There is a dissonance here - many support prison rape when it comes to specific individuals (often referenced for murders and pedophiles). However, if you asked most of those same people if the purpose of prison is to literally punish as fiercely as possible, few would agree.
Using the common definition of rape culture (See source.), there is no rape culture in the united states because rape is not normalized. We punish rapists, we abhor rape, and rape is thought of as one of the worst crimes to commit and be victimized by.
sources:
In feminist theory, rape culture is a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality.
When these small pockets of rape culture is revealed to the general public, the general reaction is one of horror and disgust, which reflects the fact that the general culture is not one of rape culture.
In the case where the accused rapist is someone liked by the community, or is in a position of power, people make excuses for him/her, or make attacks on his accuser's character. That is popularly held version of rape culture.
Men are raped at roughly the same rates as women are in the united states according to the CDC (if you define rape as being forced to have sex against your will, or having sex you didn't want at the time, or sex without consent etc.)
Yet it's dismissed and ignored.
sources:
http://i.imgur.com/p5H4Jyz.jpg this is a screen shot of the relevant data from one of the CDC studies on this topic. Other studies from other years find a similar rate.
Yes there is: pedophilia. In the UK it has recently become exposed but it's exactly the same through all western countries. Particularly it is part of the political culture and is used extensively as a kind of qualification and blackmail to guarantee loyalty.
The problem with this is that most, if not all do not want to actually be raped. These people draw the line between fantasy and reality, and probably know how much of a horrible experience it is. The commonality of a rape fantasy does not corroborate to the idea of a rape culture.
according to wikipedia, culture is: That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. And fantasizing is an habit. Therefore fantasizing(about rape) is an habit and a part of western culture.
That's not true. A fantasy is not automatically a habit. "a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up." People may fantasise once about rape in their whole life time and then suppress that fantasy.
fantesies are part of the culture, if the culture is, in the words of E.B. Tylor, "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.". According to this, fantasy can be considered a habit.
The "rape culture" term is misleading, it doesn’t only mean rape is a part of our culture, it mean that rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality.
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