Is there really a rape culture or is the occurrences of any sort of rape generally isolated instances?

You seem to be conflating different things. “Rape culture” is a term that was invented in the sociological literature that applies to a set of observed conditions. In other words, a set of conditions was first observed, documented, and described. It was then given a convenient referencing label for the purpose of presenting the research. As such, there can’t really be a question about whether it exists because it’s just a way of labeling a particular finding.

There’s a lot that could be debated, like whether the term “rape culture” is a fitting label for what was observed, whether any given piece of clickbait is using the term correctly, or whether everything that random people on the internet have identified as part of rape culture actually fits the original definition. But saying that there’s no such thing as rape culture is like saying there’s no such thing as bullfrogs. They definitely exist, even if you would have called them chazzwazzers instead.

Yes it exists. No it’s not isolated instances.

Here’s some stuff that comes up readily from Googling:

a Time Magazine article titled ‘Rape Culture Is Real’

an article in The Guardian titled ‘This is rape culture – and look at the damage it does’ which mentions, ” (in the UK over 85,000 women are raped and 400,000 sexually assaulted every single year)”

a feminist perspective on ’25 Everyday Examples of Rape Culture’

Snopes on Repuplicans on Rape

Yes, isolated, individual instances. Otherwise, it would happen, en masse, from time to time, all the time.

I can’t prove it, but I suspect that starting in ancient times and proceeding into modernity, rape has diminished as being accepted as the norm, and increased as a subject of negative moral scrutiny.
It has not disappeared to be sure. But it is clearly being debated as to whether or not modern society can accept it in any form. And that means, like slavery, it will be resolved, assumintg that reason is permitted to prevail, and if so in a positive way.
But progress is gradual.
Some social critics are a product of their generation, which means for some of them that what ever change they want they want it NOW!
I used to be that way. But I think I have figured it out.
It will never work that way. If you believe that then you must prepare for perpetual unresolved conflict. Because change is gradual. Sometimes longer than a lifetime.
There really is not a rape culture. There is merely a gradual and annoyingly slow move toward mutual respect of the role that males and females play in the human drama.
I never thought about these things until I went to the ME and interacted with those truly fucked up people. They generally have no notion about the value of women in their culture. As it is, the women are frightened of the men because they believe that they will be abused as inferiors, and the men are frightened of the women because as far as I can figure, they are worried that they won’t be able to get it up if the women are assertive. I think it gets down to that. A hard on for Christs sake. Totally fucked up.
It was so great to come home and believe that there might be chance for human redemption right here at home. Because redemption and progress is NOT happening in the Middle East. North Korea, North Africa, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Some of you on this site have no idea about how good you have it.
And that is how it is.
But, I hope the enlightened West gets over it’s little internal squabbles and starts getting serious about the great moral truths that it has to offer the rest of the world.

Good articles @Zaku. They explain our collective mentality that if a girl is attacked she brought it on in some way. It’s really her fault.

I read the articles offered up by @Zaku and now understand a bit more of what people are talking about when they use the term rape culture. But I find that term so insulting when applied to the culture I was raised in, that I resisted opening those articles. I hate that term and I believe that I am not alone.

Like @josie, I have lived in real rape cultures, where rape is rarely recognized as a crime, women are routinely tortured and abused, and the men are rarely punished for doing so because the women are considered their property. Compared to those cultures, saying that Americans live in a “rape culture” is pure hyperbole designed for emotional impact, which rarely results in rational discussion.

But, yes, there is something wrong with a culture that jokes about rape, threatens rape, practices slut shaming and all the other things described in those articles. However, if you want someone to listen to a complaint, you don’t insult them or their culture first. They will shut down on you like welk.

Change this term, stop using this term, and people like me will be more receptive to this complaint. Don’t change it, and you will be met with hostility and achieve nothing.

GA @Espiritus_Corvus .

“I hate that term and I believe that I am not alone.” @josie Nope, you’re not alone. I especially hate the way it’s used to insinuate that it is something still tolerated here in the states, especially on campuses. As I have said many times before this is a lot like what @SavoirFaire mentioned in the first paragraph of his response about the phrase being invented by academics. Most live in the publish or perish world of academia and sometimes a little shock and awe give that paper a little sparkle. Angry people in the U.S. use that phrase almost as a way of lashing out. It has the effect of being counter productive and down right damaging to the very cause of raising awareness where it actually needs to be addressed. Yet the people who use the phrase almost never get called out when using it this way. There is no more of a rape culture here in the states than there is a murder culture. Society does not tolerate those things here yet isolated individuals will break those rules. If you want to see a real rape culture it most certainly exists in many third world countries across the globe.

You know, America may suck in many ways but we pressure each other to become more enlightened. It’s only been since the 60s that pressure to not automatically blame the women has come to bear.
I think before that there probably was much more of a “rape culture” and the belief that women brought it on themselves.

I have been raped twice. The first was when I just turned 15, by two boys. The second was when I was 20. I have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and I have been assaulted for not having sex with someone. All of this happened to me by the age of 20. No one was punished.

I am not alone with these occurrences.

We do have a rape culture in the US and you are privileged if you say we don’t. Have you looked at any porn recently on the internet? Our sons look at this shit when they are very young. Women are treated like a piece of meat. Girls are giving blow jobs at such a young age now. Of course there are many boys and men who are respectful, but you can’t deny the rape culture that exists.

https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence

Men here are offended by the term. I’m so sorry.~

Yeah. ^^^.that. “Boys will be boys. Why make.such a big deal of it?” Victim’s like it too. They just won’t admit it

Yes. There is a rape culture. From media images, to individual experience, to crimes never being prosecuted. Boo hoo. The term makes me feel icky. Well, you should feel fuckin’ icky. Rape is disgusting and the culture surrounding it as well.

