminist Theory

According to the rape culture theory, acts of sexism are commonly employed to validate and rationalize normative misogynistic practices. For instance, sexist jokes may be told to foster disrespect for women and an accompanying disregard for their well-being. An example would be a female rape victim being blamed for her being raped because of how she dressed or acted. In rape culture, sexualized violence towards women is regarded as a continuum in a society that regards women's bodies as sexually available by default.

The root cause of rape culture is generally agreed to be the "domination and objectification of women". However, academic theory holds that rape culture does not necessarily have a single cause, and causes may be localized based on other social aspects of culture. For example, in South Africa the overriding "war culture" which emphasized masculinity and violence led to a culture in which rape was normalized. A University of California Davis public document alleged that the enforcement of the following of social rules by women and the conditioning of gender roles were major causes. In a study of date rape, gender-based miscommunications were held to be a major factor supporting a campus rape culture. The general unwillingness of police and district attorneys to prosecute rapes where force was not involved or where the victim had some sort of relationship with the aggressor is also cited as a motivation for date rape and campus rape. Rape culture is also closely related to slut-shaming and victim blaming, where rape victims are considered at fault for being raped, and it is argued that this connection is due to the presence of a culture that shames all female sexuality. That some rapes are not reported to the police due to fear that they would not be believed is often cited as a symptom of a rape culture, that they thought the police would not believe them is cited as a reason by 6% of women who did not report rape. Pornography has also been commonly targeted as a contributor to rape culture because it is said to contribute to larger patterns of oppression. One of the ways that it is said to do this is by reducing the female body to a commodity.

Although much of its early use as a theory to explain the occurrence of rape and domestic violence was focused on the rape of women, rape culture has been described as detrimental to men as well as women. Some writers and speakers, such as Jackson Katz, Michael Kimmel, and Don McPherson, have said that it is intrinsically linked to gender roles that limit male self-expression and cause psychological harm to men.