It Takes a Village to Rape a Woman

<blockquote> “[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 </blockquote> Some people, men, in particular, are under the impression that rape and other types of sexual violence are committed by a small group of monsters, aberrant men who go against the grain of what most civilized folks would consider to be acceptable behavior. I mean, after all, rape is illegal and it’s not like anyone thinks it’s a good thing, right? How then to reconcile these facts?: <ul> <li>there are men who openly say that rape should be legal on private property (<a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/roosh-v-make-rape-legal-5193802" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Mirror</a>)</li> <li>marital rape wasn’t a crime in all 50 US states until 1993</li> <li>38% of college guys in one study admitted to coercing a woman into sex she didn’t want (including ignoring a woman’s protest, using physical aggression, and forcing intercourse) (<a href="https://www.thecut.com/2016/06/college-men-coercive-sex-study.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">The Cut</a>)</li> <li>1 in 3 women will be raped — most often by someone they know (<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/fastfact.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">CDC.gov</a>)</li> <li>85% of American women began being sexually harassed in childhood (<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/fastfact.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">ILR.Cornell</a>)</li> </ul> Rape may be illegal and distasteful to many people, but we still live in a rape culture, where sexual violence takes place rampantly and largely unimpeded, and victims are often retraumatized by a system that ought to support them, not make things worse for them. <a href="https://medium.com/fourth-wave/it-takes-a-village-to-rape-a-woman-a7000bba18b6">Read More</a>