Maura Carroll

Jessica Morton
UWRT 1103-066
30 March 2016

Annotated Bibliography: Rape Culture/Sexual Violence

Bates, Laura. "This Is Rape Culture and Look at the Damage It Does." The Guardian.
Guardian News and Media, 2014. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/feb/14/rapeculture-damage-it-does-everyday-sexism>.
Bates main focus in this article is to describe rape culture and help the audience
realize why it is not okay. She gets all of her specific points and statements across by
having screenshot examples of social media accounts discussing rape and rape culture.
Bates states that the discussion and threat of rape becomes an acceptable part of
public discourse. She then shows two screenshots of two different womens tweets that
relate to her statement. @ProjectReinette tweet states Can't go out for walks around my
house bc routinely harassed, called names, and told that I need to be raped. Lovely stuff.
@Lethal_Brows tweet states My coworker was walking me to my car after my closing
shift, I thanked him and he laughed & said he could rape me right now. Reading these
two tweets out of many others, disgusted me. It disgusts me how okay everyone in
society is with the topic of rape.

Bowman, Christin P. "3 Components of Rape Culture and What You Can Do to Fight
Back." Psychology Benefits Society. ADMINISTRATOR, 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 30
Mar. 2016. <http://psychologybenefits.org/2014/02/18/3-components-of-rapeculture-and-what-you-can-do-to-fight-back/>.
Bowman labels and lists matters similar to the article Moseley created. Bowman
lists three major components of rape culture as well as listing multiple ways to fight back.
Rape culture may be a giant multi-faceted problem, but if we oblige to addressing each of
these negative components in turn, we can move much closer to eliminating rape for
good.
The three components listed are power, anger, and hyper-masculinity, sexual
objectification of womens bodies, and systematic and institutional support. Some parts
that stuck out to me were under systematic and institutional support. It discusses how
women (and men) are bullied and ridiculed by their own community after being raped
and how this leads to depression and a lot of the time, suicide with the victims. Also,
under sexual objectification, it discusses how often women are taught to be obsessed with
their body appearance which leads to body shame, sexual dysfunction, depression, etc.
The article lists multiple ways to fight back rape culture. For example, it states
that we should engage bystanders. A lot of cases of rape or sexual violence, there are
bystanders who never know what they should do in those situations. Another way listed is
to change the public perception of what is acceptable. Then it goes on to list a few
different anti-rape campaigns and groups that are doing positive things to help change
rape culture and sexual violence.

Chittal, Nisha. "How Social Media Is Changing the Feminist Movement." Msnbc.com.
NBC News Digital, 06 Apr. 2015. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-social-media-changing-the-feministmovement>.
Chittal discusses the new wave of feminism and its affects on social media. She
mainly focuses on the hashtag feminist movements and how its the most powerful
weapon in this wave of feminism.
Before social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook were created,
feminist movements and rallies were limited to those in the specific cities that they were
taking place. Thanks to social media like Facebook and Twitter, it has created a way for
anyone and everyone with a social media account to participate in feminist movements.
By removing geographic and distance barriers, sites like Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook,
and Twitter have made activism easier by facilitating public dialogues and creating a
platform for awareness and change.
Hashtag movements have been more and more popular. An example of a hashtag
feminist movement on social media is #WhyIStayed. This hashtag movement was created
after the Ray Rice domestic violence scandal came out and people began asking Janay
Rice why she had stayed with her husband. This lead to many other women writing this
hashtag and sharing their own personal stories of domestic violence. The hashtag
movement called #SurvivorPrivilege was created after conservative columnist George
Will claimed that rape victims have a coveted status that conveys privileges. These two
examples are small ways that women have fought back rape culture and sexual violence.

Moseley, Walter. "Ten Things to End Rape Culture." The Nation. The Nation, 04 Feb.
2013. Web. 30 Mar. 2016. <http://www.thenation.com/article/ten-things-end-rapeculture/>.
Moseley wrote this article to show the audience examples on how they can help
end rape culture. Most of the ten things should be obvious advice on how to end rape
culture such as naming the real problems.
Rape culture exists because we don't believe it does. Here's how to empower
men and women to change the status quo. This is how the article begins. What I
specifically like about this article is it directs towards not just women but men as well
because they can help change rape culture too. For example, the article speaks about how
men can make a small difference by not laughing at rape. Rape jokes are said super
frequently and no one seems to realize how they are far from funny. So, by men taking
rape more seriously and telling their peers that rape jokes are not to be said, they are
helping the problem even if just a little.
One of the ten things in the article is becoming media literate. Women (and men)
should feed their mind and heart with media that portrays women as full human beings
with the right to bodily autonomy. Use the media to learn how to talk back to media
creators. Media is usually used to speak on rape culture and used for protests and change
for it. Yet, media can be used to observe and research more in-depth problems and issues
with rape culture and better educate a person about the topic. Also, media can be used to
stop the problem even by a small amount by reporting female degradation and abuse on
Facebook for example.

"Revolutionary Millennials." Revolutionary Millennials. Feminist Killjoy, 28 May 2014.

Web. 28 Mar. 2016. <https://revolutionarymillennials.wordpress.com/tag/rapeculture/>.
Feminist Killjoy is the publisher as well as the author of this website. This
website stores multiple different pieces of work from multiple different authors, poets,
etc. Feminist Killjoy puts all of these pieces of work on one blog and they all speak
towards fighting against rape culture.
For example, one piece of work on her blog is a YouTube video of two young
women performing a slam poem entitled American Rape Culture. This video speaks
mostly towards celebrity men and their song lyrics and how they are demeaning towards
women and provoke rape culture. The poets call the celebrities out by name and describe
their lyrics. The main objective the poets try to get across is how society teaches men to
take, take, take and how society teaches women to take it, take it, take it. This video is an
example of how the media and technology in todays society is being used to make rape
culture well known and make it clear why it is so significant and wrong.
Another piece of work on this website blog is a poem entitled Fighting Rape
Culture. This poem is extremely personal to the poet. The poet describes events that have
happened in her life and for each event she makes a point about how that is the reason she
fights rape culture. For example, she states how she fights rape culture because when she
told her ex-boyfriend she was raped, he forgave her. This disgusts me that her
boyfriends first response was that he forgives her. This is a clear example of why we

need to fight rape culture and change it and she made a difference even by the slightest by
writing this poem and posting it on the media.