Rape Culture Rape

When the topic of rape and sexual assault comes up in conversation, many people truly feel a strong sense of empathy for the victim, yet many others criminalize the victim for how they got into the assault. Why does our society continue to persecute a victim? For the only ones who should be using victim precipitation in a harsher fashion, are those investigating the crime in of itself. Rape culture has become a natural part of our society and the most powerful part of this “culture,” is victim blaming. Yes, there are two sides to this issue, but whether the victim was truly raped or not, it does not matter for there needs to be a balance. Whether it is to stop blaming the victim or how the victim can avoid becoming one in the first place, we

At least not against the victim, but it was focused towards the woman’s father or husband. The earliest known definition of rape is the Roman term Raptus, this generic term of rape was to imply violent theft, “applied to both property and person in the Roman culture. It was synonymous with a woman’s abduction or sexual assault, was merely the theft of a woman against the consent of her guardian or those with legal power over her” (Jiloha, 2013, p. 250). Though rape still was used as a perverse method of control as it was used in everyday Roman folklore and warfare, as it seemed to be a twisted form of hypocrisy to control the conquered population. This occurrence still happens today in different countries; even American soldiers are known to still rape women in warring countries. If we continued to move through history, women’s rights are still fairly new, especially rape laws. Yes, there have been many laws that view rape as a crime, but presently it is still a difficult task to enforce even

Seven simple rules will apparently keep a rapist at bay if a woman will, “travel in groups, alcohol consumption must be limited, be conscious of what they wear, be alert or on guard, places they travel to are restricted, be more tied to social networks and technology for their safety, and restrict their movements or hold themselves appropriately” (VanRyne, 2015, 4). So if a woman does not follow these things, does it justify the rape that she had received? Or instead should observers also be held accountable and detect who the rapist is and, “determine the rapist’s intentions and reasons… To assign some degree of blame to the rapist” (Niemi & Young, 2014, 230). Instead of focusing towards whether or not the rapist had a history that may have been a warning to a future crime, we focus on if she was sexually active. What about what exactly the rapist did to coerce the victim to submit to the attack, no disregard that focus on how short the victim’s skirt was. The final nail in this coffin of abusing victim precipitation to victim blame, is whether or not the victim had been drinking that night. Why does all of this matter to justifying a rape, for if this were a young man he would not be critiqued, but applauded for how confident he is. A double edged sword, but the fact remains for no matter what a woman did she did not ask to be