The rape culture thread.

[NodmiTheSellout]

What a sunny topic! OK, let's start out with what the idea of rape culture isn't.

It isn't an argument that someone will, say, listen to a song depicting rape and respond, "You know, that sounds like a good idea. I think I'm going to go out and rape!"

Rather, rape culture refers to the many, many things that diminish the severity of rape, undermine consent, and otherwise pretend the line of what is and isn't rape is "blurry", that people--particularly women--default to 'consent' and if they were too scared to say 'no' then they consented, etc.. It's the habit of people/articles/etc. advising women how to protect themselves against rape, but not advising men of how to properly obtain consent, that women's bodies aren't something earned through taking them out to dinner, etc.. It's news articles that refer to rape as 'having sex', even in the most blatant examples of rape.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/loca...oze_binge.html

Kierra Johnson, 15, lived a turbulent life that ended in a haze of alcohol and sexual violence on the afternoon of March 7, 2008.

Yesterday, the second young man involved in her death by alcohol poisoning quietly pleaded guilty in a Philadelphia courtroom, as his co-defendant had done in February.

Shareef Clemons, 18, who, if found guilty at trial, could have spent decades behind bars, agreed to plead guilty to rape, conspiracy, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and simple assault in exchange for a six-to-12-year state prison term, plus five years' probation.

Clemons will be formally sentenced July 28 by Common Pleas Judge Ellen Ceisler, who revoked his bail yesterday and placed him in custody.

Co-defendant Juan Williams, 19, who was prepared to testify against Clemons at trial, will be sentenced by Ceisler May 4.

"We're glad that it ended in a nontrial disposition so that the family didn't have to sit through a trial and listen to all the details of Kierra's last moments of life," Assistant District Attorney Eileen Hurley said after the brief hearing.

Johnson, of East Germantown, gave birth at age 14 and was expelled by the school district to Community Education Partners, a disciplinary school in North Philadelphia, after she was caught having sex on school grounds.

She, Clemons and Williams attended the school, although the boys did not know Johnson.

They met for the first time while waiting at a bus stop on the morning of March 7, 2008, when all three should have been in school.

Clemons, who was 16, and Williams, then 17, didn't even know Johnson's name but recognized her school uniform, they later would tell police.

The trio ended up at Williams' house on Crowson Street near Church Lane, East Germantown, where they drank vodka, wine, peach schnapps and rum.

When Johnson passed out on the living-room sofa, the boys carried her down the basement stairs and placed her on a weightlifting bench, Hurley told the judge.

They put on condoms and took turns having sex with Johnson, who was vomiting and drifting in and out of consciousness.

Clemons also had unprotected anal sex with Johnson, and his DNA was recovered from the victim's body, Hurley said.

The city medical examiner later that day determined that her blood-alcohol level was .433 - rendering her unable to consent to sexual intercourse. That level is also nearly five times above the legal limit to drive a car. When Williams' mother returned home, he ran out the back door, and Clemons told her before fleeing that he and Williams had been in the basement lifting weights. Williams' mother found Johnson unconscious, partly clothed and dangling from the weightlifting bench.

That they put 'rape' in the article heading is pretty uncommon as it it, but you can't "take turns having sex" with someone who is so drunk that she can't function and is about to die from alcohol poisoning. You take turns raping a woman in that state. PS: Rape culture is also going out of your way to paint the victim as immoral and who probably "had it coming", because women who live a certain lifestyle practically rape themselves, y'know.

As for the depiction of rape in entertainment, rather than in news stories. . .this is where I kind of falter. I think there is no problem with me, my friends, etc., consuming material which depicts rape as laughable or sexy (or as an appropriate comparison to something mild, i.e. "that tax bill is raping me") so long as we're aware that it's happening, and not pretending that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the message it's sending. I know the difference between fiction and life, and know that if someone's raped in real life, there's nothing "hot" about it, and there's nothing funny about touching a drunk girl/stealing her underwear/whatever no matter how awkward and pathetic the guy doing it is. Many people who recognize objectionable things in entertainment feel they have to stop watching it, supporting it, etc., but I can't do that. . .because uhm, if I stopped listening to every band with a lyric that diminished rape (or illustrated some other sort of bias), I'd have about two bands I could still listen to. MAYBE.

