Rape Culture

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Pages: 2

The perpetuation of rape culture has increased the prevalence of sexual assault in modern society; a culture which paints sexual assault as an almost inevitable picture, colored with the normalization of aggressive sexual behavior and victim-blaming. The installation of rape culture has been a product of a series of steps taken by the media in order to ensure that a man’s sexual urges appear almost too powerful to overcome, mitigating responsibility for unwarranted advances and placing it onto the victim. An unfortunately perfect exemplification of this issue can be seen across college campuses nation-wide, where it is estimated that nearly 20% of women will become the victim of sexual assault during their undergraduate careers (New, 2016). Of that 20%, a disproportionate number of victims remain silent due to the forces of rape culture at work, leaving them overcome by guilt and fear as they watch these institutions neglect the majority of reported cases.
Ambiguity of Assault
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Merriam-Webster defines “assault” as a “violent physical or verbal attack,” and although this definition encompasses such a wide-range of behavior, it is typically interpreted with a much narrower scope with respect to sexual assault cases. Due to the various levels of interpretation, victims often struggle with the process of trying to label their encounters as assault and may even deem them ‘unworthy’ of the term depending on the perceived severity of the situation (Fisher, Daigle, & Cullen, 2010). If the victim perceives the encounter as being less severe, they are unlikely to label it as an assault or to report it as such. The process of classification in these instances can be seen as the product of rape culture because as the victim deems the encounter to be of a lesser severity, the actions become accepted as inevitable and almost