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Sexism in films essay
Domestic violence against women
Domestic violence against women
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Visual images are extremely prevalent in modern western culture and they are nearly impossible to overlook with the various avenues of technology and social media. Visual images and depictions of women are particularly pervasive, yet society seems to overlook what specifically these sources are conveying about women. These images tend to clearly detail the ways in which women are expected to look, be treated in relation to those they encounter and act to all sexes. With consideration of all the representations of women within our culture, film or cinema, is possibly the most dominant of composing a particular way of grasping societal conventions. Images of women in cinema, therefore, are in a position to become so ingrained in society …show more content…
Rape sequences in films frequently show rape as a response to women moving outside the norms of submissive behaviors and embarking on independent behaviors. For example, in the film The Last House on the Left, when the two women head out of town alone and meet a young man their age, they are then brutally assaulted both sexually and physically by a gang. The portrayal of the two young women going out alone appears to be punished by being assaulted in the film. Like this particular movie, some films have coupled a woman’s independence and rape. Frequently, films depict rape as a cautionary tool or consequence to women who choose to step outside the traditional roles provided by the patriarchal …show more content…
Milburn recruited 137 students for an undergraduate college campus to examine two specific variables of: exposure to objectifying images of women and exposure to fictitious magazine account of a date or stranger rape (Funk 1). The short clips of the R-movies contained degrading scenes of male dominance, female availability and female objectification. The fictitious magazine account displayed two scenes, one describing a woman and a man who met at a bar and both has a lot to drink and ending with the man forcing himself on her and having sexual intercourse. The second scene described another drunken woman, who had a man approach her and force himself on her and complete the act of sexual intercourse. The results from this post facto experiment are as follows: watching the objectifying video results in participants, more so males, believing that women being raped received pleasure and “got what they wanted.” Additionally, men who held more traditional views of gender and men who did not hold such views were equally as likely to attribute blame to the victim for the rape as well as receiving pleasure. In regards to the stranger rape magazine scene, males stated that there was a five percent chance of them acting like the perpetrator and an eight
In today’s society, there is evidence that gender roles hold high standards in forming an identity, whether that gender is male or female. These standards put pressure on either gender to uphold them and commit to specific behaviors/actions that validate their very being. For men, this includes being considered masculine, or portraying the sense that they are authoritative over others, in which this includes displaying attitudes that contribute to female subordination. According to Pascoe (2016) in his article “Good Guys Don’t Rape” men are given the opportunity to challenge rape yet reinforce rape attitudes at the same time that are contained within rape culture and masculinity considered “norms.” Pascoe, illustrates that rape can be seen
Schneider L, Mori L, Lambert P, Wong A. The Role of Gender and Ethnicity in Perceptions of Rape and Its Aftereffects. Sex Roles [serial on the Internet]. (2009, Mar), [cited March 16, 2014]; 60(5/6): 410-421. Available from: SocINDEX with Full Text.
Cross-cultural research has shown that rape is most common in cultures that are dominated by males and violence. This means cultures in which males dominate the political decisions and cultures adhering to the male ideology of toughness, interpersonal violence and war (Groth 7). In a culture of people with more traditional or sexist gender role, attitudes are more tolerant of rape than are people with more nontraditional attitudes. Traditional men are more likely to report that they would commit rape if they knew they would not be caught; some researchers have found that a traditional man is much more likely to commit a rape than a nontraditional man is. Many attitudes in our culture perpetuate rape, for example: A husband is entitled to have sex with his wife," "A 'real man' never passes up a chance to have sex," and, "A women who 'leads a man on' deserves what she gets (Growth 7). “ Some media depictions may promote rape. Many movies make violence appear attractive and some movies convey myths about rape. Such as slasher films that make violence seem exciting, or movies suggesting that women like to be forced to have sex or that women's only value...
American commercial cinema currently fuels many aspects of society. In the twenty-first century it has become available, active force in the perception of gender relations in the United States. In the earlier part of this century filmmakers, as well as the public, did not necessarily view the female“media image” as an infrastructure of sex inequality. Today, contemporary audiences and critics have become preoccupied with the role the cinema plays in shaping social values, institutions, and attitudes. American cinema has become narrowly focused on images of violent women, female sexuality, the portrayal of the “weaker sex” and subversively portraying women negatively in film. “Double Indemnity can be read in two ways. It is either a misogynist film about a terrifying, destroying woman, or it is a film that liberates the female character from the restrictive and oppressed melodramatic situation that render her helpless” (Kolker 124). There are arguably two extreme portrayals of the character of Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity; neither one is an accurate or fare portrayal.
Sociological Analysis of Sexual Assault This essay will examine the social and cultural conditions, within the macro-diachronic and micro-synchronic theoretical models, that intensify or perpetuate sexual assault. I have chosen only one concept from each model because these are the only concepts that I feel that I can use to most accurately and comprehensively depict causes and reasons for why sexual assault is deeply entrenched in our social structure. I will thus explore, from these ideological viewpoints, some of the motivations and circumstances that lead offenders to sexual assault. I will also fuse some of the historical attitudes from which today's concepts have evolved into our contemporary understanding of these social phenomena. However, it’s important that we look beyond both offenders' motivations and history, and to the greater sociological view, if we are to correctly reconstruct acts of violence such as sexual assault.
