Rape Culture, Part II of III: Catcalling and Victim Blaming

Featured image, “Stop Telling Women to Smile” by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

 

Written By Alexsia

 

 

Welcome back for Part II to learn about, Catcalling and Victim Blaming.

Catcalling is a form of sexual harassment and instead of telling people not to catcall, we try and teach people to avoid it as if it is just a normality.
We do the same thing when we victim blame. We tell women that maybe if their dress wasn’t that short or if they weren’t showing so much cleavage that they would not have been raped when the truth is, no article of clothing can tell a person that it is OKAY to rape them.

Rape culture is also commonly perpetuated on social media and among close groups of friends in the form of jokes. An example of a rape joke is:

Why are girls so scared of rape? Y’all should feel pride that a guy risked his life in jail just to f—k you.

Using that logic, you shouldn’t be afraid if someone tries to assault you. After all, they risked their life just to hurt you. It’s not very funny in that context though.

And while you may see rape jokes as harmless, they actually have a big impact on society. Not only does it traumatize rape victims, it also makes rapists think that rape is okay. In fact, it has been shown time and time again that rapists believe that ALL men rape and they’re just hush about it. Rape jokes perpetuate this idea that rape is normal and should be a joke when that is not the case.

Come back next week for the final part of this series on Rape Culture, How To Stop Rape Culture.