Overall, I'm more offended by disgusting advertising than music--I exempt art in many cases because if that isn't an appropriate outlet for ugly sentiments, what is? You can't expect everyone to have nothing but pure, progressive thoughts 24/7, and it's better to sing about them than act on them. Of course when the songs are merely glorifying an ongoing lifestyle of dehumanizing women, then. . .eh. Most of the offending songs I listen to are about things that the singer would never do, they're stories or fantasies ("Someone less privileged than you should rape you"). If they were different from that, if they seemed to be about treating women like shit in actuality, I wouldn't listen--and there's been cases where that's happened.

Anyway, I'm ranty and don't make for a coherent argument. . .so go for it.

[Hobbs]

How is rape depicted in advertisement?

[Fryk]

Couldn't you argue that advertising, in itself, is an art form?

[NodmiTheSellout]

How is rape depicted in advertisement?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j48Z0Ns3Bk4

Rape, when depicted in advertisement, is written off as "funny and playful". Because women not feeling secure in their own bodies, feeling vulnerable on a base level like that--it's hilarious.

Objectification of women is also a large part of rape culture (if women are simply objects, why should their consent be respected?), so I don't think I need to point you to the three million things companies use women's bodies to sell.

Couldn't you argue that advertising, in itself, is an art form?

You could. But it's not an art form in the same way that other things are art forms. It has a motive, to sell; it's an expression of why [product] is great and you should buy it. Whereas the things I mention exist for expression and entertainment. Not to mention, it's not only men who purchase things. In fact, in a lot of families, women do most of the shopping--shopping for food, for cleaning products, stopping at fast-food places in between such shopping trips, etc.. So when a commercial clearly doesn't even consider women when it's being made, it's alienating a huge chunk of its customer base. Which is just a bad idea. Many women will buy the products anyway, just because they're necessary for whatever reason, but advertising without insinuating that, for instance, women just loooove cleaning so goddamn much if they have [product], would probably be more effective. I understand that the intended message in many cleaning commercials is "this product means you're finished cleaning faster, and it's done better, too!", but it gets muddled up with imagery insinuating that women do nothing but clean and do shit for their kids.

[Red Panda]

I always thought it was a bit odd how rape in Rescue Me never was a relationship killer. In one case it actually helped the relationship.

[Hobbs]

That's not rape. That's voyeurism. The two are both crimes, but there are strict differences between them. As it is, it's not glorifying rape, nor objectifying women. It's using (albeit an odd method) to get a message across. If it had been a man showering, would you have raised such a fuss? Anyone would be uncomfortable knowing a group or even one person was watching them shower. In this case, I think you'd need a lesson from Freud, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." I've never even seen this advertisement, when was it aired?

[Fryk]

Ah, but art is a form of communication... and all communication is persuasion at heart. Like advertising is.

I I agree with Hobbs that that commercial isn't a form of rape. But it IS objectifying, and even as a guy I found it creepy.

[Hyena Dandy]

I agree the ad is creepy, but I don't think its rape, and I don't think its INTENDED to be fun and playful. The idea was to scare you with the idea of what you were putting in the bath. And that was just what they did. You're SUPPOSED to be disturbed.

[NodmiTheSellout]

It was intended as a bit of playful fun. There was a huge shitstorm over it across all sorts of feminist blogs (hence why it's on YouTube and not Method's website), and they used almost exactly that phrase to describe it. Apparently the fact that they're cartoon bubbles makes it hilarious.

Anyway, it's rare that actual rape is depicted in commercials, though it's certainly insinuated in, say, security commercials--notice that most of them contain terrified women talking to such soothing men. . .if you don't get our security system, A MAN WILL COME IN AND RAPE YOU. Of course they can't say that and hope to get on the air, so. . .

Again, rape culture isn't even about actual depiction of rape in media. It's about how media portrays the relationship between women and men--it's how it encourages male entitlement to female bodies, tries its damnedest to reduce rape down to "sex she regretted", paints "It's not rape, it's SURPRISE SEX!" as funny and witty, and similar things of that sort. Really, the most blatant example, in my view, is how courts and newspapers handle a rape case. Did you know it's impossible to rape a woman wearing tight pants? Because there's absolutely no other way that a woman who doesn't want to fuck might be persuaded to take off her pants.