Many of the attitudes, beliefs, and mistaken ideas about rape have been with us for centuries. By looking at myths, such as “women ask for it,” and “it would do some women good to get raped,” from a historical perspective, lead us for better understanding how they evolved. Women are still seen as the property of men, are protected as such. Men and women are still taught to occupy very different roles in today’s world. Men are usually more aggressive, and women are seen as passive. (Vogelman) This socialization process is changing, but slowly.
Susan Griffin’s Rape: The All-American Crime touches on many issues within American society. She begins by recounting how she was taught to be afraid of strange men from such a young age that she had not yet learned what it was she was so afraid of, and then goes into her experience with harassment, an experience shared by every woman at some point in her life. Griffin recounts the belief that all rapists are insane and the proof that they are just normal men and dispels the myth that rape is normal activity that is prohibited by society. However, she goes on to clarify that our culture views rape: “as an illegal, but still understandable, form of behavior” (Griffin 514). It seems that the wrongness of rape is determined by the situation in
Burt explains that “the hypothesized net effect of rape myths is to deny or reduce perceived injury or to blame the victims for their own victimization” (Burt, 217). When men get raped they don't see it as getting raped. Yet, when it comes to women they are more easily blamed because of “poor choices” like walking down an alleyway late at night, wearing sexy clothes or for drinking too much, giving a man a “justifiable” reason for his actions. McMahon also describes how “common rape myths include the belief that the way a woman dresses or acts indicates that “she wanted it” and that rape occurs because men cannot control their sexual impulses” (McMahon, 357). Chapleau, Oswald and Russel also explicate how “benevolent sexism is associated with victim blaming to protect one’s belief in a just world” (602). Benevolent sexism is the reverent attitudes that reward women who are traditionally feminine and is similar to hostile sexism in the idea that hostile sexism is when women are objectified or degraded often presented as anger, resentment or fear, while benevolent sexism is just as harmful, but put into a positive disguise, in a casual nonchalant manner that doesn’t make it so
In “Sex and Violence: A Perspective,” MacKinnon turns her focus to the common definition of rape as a form of violence. The categorizations of rape, sexual harassment, and pornography as forms of violence are problematic in themselves because they do not capture the reality of sex. In fact, much of intercourse is about violence (MacKinnon p. 268), in the way that power and dominance are extremely eroticized, thus to say “rape is violence” is a misnomer. MacKinnon brings one’s attention to the construction of rape, which separates rape from intercourse based on the amount of force applied (p. 268). This definition is especially legitimate in the legal system, which derives solely from a male point of view: it is called rape when there is penetratio...
According to Marshall University, Rape Culture is defined as “an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in media and popular culture.” In American society, it is not hard to find examples of rape culture. In popular movies, music, and current events there is an undeniable notion of victim blaming, and sympathizing with male perpetrators. People have begun to use the term rape as a casual adjective. For example “I just raped him in that game,” could be used to describe two people playing a game and one winning easily against the other. American society uses pop culture and current events to promote and justify the prominent rape culture.
Some people might say that these movies provide entertainment and transport families into the lives of princes and princesses. Many critics have said that the films have amazing soundtracks and have detailed and interesting plots. Still, however entertaining the films may be, the way women are viewed and treated outweigh any enjoyment that a viewer could have. The subliminal lessons young women learn from these films have lifelong repercussions and negatively affect the female
2011). The rape myths most widely studies and acknowledged included: husbands cannot rape their wives, women enjoy rape, women ask to be raped, and women lie about being raped. Assessment of such myths through measure such as The Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (RMAS; Burt 1980) and Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (IRMAS; Payne, Lonsway, Fitzgerald, 1994) show that not only does a portion of the population endorse them to some extent, but also that these beliefs permeate throughout media, religious, and legal domains. A troubling example of the myth that women ask to raped comes from Walklate (2008) in that 26% of polled participants thought a rape victim was partially or totally responsible if she was wearing sexy or revealing
Many of the attitudes, beliefs, and mistaken ideas about rape have been with us for centuries. By looking at myths, such as “women ask for it,” and “women secretly enjoy rape,” from a historical perspective, can lead us for better understanding how they evolved. Much stems back to the idea that women are still seen as the property of men, and are protected as such. Men and women are still taught to occupy very different roles in today’s world. Men a...
Feminism is a movement that supports women equality within society. In relation to film, feminism is what pushes the equal representation of females in mainstream films. Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist that is famous for touching on this particular issue of how men and women are represented in movies. Through her studies, she discovered that many films were portraying men and women very differently from reality. She came up with a theory that best described why there is such as huge misrepresentation of the social status quos of male and female characters. She believed that mainstream film is used to maintain the status quo and prevent the realization of gender equality. This is why films are continuously following the old tradition that males are dominant and females are submissive. This is the ideology that is always present when we watch a movie. This is evident in the films from the past but also currently. It is as if the film industry is still catering to the male viewers of each generation in the same way. Laura Mulvey points out that women are constantly being seen as sexual objects, whether it is the outfits they wear or do not wear or the way they behave, or secondary characters with no symbolic cause. She states that, “in traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote it-be-looked-at-ness.”(Mulvey pg. 715). Thus, women are nevertheless displayed as nothing more than passive objects for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Mulvey also points out through her research that in every mainstream movie, there is ...