Rape Culture Controversy

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While there are many problems in the world, like poverty, famine, cancer, and an abundance of carbon emissions into the planet, there is one that has been in the back of my mind for quite some time: rape culture. This issue is vastly popular in the world of bloggers and social networking site, tumblr. It’s slowly progressing into an important issue that the public is acknowledging. Reviewing the issue’s historical, social, political, cultural and economic perspectives will entail rape culture’s controversy. Rape culture is an issue that has gained moment through the feminist movement within the last couple of decades. Rape itself has been around since the beginning of time and its definition has changed over the years. In the United States before 1993, a woman could not charge her husband for rape. The definition of rape varies by state and each state has it’s own set of rape laws. According to Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), rape culture “is a term that was coined by feminists in the United States in the 1970’s. It was designed to show the ways in which society blamed victims of sexual assault and normalized male sexual violence.”1 Rape culture existed in the 1970’s and still exists today. The biggest issue with rape culture is that there’s a split decision on whether it exists or doesn’t exist. Any girl (or woman, to be politically correct) experiences rape culture without knowing that, in fact, it is rape culture. Tumblr user vonmoire describes rape culture as: “[Living] my life with the ever burning anxiety that someone is going to put their hands on me regardless of my feelings on the matter, and I’m not going to be able to stop them. I live with the knowledge that statistically one in three women have experi... ... middle of paper ... ...is issue is still in its baby steps and it has been gaining momentum through things like the SlutWalk that originated in Toronto. The SlutWalk is a walk where both men and women come together to protest rape culture.4 SlutWalks are happening in Dallas, Chicago, Sacramento, Boston, Detroit and many other major cities through the U.S. and Canada. Rape culture will seize to exist when someone is asked for the last time what they were wearing, how much they were drinking or if they somehow caused the assault to happen. Works Cited 1. Women Against Violence Against Women| Rape Crisis Center. WAVAW. Web. 6 April 2014 2. Vonmoire (R.D.). “When I Was Seventeen and Preparing to Leave.” Tumblr. Web. 5 April 2014. 3. “Rape Myths and Facts.” The Student’s Center of Health. West Virginia University. Web. 5 April 2014. 4. Dallas SlutWalk. “About.” Facebook. Web. 5 April 2014.

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