I’m a female who experienced being drugged and date raped as a teenager decades before the term “date rape” was coined.
That said as a woman I also hate the term “rape culture.” There are individuals that feel they can assault women for a variety of reasons from serious mental health pathologies to simple entitlement/narcissism. Rapists come from all walks of life and socioeconomic classes and just like all crimes, some pay and some don’t. Sexual assault is a problem and sure, there is a good amount of bullshit innuendo and misplaced cultural beliefs but I agree with @Espiritus_Corvus to call our culture a rape culture compared to many other cultures where sexual assault runs rampantly unchecked, goes unpunished and women are actually murdered, stoned, burned alive, beheaded for being victims..well….

I’ll tell what a goddamned rape culture looks like. Prison is a rape culture. I spent 93 days in a Venezuelan prison shithole, and believe me, that was a rape culture. The whole fucking pecking order was based on rape and it was encouraged by the guards because any order is better than disorder. It made their jobs easier and they could get a nice, free, tight piece of ass or an expert cocksucking anytime they wanted. You heard men screaming all night long, every night. It was continuous. It was how a man could get a gopher and an income stream and his slave could nothing about it. There was nowhere to go and no one to run to. Punishment and revenge often entailed gang beat downs ending in gangbangs with the guards either watching or participating. Men spend years in places like that, some spend decades. The ones who survive the longest are the serial perpetrators of rape, the hierarchy, the owners, the best friends of the guards, the man with the most slaves and therefore the highest income and luxury.

Then you get released and on the outside men and women both make jokes about male-on-male prison rape on late TV night, at the office, in the gym, at the neighborhood bar-b-q—
everywhere. It’s one, big, fucking joke. Even anti-rape sites, run mostly by and for women, pay very little attention to this aspect rape. But it goes on, every day and evey night in American prisons. It is last on the list. If you;re not going to joke about it, then nobody wants to hear about it. Nobody wants to hear about a bunch of fucking felons getting it up their asses and down their throats.

So, when the victims come back from behind that tall wall that protects the rest of you from that world so you can joke about what on inside, they don’t talk about it. They don’t think about it. They bury it and try to get on with their lives because it’s a joke on the outside, nobody gives a shit. And if the victim does talk about it, he will become just another whispered buttfuck joke down at the gym or at the office.

So, don’t tell me shit about you living in a rape culture. It’s an anomaly on the outside. It’s institutionalized as it is in prison or in other cultures. I don’t give a shit how times you’ve been raped or abused. If you call what you are living a rape culture, then you have no fucking idea what you are talking about. You’re just another fucking whiner hunting for just another fucking way to be offended.

@Espiritus_Corvus Standing ovation! Baby take a bow!

EDIT:
*it’s NOT institutionalized as it is in prison…

I’m sure feminists are all over that issue as well~

@ARE_you_kidding_me Right. haha

How did you end up in prison for 93 days @Espiritus_Corvus?

@Espiritus_Corvus and @Coloma : I see what you’re saying but I don’t think that’s the way the term is intended. I read “rape culture” as there being aspects of the culture that normalize or downplay (and therefore indirectly enable) rape, and not that the whole culture is overtly pro-rape. In fact, it’s usually used and brought up in full awareness that most of the dysfunction around rape is covert and subconscious, and so it needs to be discussed overtly in order to change it.

The behavior @Espiritus_Corvus described in out-of-prison American conversations about prison rape is an example of that. The joking and avoidance and denial are what enable the overt prison rape situations to continue, and the way to change the prisons is to move the subject from joking, threats, and taboo denial, to discussions about how the non-prison population won’t confront that it allows prison rape to continue.

What allows rape to continue and to be so common (particularly in prisons, the military, and families) is resistance in the thoughts, feelings and conversations of people in those groups, and in the society around them, that makes rape a taboo topic, a shame-laden topic for the victims and for society, so that we avoid calling it out. That’s the value of talking about “rape culture” – it’s acknowledging that our prisons, military and families have serious problems and that the thinking of our culture needs to be willing to face that in order to change it, rather than denying, enabling, and making excuses for it. We need to learn to detect, protect, and heal, and to have that become the new normal instead of ignorance, inaction, and misery. Part of what sustains the problems is failure to own that it has been happening and to take responsibility and say the situation must change.

@Dutchess_III I was walking down a sidewalk in the shopping district of downtown Caracas hunting for a certain doctor’s office to discuss a research protocol of a study trial that my lab wanted to recruit him into. I was gradually enveloped by a huge teacher’s protest, then we were all gassed, surrounded by national guard, thrown on the ground, our hands bound behind our backs, put onto trucks, shipped into a soccer stadium, processed, then shipped off to various prisons in the interior. If it wasn’t for my boss, I’d either be dead or still there today. It took 90 days for the US State Department to locate me and three more days to cut through the bureaucracy and get me out. Back in 2002.

OMG. Nightmare, like Midnight Run.

It happens all the time to foreign nationals all over the world, Dutchess. That’s why you should always go to both the US State Department website and the CIA World Factbook website and look for travel updates for Americans before you do any foreign travel.

ffs, rape is rape. There is no such thing as rape being worse for someone else because of where they live. Rape culture exists everywhere.

This facebook page is full of examples of how men get away with raping women in the US with minimal punishment.
https://www.facebook.com/BrockForPrison/

Yes, rape is rape but most women in America aren’t murdered for being rape victims like many in other countries are. So some rape is worse than others if it ends up in the murder of its victim. Also @Espiritus_Corvus shares the little discussed topic of male rape, so rape is not just a womans issue, not by a long shot. Male rape is every bit as ugly.