The+Feminist+Theory+and+The+Rape+Culture

Name: Sze Wing Lee Student number: n8720258 Tutor: Judith Meiklejohn __The Feminist Theory and The Rape Culture __ media type="custom" key="24219540" width="112" height="112" align="left"
 * From ‘Condoms on Bananas’ to Negotiating Consent: **  ** Educating around safety and desire in human sexual relationships. **


 * __ MY ARTEFACT __**

This video called "Rape culture in our media". This video are giving some examples of rape culture, which included images, advertisements, clothing items, jokes, lyrics. It showed how the rape culture affects the society through different ways, as well as showed what the public think about the rape culture. Also, It gave some comment on this issue to let the viewer to have a introspection for this issue. Moreover, this video also show the irreverence of women, most of the examples in the video, those women were lying on the floor, controlled by men.


 * __ THE PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE __**

The public health issue behind this video is how public view sex in the mainstream society and media. It provides how media sustained to allow "rape culture" to emerge in the society and how it influence the public and the status of women. According to Herman (1984), in some countries rape could be legal for men which means rape laws was established not to protect the consent of women but to protect women's property value of men. Therefore, the rape culture affect the public view of sex to be sex could be without women's consent and women is the subordinate of men, which is same as the video have shown.

According to Ritzer and Ryan (2009), rape culture is a concept that links nonconsensual sex with the cultural fabric of a society.rape culture is not an either-or phenomenon but exists in varying degrees, from the institutionalization of rape to its perfunctory punishment as crime. In most strident form of rape culture, women are the property of men who deny them respect and the right to control their own bodies. According to Krug, Dahlberg, Mercy, Zwi, & Lozano (as cited in Boakye, 2009, p. 1633), the rape culture has become a deep social problem in many countries, therefore, this issue has become an important issue in the society which also need the public awareness to solve this issue. A research conducted in the United States showed that one in four women have experienced rape or attempted rape in their lifetime and for 84% of the cases, the victim knew the offender (Boakye, 2009). And this situation is not very different in England, Wales, South Africa and Ghana (Boakye, 2009). In these examples, the rape culture was not only appeared in developed countries, but also in developing countries. Recently, there was a Norwegian woman has been raped by colleague in Dubai that made her been kept in jail for four days with no explanation as to why (Goulding, & O'Sullivan, 2013). From this cases, it showed the rape culture was become a serious problem to the society which lead to the irreverence for women.
 * __ LITERATURE REVIEW __**

According to Boakye (2009), feminist of rape posits, among other things, that patriarchy and gender inequality are the major factor attitudes toward rape. The researchers found that High level of sexual violence occur when men suffer some consequences, such as social, psychological or legal, from forcing women to have sex. In some countries where men are expected to be sexually aggressive, some coercion may be viewed as normative, the perpetrator may not feel guilt or regret if they construe their actions as justified (Tavrow, Withers, Obbuyi, Omollo, & Wu, 2013). Moreover, the traditional beliefs about rape which also called "rape myths", such as women provoke the sexual aggression of men and men cannot control their desires, gave a concept to the believers that women are the subordinate of men and the rape appear is because of the false of women but not men (Tavrow et al., 2013). Many rape myths related to the characteristics of women. According to Tavrow et al. (2013), if the woman does not behave like a stereotypical "good girl", she may be blamed for the rape which means if the girl had been raped the people might said she deserve rape. As the photo next to the paragraph, it showed how the believers affected by the rape culture in the mainstream society.

To measure this issue, a number of different scales was constructed, of which two most commonly used are Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (1980) and the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (2010) (Tavrow et al., 2013). Using these two scale, it has seven categories of rape myths based on six studies conducted in the United Status. Meanwhile, the majority of studies that testing rape myth acceptance had been done in several developed countries, only a few studies had been conducted in developing countries, such as Africa.



From those studies, they got a result of the stereotyping in the rape culture which are male perpetrator role, female gender role and victim behavior role (Tavrow et al., 2013). As the result, although the public blamed the rapist, they still taught women not to raped but not to taught men not to rape. As following image, the marchers gave an example of how the public face this issue.

Although these methodologies in trying to fully understand and redress the issue, there are several limitation. First, the participants were drawn from the same district in Kenya. And it is possible that their opinion are not representative (Tavrow et al., 2013). Second, the methodology had mixed gender focus group that are peer educators and adults may have led to biases, which means men potentially less likely to give misogynistic views in front of women(Tavrow et al., 2013). Last, although the methodology provided evidences that the rape myth acceptance scale would need to be developed for East Africa, it did not systematically test all the elements of the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale to determine its relevancy(Tavrow et al., 2013). Therefore, it should have further research to outline an rape myth acceptance scale for East Africa and to another place.