EDIT: Something just occurred to me about advertising and why I regard it as different from music. . .at least the music I listen to. The music I listen to isn't designed to appeal to a large audience. The people making it more or less acknowledge that the creation of their music is a selfish act, in large part, and they're kind of just lucky that people enjoy it. So, it's a product inasmuch as it's something they sell to make money, but it's not a product in that it's a reasonable desire that huge, varied groups of people will buy it. This isn't me trying to say people who like popular music are brainless consumers or any such snobby bullshit. . .I just think there's something more malicious in writing/executing something that objectifies women, glorifies unwanted male aggression, slyly blames women for the crimes perpetrated against them, etc., when you begin the process with "How can I sell this to as many people as possible?" Because then you're using people's misogyny as a marketing tool and. . .eugh. It's just gross.

[Hobbs]

Anyway, it's rare that actual rape is depicted in commercials, though it's certainly insinuated in, say, security commercials--notice that most of them contain terrified women talking to such soothing men. . .if you don't get our security system, A MAN WILL COME IN AND RAPE YOU. Of course they can't say that and hope to get on the air, so. . .

OF course that's the message of ADT/Broadview/etc. They're trying to market and sell a product about defending from home invasion/crimes. So of course they're going to give worst-case scenarios. Although, most of the ones I've seen depict home invasions, I have seen one about a stalker-ish ex-boyfriend.

[NodmiTheSellout]

My point is that they don't have to use the woman alone crap all the time. They can use men, men WITHOUT borderline hysterical wives/girlfriends. I can't remember a single commercial depicting a single man though. Some depict single women or mothers, some depict married or dating couples. . .but apparently a man is never vulnerable. Because men don't have valued personal possessions and can wake up out of a dead sleep and drop an intruder, y'know.

[Hobbs]

It's still a marketing ploy. The people who most likely buy burglar alarms are new homeowners, newlyweds, new parents, etc. So the marketing trend is to show that a family is vulnerable w/o the anti-theft system. The absent-husband is part of the ploy; "They can get your family when you can't protect them." Despite the "advances" of equal-rights, I would presume most, if not all, men still feel protective of their wives and children. People aren't meant to act rational in these commercials, because the point is to sell the product.

By the way, in the same corollary, I've seen commercials for Krav Maga that show both men and women taking the classes.

[Fryk]

So you're saying the music you like to listen to gets a free pass because not a lot of people like it? Hogwash. That just means that less people listen to their misogyny, that's all.

[Wingates_Hellsing]

The less pessimistic side of me wants to think that's why fewer people listen to them... but that side can fuck off, given the circumstances. I don't distinguish between widely and narrowly heard messages. What you put out there is on you, regardless of how many people it reaches. More listeners may worsen the situation, but you're no less a scumbag for putting it out there/preaching it.

[NodmiTheSellout]

Nah, it mostly gets a free pass because it's either a. a highly fictional environment (as opposed to, say, a song that purports to be a document of how the singer's relationships with women actually go), b. highly self-aware, kind of satirical or c. it's not misogynistic so much as the context in which rape is mentioned is kind of iffy (i.e., is rape an appropriate metaphor for anything? some people believe rape should only describe, well, rape), which is a specific case--and that particular musician has been much closer to the topic of rape than I ever have, so I'm not going to tell him how to express himself in that regard. I don't have some magical, transcendent authority on the subject of rape just by being a woman.

But I do think there's a difference between songs written by the artist performing them and, say, songs written by some professional songwriter to be performed by someone else. Because in that case I can't chalk it down to telling someone how to express themselves--their first thought is "does this sell?". There's something more insidious about selling misogyny than, say, being kind of a fuckface who can't handle a breakup and writes songs about killing women as a way of dealing with it.

As for the suggestion that it's the misogyny that puts people off. . .are you serious? Misogyny is all over popular music, measuring women's worth by how fuckable they are, etc..There's only one musician I listen to where it's so prominent that I can see it turning people off, and that's the one where he's sort of created this hyper-sexual character to play with; it's intended to illustrate a certain mindset to the extreme, not condone it. He makes it so cartoonish that there's just no way it's meant to represent his views about women.