Things not to discuss in polite company: Rape Culture and the problem of consent

Normally, they say there are three things you shouldn’t discuss in the presence of polite company: religion, money and politics. I’m sure that following in line with the “proper” rules of conversational etiquette, it probably wouldn’t be considered socially acceptable to burst into the topic of rape and rape culture suddenly in the middle of dinner. There are a lot of issues often avoided and swept aside for fear of that ever awkward hemming and hawing in conversation that should be talked about. Frankly, when we don’t openly talk about political and social issues because they might be contextually “inappropriate”, we are inadvertently supporting a culture that wallows in its own self perpetuating misguidance on issues such as rape and sexual violence. This very phenomenon of societal ignorance thrives in our modern day civilization in the form of “rape culture”; a term that has been made popular through social media, with its roots tracing far back to the feminist movements of the 1970’s, to describe the victim blaming prejudice of sexual violence in our 21^st century.

Rape culture has come to be more of an umbrella term that sums up the attitudes of our populace in correspondence to sexual violence and rape. Usually, it deals with the victim shaming that is too frequently the default reaction when a woman declares she has been assaulted in some sort of sexual manner, or the emasculating remarks made when god forbid, a man claims to be the victim of sexual assault for once. For a man to speak out about his experiences of sexual assault, there are too many instances where he will be met with “advice” to “take it like a man” or ridiculed for not wanting sex. He will be degraded for not defending himself or degraded for rejecting a sexual advance because there seems to be an unwavering belief that men are always looking for sexual interactions. If a woman takes a stand against her perpetrator  there will more often than not, be reprimanding words that call on her to take more responsibility for her own actions; don’t send so many mixed signals, don’t get so drunk that you are in a position to be taken advantage of, don’t show so much skin or dress so provocatively when you go out, etc. The list goes on. The epitome of such victim blaming behavior can already be commonly evidenced in the public responses to the Steubenville rape case. A quick glance through any comment roll on almost any news blog can indicate a large proportion of reactions that focus not on the horrific or disgusting nature of the crime but that the girl, the victim of such utterly humiliating abuse where she was raped repeatedly and peed on while unconscious, is most definitely in the wrong and should be punished for underage drinking. Accusations are abundant, purporting not that the perpetrators should be ashamed for their choices to ignore the moral high ground, but that the victim is responsible for her own abuse due to her decision to drink to the point of unconsciousness.

To an extent, perhaps yes, we should be teaching our youth to watch out for themselves, to hold them accountable for their actions as both a safety and a defense mechanism. It’s become a pretty widespread attitude towards sexual violence that if you don’t want to get raped, you shouldn’t put yourself in a compromising situation where you can easily be taken advantage of. However, acting upon this sort of mindset means we are missing the bigger picture. Such an approach overlooks the larger problem at hand that underscores the situation; we are teaching our generation not to get raped when we should also be teaching them not to rape. To teach them not to get raped rather than not to rape at all is exactly the example of victim shaming that flourishes in the aforementioned “rape culture” our society has come to embody, and as a result, rapists receive the opportunity to use their own victims as scapegoats for their actions. On the popular social news site Reddit that is based off user generated content, I came across a thread commenting on a photo of a woman explaining her own encounters with sexual violence and rape (and then proceeding to mock and ridicule her claims). The thread (warning; potentially offensive content on a NSFW subreddit) was flooded with comments berating the woman for being too drunk, dressing too provocatively, essentially “asking for it”. Now speaking rationally in relation to both the Reddit thread and in light of the Steubenville rape incident, maybe it isn’t such a good idea to become so intoxicated from alcohol you lose complete control of your body and you have difficulty giving consent. That’s common sense and people should be informed about the dangers of excessive drinking at social events. At the same time however, shouldn’t people also be taught about what proper consent actually means in these rather “grey-area” situations?

In all fairness, a lot of this victim shaming outlook stems from the more deeply rooted issue that most people aren’t thoroughly educated on what consent really is. We learn and tend to operate on the notion that it’s considered rape if one party explicitly disagrees or says “no”. That if your partner is crying, violently thrashing or showing vehement discomfort, only then is it really rape. I have certainly read articles from writers who speak about sexual violation where the perpetrator uses the lack of defiance from their partner’s end as justification as to why they still initiated sex – even when their partner did not specifically or physically consent because they were inebriated or it was in the heat of the moment and they were simply too caught up in a whirlwind of high flying emotional turmoils. In these moments where consensual actions are not defined, it can be hard to determine whether or not to continue with sexual activity. People will claim their partners “wanted it” based on the biological responses of their body (the physical reaction of being “turned on” for example) – not because they had actually made it clear that they did in fact, want it. This is the main problem with a “no means no” mindset; it leaves too many grey areas and too much up for guesswork when really, at least for sex, we shouldn’t be guessing. There are far too many emotions up for stake and too much vulnerability from both partners to be taking shots in the dark. There are innumerable circumstances where properly giving consent becomes difficult or impossible, such as when your partner is intoxicated or emotionally incapable. But if we are going to teach our youth to take responsibility for their actions, such as not getting too drunk in the first place at social events, shouldn’t we teach them that in such situations they are also responsible for their decisions of whether or not to proceed with sex if their partner is clearly not in the right state to be consenting?

Perhaps, instead of operating on the very “no means no” mindset that has become a crippling and even dangerous way to approach sex, we should be teaching our generation to operate on a “yes means yes” perspective. Instead of having to use an explicit, verbal “no” as the red light with sex, we should be focusing on using an explicit, verbal “yes” as the green light to go forth and proceed onward. Consent can be hard to define when applied practically to real life situations, and too many problems are derived from ill-conceived notions of what proper consent really is. Often enough, there is a lack of focus in our education on comprehensively informing our youth about sexual awareness. In too many instances, we simply pigeonhole rape into a two-dimensional box of yes and no, focusing too much on the meaning of “no” and too little on the meaning of “yes”. A lack of “no” does not automatically equate and transform into a “yes”; only “yes” can and will ever mean yes. When we don’t teach what consent, and more importantly, enthusiastic consent, really is, we fail in construing a thorough understanding on sexual boundaries. For both women and men there exists a profusion of victim blaming that promotes ignorance and quells enlightened, knowledgeable discussion on actually solving the underlying issues of rape and sexual violence. Learning to define consent may not necessarily deter rape and sexual violence itself, but it can be a first step to rebuilding an educated, informed society that works on fixing the larger issues at hand rather than passively firing the blame onto the victims.

And let’s face it: if we don’t really understand consent, we don’t really understand rape either.