Feminist theory has different definition which is because sometimes feminists and feminist scholars will create their own definition of feminism to best suit them. And the following will introduce three different definition of feminism which are Feminism, Cultural Feminism and Ecofeminism. According to Sexual Assault Support Centre (2013), Feminism is the theory that women and men should be politically, economically and socially equal. This theory is the core of all feminist theories, sometimes it also referred to as "core feminism" or "core feminist theory". Furthermore, cultural feminism is the theory that are fundamental personally differences between women and men, and women's differences are special and should be celebrated (SASC, 2013). This theory supports the concept that men and women do have biological differences which believed "woman's way" is a better way. In addition, ecofeminism is a theory that base on the core feminism and that patriarchal philosophies are harmful to women, children and other living things (SASC, 2013). The eco-feminists believed that resist the patriarchal culture are also resisting the pillaging and destroying of the Earth.
 * __ CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ANALYSIS __**

According to Boakye (2009), the feminist theory of rape posits, among other things, that patriarchy and gender inequality are the major factor attitudes toward rape and that underlying patriarchy and gender inequality are false belief (rape myths) and gender stereotypes about rape, rapists and the victim of rape. Moreover, in 1980s, the rape culture already be normal as a part of the society. As Herman (1984) said "date rape has already existed in United Status and many young adolescents view date rape as a part of dating. In brief, rape culture is a concept that affect the society for long time and show the inequality between women and men. And women are the most influence group in this issue. Although in the current society, many people said that women and men should be sex equality, not only men could do well, but also women could also do it well. There are still having a part of the society and culture said that women are the property of men who deny them respect and the right to control their own bodies. According to Herman (1984), in some countries, rape could be legal for men which means rape laws was established not to protect women but to protect women's property value of men. These are the examples of legal rape law for men (rapists) but illegal for women (victims),January 2010, a British woman was raped by an employee in Dubai but be charged with intoxication and having sex outside of marriage. And in 2008, an Australian woman was gang-raped and drugged in Dubai but be convicted of having sex outside marriage and be sentenced to eleven months in prison (Goulding, O'Sullivan, 2013). Therefore, increasing the awareness of this issue is important which most of the public would be a parent, when their daughters told their parents that teacher teaches how to avoid raped, son was taught nothing about rape. And the following image shows the parents opinion of rape culture. And these are the reason that the society needs to increase public awareness and educated the children.

As previously mentioned, this YouTube video present different kind of examples that how media and the mainstream society view sex and rape culture. After each kind of examples, it show a sentence of how media respond to the examples, then gave the viewer a short question to ponder. For example, after showing a few image that women lying on the floor, it said "they call it fashion" which is the respond of the media, then it asked "What's so alluring?". It gave the question to the viewer to ponder that: Do this issue is sustainable? Why should we sustain this culture? Do we still show the irreverence of women?
 * __ ANALYSIS OF THE ARTEFACT AND MY LEARNING REFLECTIONS __**

I chose this video clip to be my artefact is because it gave the massage that how people view sex and rape culture which can let more people to ponder their action. Also, since my topic is about rape culture and feminist which included how feminist view rape culture and using this angle to analysis rape culture, and this video is using a feminist angle to view rape culture which is exactly the same as my topic. And this is the reason of choosing this video.

From this assignment, I have learnt more about feminism, which is feminism is not only one definition, it also has more definition while people want to best suit their situation. In past, I did not hear about what is rape culture and how it affect the society. But now, through this assignment I knew more about this issue, which included: There are many victims of raped would be sentenced to jail as they were having sex outside marriage; the inequality between women and men. and that surprising me because the school taught us women and men is equal but when I face this issue, I realise that it still not be promoted in most of the society. After finishing this assignment, it help me to understand women is not the property of men, rape is not the fault for the victim but for the rapist.


 * __ REFERENCE LIST __**

Boakye, K. E. (2009). Attitudes toward rape and victims of rape, a test of the feminist theory in Ghana. //Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24//, 1633-1651. doi: 10.1177/0886260509331493

Goulding, N., & O'Sullivan,P. (2013,July 21). Norwegian woman: I was raped in Dubai, now I face prison sentence. Cabal News Network. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/

Herman, D. F. (1984). The rape culture. In J. Freeman (3Eds.), //Women: A Feminist Perspective// (pp. 45-53). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

Ritzer, G., & Ryan, J. M. (2011). The concise encyclopedia of sociology [EBL version]. Retrieved from http://www.qut.eblib.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/EBLWeb/patron/

Sexual Assault Support Centre. (2013). Feminist Theory. Retrieved from http://www.sascwr.org/

Tavrow, P., Withers, M., Obbuyi, A., Omollo, V., & Wu, E. (2013). Rape myth attitudes in rural Kenya: toward the development of a culturally relevant attitude scale and "blame index". //Journal of interpersonal violence, 28//, 2156-2178. doi: 10.1177/0886260512471086

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 * __ REFLECTION __**

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