The unpopular opinions thread.

Oct 13, 2016 22:22:58 GMT mrsanomaly said:

-Rape culture in the US is alive and well in many various ways. Sometimes I'm tempted to say you would have to be raped and go through the court system to see this clearly- but you know- I'll give all the lucky folks out there who haven't been raped and through the court system the benefit of a doubt mmkay? 

What do you consider to be a part of rape culture? I think that's where a lot of the disconnect is with the detractors of the concept. When some people hear the term, they think of the controversy over "Blurred Lines" or this supposed rape joke at E3, both of which I think are pretty contrived as far as controversies go.

But I don't think reasonable people look at the Brock Turner trial and think "Yeah, this is fine. This is how a civilized society should handle this kind of atrocious disregard for a fellow human being." And then there are those horror stories you hear about regarding the things that are said to victims when they report their assault or during the trial. People--decent people (which I would venture to say most are)--recognize that there's something wrong there.

It's just that some are hesitant to call that "rape culture" because they feel that the blame should be placed on the individuals rather than the collective "culture" of which they are a part. Which I do get. A lot of the cases we're talking about are due to the wrong people being in positions of power. All it takes is one judge, one lawyer, one police officer to make what is already a horrific ordeal even worse. But why should an asshole judge who cares more about rapist's career prospects than a victim's well-being cast blame on anyone but himself? The vast majority of people recognize him for the backwards dickweed that he is. So why make it into a societal issue?

The thing is, though, these aren't just a handful of isolated incidents. The volume and frequency of these reports serve as a steady stream of mounting evidence that there is indeed an intrinsic, systemic flaw in the way our infrastructure handles these cases. We should go after the individuals, sure, but there are larger-scale interventions we should take as well. Specialized training. More restrictive cross examination protocol. Appropriate mandatory sentencing. Raising awareness of the kind of suffering that survivors go through, both from the crime itself and the attitudes of others. Whether or not we want to call that a response to "rape culture" is beside the point. There is a problem here. We all see it. Let's lose the semantics and talk about how to resolve it.