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Brittany Aldana
CSUN Professor Lusine Makarosyan
English 114B
26 April 2015
Rape Culture
What was she wearing? is one of the main questions that is asked or assumed when you
hear about a person who got raped. Rape basically means doing something to someone else
without their full consent, which means they have to be sober and say yes. Society uses these
kinds of statements and questions to put the blame on the victims. Because of these assumptions
and questions about rape, the term Rape Culture comes into the conversation. Rape Culture is a
term that was made up by feminists in the United States in the 1970s. It was designed to show
the ways in which society blamed victims of sexual assault and normalized male sexual violence.
Rape Culture shows us that women are the ones to be associated with rape, how media as a
whole pretty much tell us that it is not a big deal because of the messages they give us, and how
not many people who rape get punished for their malicious crime.
This topic about rape culture is seen in the book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a
Girlhood among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston. In the short story of No Name Woman,
that is found in this book, the narrator talks about her aunt that is basically someone who is never
mentioned. She was shunned from her family for getting pregnant by another man and then
committing suicide. Throughout the whole story the narrator comes up with the different
possibilities on why her aunt did what she did and on how she could do such a thing to her
husband. She came up with this idea that maybe the aunt got raped and was threatened by this
man to keep quiet which caused her to commit suicide and take her baby along with her rather
than living shunned by her family. If you tell your family, Ill beat you. Ill kill you. Be here

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again next week.(Kingston 7) This is a very similar problem in todays society and the way
people think about how rape is usually silenced.
With the term of Rape Culture comes questions and comments which lead to the
association of women with the word rape. Questions like what was SHE wearing?, was SHE
drinking?, and why were you walking alone during the night? are the most common.
Comments like She deserved it, what did you expect, you were drinking, and SHE is a
slut! also are very common. In an article that was written by Zerlina Maxwell called Rape
Culture is Real, she describes her experience of coming forward about her getting rape. Instead
of support, many well-meaning close people to me asked me if I did anything to cause the
assault...(Maxwell 1). It must hurt to have people that one is very close to ask a person these
types of questions. I think media has to do a lot with these assumptions and questions.
When I say media I do not just mean social media, I mean music, movies, and television
shows. They are leading us into the direction of what rape really is. Music that has lyrics like
you know you want it in the song Blurred Lines by Pharrell and Robin Thick, tell us that it is
ok to do sexual things to women if you think that they are looking for it. These songs make it
seem like men are putting words into the mouths of women and pretty much telling them that
they want it and they will like it without the women even saying anything. In the video of this
song, the women are parading around in silence naked. This shows that women are assumed to
be promiscuous and all they want to do it have sex and temp males to act sexual towards them.
Keep in mind that most of these songs are about women not men or children.
Movies like 50 Shades of Grey, which was just released in February 2015, shows us that
it is ok to have sexual relations in a violent type of way and not call it rape if the person who so
called got raped says it was rape. Throughout the movie you see how this man takes full on

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power over this women. He is sexually violent to her when he wants to have sex with her and
uses different methods as a way to be pleasures. The women never said anything to him and just
seems to enjoy it. This portrays women to also be promiscuous and let the male show his
dominance over her. Yes she fell in love with him and he showed her a good time without using
sex, but there would be no excuse for treating her with no respect. I believe this relates to rape
culture in such a way that the movie makes it seem that it is ok to treat someone in a violent
sexual manner whether it is consent to have sexual relations with a partner or not.
Posting sexy pictures on social media like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter would also
be a way of asking for it and promote getting rape. It also says that if this person got raped it
would be their fault because of how they show themselves to the world. What is a sexy
picture? Most people would say that even a mere expose of skin that is normally not shown is the
definition of a sexy picture. If someone posts a picture of them in a bikini at the beach or by the
pool, they immediately get attention because people think it is hot and think it is sexy. This
person might even start getting some comments about the picture. All of these things lead us to
believe that being sexually assaulted is not a big deal and that no one will care if you do it or
even believe the victim when they come forward about it. If it comes to this, not many people are
going to get punished for their crime.
Within media, like the television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, we are being
fed the wrong idea of what a rapist could look like. A terrifying monster lurking in the bushes,
waiting to pounce on an innocent girl walking by is the idea most people have of a rapist
(Maxwell 4). Rapists can be someone that the victim is in love with or a best friend. It can also
be a family member like a cousin, brother, even the father. Because of this, most rapes are not
reported because the victims are scared of that person or mostly because they do not want

