Peter I am not sure where you live, but it sounds nice there judging by the fact that you have never heard rape-ish talk in your life. I, however, have heard plenty of it. In one of the clips, the TYT I think, the hosts acknowledged that two drunk individuals was a messy situation, and that it was good that campuses were educating people on consent and the potentially dangerous issues around alcohol, parties, and intercourse. Two people, drunk and unable to consent, is messy. However I have heard in years past plenty of guys in University talk about “making fruity drinks loaded with alcohol” for the express purpose of getting girls drunk so that they could be easier to take advantage of, or to get them to make poor choices. That isn’t messy, that is planned. I have also seen guys get away with groping women and being total perverts in clubs and at parties. I have seen females turn on other females after they came forward about being assaulted- because any sex can perpetuate the stigma and shame of sexual assault. I have also seen, though this is changing some now, incredibly weak sentences handed out for rapists. There is no one answer to the problem of rape, but that is why the term “rape culture” is so in-your-face, to raise awareness and start a better dialogue.

I was hoping to hear if there were any counterpoints to the points I made, but no one raised any. I didn’t think there were any to begin with, either.

And just how much of this “rape culture” have you witnessed firsthand in your long life, James? You’re more than twice my age, so surely you would have a lot more experience with it over the years.

Because I’ve always been wondering that, despite the sexual assault laws being increasingly broadened to categorize more and more actions as sexual assault, the number of these crimes happening have statistically been going down over the past few decades.

I don’t know what it was like when you were my age, but I was raised being told not to hit girls, even when they hit me first, and men who were known to beat their wives or otherwise assault women in general were made social pariahs and seen as less than human. And yet today I’m told that this sort of abusive behavior is encouraged, somehow.

I heard this podcast this morning delivering the news here in Southeastern Arizona. The USAT, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Arizona Republic and Tucson Daily Star.
It was amazing, sad, and disturbing. I am 66 years old and never in my life have I ever had a thought about rapeing a woman nor have I ever been around anyone that has expressed any
desire, joke or comment about rape. Maybe being an ole hippie, we just never thought about abusing women in this way or any other way. In fact, being a man and supporting women’s rights has just been a normal way of expressing my consciousness…you know, right versus wrong.

This election has not only assaulted women and men by it’s (Trump) hate filled rhetoric and inhumane references to so many cultures but also assaults any thinking person’s sense of decency, spirituality and quality of life.
Rape has being going on for thousands of years and seems to be in the human gene pool.

I found this podcast to be extremely educational at the same time heart-breaking. I am not so naive as to believe it is ever going to change. What needs changing first is a higher level of wisdom and judgment on this planet. What needs to happen is a constant activism from both men and women to make sure that ‘rape culture’ is clearly defined and taught trustfully and truthfully in our educational systems on all levels.

Forget religion and the churches.. they have failed and always will. In some ways they have tainted and fouled our society with the false teachings of false prophets that have never really protected our women and children from a organized patriarchal reality.

Dismissing all of my arguments in the here and now because of anything that happened in the past is an ad hominem attack and does not address my counterarguments.
Besides, in your previous exchanges, you couldn’t cite any specific points to counter my arguments, and just dismissed all of them wholesale by diverting the discussion to a bunch of reading material. If you are going to present the reading material as part of your counterargument, cite the passage which contradicts my claims, since you wouldn’t be raising an objection in the first place if you didn’t know that there was a specific passage somewhere in the material that supposedly debunked my claims in the first place. It was a diversionary tactic, I fell for it, and it shut down the discussion altogether as a result.

I’m not talking about any past exchanges, I’m talking about this one. If you could tell me what has been misrepresented, I would like to be better informed.

I’ll happily state for you and anyone who happens upon this thread that you have cartoonishly misrepresented the arguments I’ve presented. However, past exchanges have shown me how futile it is to try to engage with you directly so I have no interest in clarifying anything for you.

If you feel that I have misrepresented any of your arguments in these comments, I would like to know what the actual arguments were so that I can address them properly.

In your closing statement, are you implying that girls gossip and put pressure on each other because of Patriarchy? The only people who tell women to act and dress the way they do to attract boys is other women, whether they be peers or fashion magazine editors. Many women have tendencies to undermine each other’s confidence through peer pressure, passive aggression, and insults disguised as compliments. I like to call these unhealthily competitive behaviors “toxic femininity”.

As a man, I am much more fearful of being called a rapist or a rape apologist than I am of actually being raped. In fact, I would much rather have my bodily autonomy taken away from me for a few hours than to have my entire reputation and career ruined for the rest of my life because of an accusation. This is what having “male privilege” gets you, apparently.

But if we live in a rape culture, then being accused of rape will get me the hero’s treatment instead, right? Which outcome seems more likely?

The “acquaintance rape” argument in chapter 5 discusses drunk sex, yet fails to consider that both parties are often heavily intoxicated when this happens. If you believe that a drunk woman is unable to give consent, why do you automatically assume that her drunken male partner can?
It’s a messy experience, it can leave one or both parties filled with regrets, but the only way such an act can be considered rape is if both parties were charged as equally guilty, as neither of them could be considered to be in sound enough states of mind.

And I don’t buy for a minute that actual victims would rather not report the crimes, since if most rapists are repeat offenders, why would they want to wish what just happened to them to happen to anyone else in the first place?

Personally, I’m way more concerned about what Hillary has actually done than anything about what Trump has said, but now that this has come up…
The definition of rape culture, as it is described in the title card, does not exist in the western world. Rape is and has been a reprehensible crime for a large part of most of human civilization, and was punishable by death for a large portion of this past as well.
I don’t think that people need to be “taught not to rape”. An actual rapist knows that what they are doing is wrong, and doesn’t care. You might as well teach a thief not to rob you.

If making rape jokes is equivalent to the perpetuation of rape culture, then is making jokes like “I’m gonna kill my boss if they move my schedule again” a perpetuation of murder culture? I would think not. You may think that these jokes are tasteless, but it’s a far cry from normalizing rape as anything other than forbidden.

In fact, if one is to change the definition of rape to making jokes or just making people feel uncomfortable in general, that trivializes the traumatic experiences of actual rape victims; if everything is considered rape, nothing is.

If America actually had a rape culture, there would be no controversy surrounding Trump’s tasteless statements whatsoever, because rape would be a “normal” thing to us.