Elle Beau ❇︎
2 min readAug 13, 2023

--

No, it is not a human problem and it's not always been going on - it is a patriarchal dominance hierarchy problem. As I already noted, there are cultures today where rape functionally does not exist - because it is considered unmanly and because domination of women is not an intrinsic part of how that culture views masculinity.

Up until about 5k years ago, women had a lot of respect and an equal place in their cultures (the way that it is in modern societies that currently have no rape). It took the rise of patriarchy for rape to become common and “just what some men do.”

Scully’s (1990) study of sexual violence views rape as learned behavior within a patriarchal culture. According to her findings rapists as compared to other felons are more likely to believe in a double standard regarding gender roles and they identify more strongly with the traditional male role.

Feral boys will rape, but so will everyday nice young men from loving families who have been taught entitlement to women's bodies and that they have the right to keep pushing until they get what they want because that is "the game." Most rape in America is date rape - over 85%, and a lot of those men have no real understanding that they are engaged in rape - because in America, mainstream male heterosexual sex has a lot of overlaps. It looks nothing at all like war-time rape.

I appreciate your efforts in Bosnia, but that doesn't give you any sort of more generalized expertise in this subject area. We very demonstrably live in a rape culture. Hell, Amnesty International points out the ways that even 4 of the Nordic countries are rape cultures.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/04/rape-and-sexual-violence-in-nordic-countries-consent-laws/#:~:text=Despite%20being%20among%20the%20top,in%20a%20report%20published%20today.

You're right, no amount of hand-wringing will stop it, but getting men on board to shift the norms of masculinity in our culture to be less dominance-oriented will, as will taking on the other elements of rape cultures, such as victim-blaming, and problematic justice mechanisms.

--

--

Elle Beau ❇︎
Elle Beau ❇︎

Written by Elle Beau ❇︎

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed. I'm your hell, I'm your dream, I'm nothing in between.

No responses yet