Except for the fact that it is a central feature of our culture. If it weren't, one in three women wouldn't be raped and the vast majority of rapists wouldn't get off with a slap on the wrist. See below for research on that. In addition, cultures that don't have domination and control of women as a central feature of normative masculinity really don't have rape. It functionally doesn't exist. Rape is a key aspect of patriarchy, however.
“Rape may be a way of proving one’s manhood, an important concern for adolescent males.” In rape cultures, dominance and control over women become aspects of achieving and experiencing masculinity, and rape, while not condoned, becomes part of the culture at large. (ScienceDirect)
And no, research indicates that your personal experiences are not universal. Interviewing thousands of boys and man from all different walks of life is not being "on the outside looking in." It's hearing from the horse's mouth what is really going on. The fact that this wasn't your personal experience is entirely irrelevant to the larger sociological dynamic.
People assume that your wife cooks because in nearly all heterosexual relationships, the wife does nearly everything related to the home, except perhaps the yard work. It's not because they don't think a man can cook, it's that they've just never witnessed one who actually would do it.
“[Ours] is a culture in which sexualized violence, sexual violence, and violence-by-sex are so common that they should be considered normal. Not normal in the sense of healthy or preferred, but an expression of the sexual norms of the culture, not violations of those norms. Rape is illegal, but the sexual ethic that underlies rape is woven into the fabric of the culture.” — Robert Jensen
The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz
FEMINISTS DEVELOPED THE CONCEPT OF a rape culture decades ago to describe how men who rape are not simply a handful of “sick” or deviant individuals. They are instead the products of a culture that glorifies and sexualizes male power and dominance and at the same time glorifies and sexualizes female subservience and submission.
Rape must be understood not as an aberration in such a cultural environment but as simply the extreme end on a continuum of behaviors. The controversial aspect of this seemingly commonsense argument is that it implicates tens of millions of men who are not rapists. Most men would rather not think about how they participate in a culture that actively promotes — or at the very least tolerates — sexual violence. Many find offensive the mere suggestion of any sense of shared responsibility. ~Jackson Katz
My review and analysis draw especially on research and theory that highlight the connections between sexual violence and normative (rather than strictly aberrant or toxic) heterosexuality and masculinity (e.g., Cahill, 2014, 2016; Gavey, 2005; Mardorossian, 2014). This work contends that there is a common ground between normative heterosexuality and sexual violence (what Cahill, 2016 refers to as the “heteronormative sexual continuum”) — not that they are one and the same but that hegemonic heterosexuality functions to obscure clear “distinctions between what is [sexual violence] and what is just sex” (Gavey 2005: 2, emphasis original). In other words, as I and others have demonstrated elsewhere, Western hegemonic heterosexuality is often male-centered and patterned in ways that can support and obscure men’s sexual violence against women. (Sage Journals)