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anything bad to happen to the perpetrator. With this, the perpetrator does not get punished. The
organization called RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest Nation Network) found that 97 percent of
rapists never spend a single day in jail for their crimes. It is sad that there are more people in jail
for stealing something than people in jail for sexually assaulting someone. I think that the only
way for someone to get noticed and put in jail for rape is if they murder the person they raped
and actually get caught for it.
I believe that rape happens mostly among younger people. More young people listen to
music that promote sexual violence and watch these types of movies that show it is ok to be a
certain way. Department of Justice data released in December 2014 estimates that 0.61 percent of
female college students are the victims of sexual assault (Commentary 2). If someone is raped in
college and tell someone what happened they will doubt you and most of the time call you a liar
and ask them if they did something to cause it or what were they wearing or if they were
drinking. More rapes happen in college because there are more parties and more ways to get
intoxicated and mentally and physically impaired to have someone take advantage of you. If you
were physically and mentally impaired and think you got raped, the person who raped you will
most likely say that you were ok with it and that you loved what happened that night. It will be
your word against theirs. If someone is drunk or some other type of intoxicated, they cannot give
their full consent because they are not able to make good decisions like when they are sober. If it
has to do with a woman, there is more reasons on why she is a big fat liar and why this happened
to her than anyone actually believing you on the first word. College women are at particularly
high risk for sexual assault, with between 20% and 25% reporting an attempted or completed
rape (Psychology of Violence 76). This statistic shows that being raped comes along with a lot of
victim shaming which is why they would rather not speak up about it and report it.

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One more reason that people do not notice why rape is not being taken seriously is the
way some people use the word rape as an excuse. People sometimes say that they were raped to
get out of a relationship that they are in. Most people say they got raped by a person as a way of
getting revenge towards a person that they do not like. As this gets more common, people start
doubting your words. When this person really does get sexually assaulted no one is going to
believe them because they already used it as an excuse to get out of something or to get even
with. No one will help this person or hear them out because people are going to think they are
lying and just want attention from all these other people.
The effects and consequences to the victim of rape can be very harmful and drastic. Some
of the effects can be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, substance abuse, and
suicide. PTSD is when a person has flashbacks of the incident and is constantly thinking that
they are back at that time and place and everything has them extra cautious. These effects make it
hard for someone to move on with their lives and get over the fact that their rape happened and
there is really nothing more that you can do to change it. Depression and substance abuse can
lead to ne inflicting harm to their body such as cutting themselves or even hitting and also
themselves that it was their fault and that they are worthless. This can be very dangerous because
most of the time it will lead to attempting suicide. No one knows what goes through the mind of
a victim and what they have to live with every day.
Rape is not taken seriously and that is a problem. People using it as excuse, media
promoting sexual violence being ok, women always being associated with the term rape, and not
many people getting punished for their crimes. We should not let these things block our mind of
the true meaning of rape. Rape is basically when someone does something to someone else
without consent. Rape is serious and should not be taken lightly because it comes with many

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consequences for the victim and could end up into someone losing their life. I believe that if
these victims have someone to talk to about what happened to them and what they are going
through there would be less occurrence in death every day. We should lend a hand and help these
people get back on track with their lives and say they are a survivor and that it happened so so
what! People are not coming forward head on when the assault occurs and want someone to do
something about it. Start doing something about it right away if you want to see a change
because if not nothing will change and no one is going to care. Do not let people not care about
this topic, especially if you are a women, because that will be the end of us having certain rights.

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Work Cited
Kingston, Maxine Hong. "No Name Woman." The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood
among Ghosts. New York: Knopf :, 1976. Print.
Maxwell, Zerlina. "Rape Culture Is Real." Time. Time, 27 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.
<http://time.com/40110/rape-culture-is-real/>.
Ridgway, Shannon. "25 Everyday Examples of Rape Culture." Everyday Feminism 10 Mar.
2014. Print.
Turchik, Jessica A., Danielle R. Probst, Clinton R. Irvin, Minna Chau, and Christine A. Gidycz.
"Psychology of Violence." Prediction of Sexual Assault Experiences in College Women
Based on Rape Scripts: A Prospective Analysis (2010): 77. Print.
"What Is Rape Culture?" WAVAW Women Against Violence Against Women. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.wavaw.ca/what-is-rape-culture/>.
"What Is Rape?" Definition of Rape -. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.pandys.org/whatisrape.html>.
Wilhelm, Heather. "Commentary." The Rape Culture Lie (2015): 2. Print.
Zinzow, Heidi M., Heidi S. Resnick, Jenna L. McCauley, Ananda B. Amstadter, Kenneth J.
Ruggiero, and Dean G. Kilpatrick. "Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology."
Prevalence and Risk of Psychiatric Disorders as a Function of Variant Rape Histories:
Results from a National Survey of Women (2012). Print.