Domestic Violence Sociology

Sexual and domestic violence is a difficult topic for any individual to discuss, especially if they have experienced it. Throughout the media, this is a subject matter that is rarely talked about with positive affiliations of how to prevent these types of situations from occurring and how to receive help if it did happen. However, these things are only mentioned after the media has gotten ahold of an individual’s story. Instead, it is a subject matter that is mainly discussed with negative associations and usually only given news headlines when connected with celebrities and other prominent figures; examples of this being the circumstances surrounding Mel Reynolds, Ray Rice, and Bill Cosby. Mel Reynolds, a Democratic politician, was convicted …show more content…
Bill Cosby, a famous actor and comedian, has been heavily mentioned in the media regarding accusations of sexual assault. These are only a few examples of headlining news stories that influence society and our culture regarding violence, which then in turn ultimately affect rape culture.
Rape culture can be terminologically defined as being the culture where “gender-based violence is securely embedded in the prevailing social fabric and taken as harmless social fact, thereby permitting violence to regenerate” (Morczek, 2015, p. 49). However, it can be simplistically defined as being how society views rape and how violence is ignored, trivialized, normalized, or made into jokes (Ridgway, 2014). Although it is not explicitly labeled, rape culture exists all over and throughout society. Shannon Ridgway wrote an article on Everyday Feminism on defining and explaining everyday societal examples of rape culture. Some examples from Ridgway include “mothers who blame girls for posting sexy selfies … instead of talking with their sons about their responsibility for their own sexual expression,” companies promoting sexual violence for business profits, rape reports not taken seriously, how “only 3% of rapists ever …show more content…
Recent news articles about his current circumstances briefly mention his sex offender status from his 1995 sexual assault conviction, his five year prison sentence and how half his sentence was commuted by Bill Clinton, who was President at the time (Meisner, 2015). Although Reynolds finished his prison sentence, a Presidential commute regarding his sexual assault conviction only downplayed the societal impact of any individual being convicted of a sexual assault. The societal impact of this on rape culture is that sexual assault and violence can be viewed as not being a serious crime although physical and/or mental harm may have been inflicted on the victim. After the elevator videos of the altercation between Ray Rice and his fiancée were released to the public, the NFL decided upon a two game suspension as a result from the domestic violence incident but the prosecutors had “dropped the felony assault charge against him in favor of court-supervised counseling” (Belson, 2014). The article written by Belson (2014) also includes the information that NFL rules concerning domestic violence was strengthened so that “players or league officials found to have committed domestic violence will now receive a six-game suspension” and that Rice’s original suspension remained

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