Don’t publish

I felt it important to pen a response as I felt it necessary to add that I am no more “peddling a misogynistic agenda” as Catherine Snow is peddling anti male agenda. Both claims are equally as absurd.

Catherine writes that the study released in 2014 by the United States Department of Justice which reveals, on average, that one in 164 college women aged 18-24 reported experiencing rape or sexual assault between 1995 and 2013, did not cast substantial doubt on the perceived view that we live in a rape culture.  Whilst she outright doesn’t provide any immediate commentary on this particular study to show how it does not cast doubt on the existence of a rape culture, I can only assume that she was making reference to what she later describes as being “misunderstandings”, the first of which being my understanding of consent and secondly the definition of rape culture itself.

Now, firstly on the notion of consent. My definition on the nature of consent is synonymous to the definition provided by the sexual assault prevention and awareness centre which states that “Consent is when someone agrees, gives permission, or says “yes” to sexual activity with other persons. Consent is always freely given and all people in a sexual situation must feel that they are able to say “yes” or “no” or stop the sexual activity at any point”. If someone’s removal of consent is ignored or they have been incapable of giving consent, through black out intoxication for example, then this is rape. This is something that both Catherine and I echo.

Furthermore, to be clear, the taking away of consent during the sexual encounter is equal to not giving consent in the present and should the perpetrator chose to ignore the taking away of consent during the act, then they are guilty of rape.

However, there is some potential disagreement about consent being taken away after the act has been committed. This may not be true of the author of the article but it has been true of others and thus I feel it merits a mention. Considering how the giving of, refusal to give and taking away of consent is grammatically applicable to an act in the present,  I struggle to find how the word consent can apply to the past unless one uses the past tense; consented. Therefore, if you consented to something, does the removal of consent later outweigh the fact that one had previously consented to an act in the past that no longer exists in the present? Indeed, I have personally had unfortunate encounters but this does not remove the regrettable fact that I consented it.

Furthermore, the Mary Koss study I referenced showed how 40% of women who said they were raped, consented to sexual intercourse with their rapist at another time. In regards to accuracy of rape reporting it is not irrelevant to mention this fact. Whilst both Catherine and I agree that the woman’s choice to have sex with her rapist was a consented act, this act is relevant to the previous accusation of rape because one’s willingness to have sexual intercourse with someone who has previously violated them through “behaviour that degrades and oppresses women” seems to be rather questionable. This can’t be put down to just a rare case of questionable individuals because 40% of women, in this study, chose to do so.

The second labelled misunderstanding is my understanding of what constitutes rape culture. It is clear that this is the main topic under dispute. The word rape is quite clear. It’s definition entails the unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim. Culture is quite simply defined as the attitudes and behaviour characteristics of a particular social group. Upon combination these entail that the forced penetration of a bodily function, without consent of the victim, is a prevailing attitude and behavioural characteristic of this particular social group. I could even go further and use Marshall University’s Women’s centre definition that argued that Rape Culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture.  However, the definition of rape culture that Catherine uses argues that rape culture is “embodied every time someone shouts a lewd remark to a woman walking down the street, or when a pornographic video is shared from one phone to another at a school. It occurs every time someone makes a rape joke and excuses it as banter or when a woman is slut shamed. It occurs when women receive threats of sexual violence over Twitter or find their timelines clogged with memes bearing the slogan “it’s not rape if…”. It is seen every time a woman is told she was asking for it by drinking or walking home alone. It is seen every time a woman is told she was complicit in her rape because she went back to his flat.”

Firstly, the point was raised about how the mention of rape in a joke, which I do not see as a fit subject for humour, is evidence of a culture of rape. Is this equally logical as arguing, as was so aptly asked in a response to her response, that “If someone jokes about how they could murder someone does that mean we live in a murder culture?” I would maintain that they are equally illogical.

Secondly, to argue that two individuals sharing a pornographic video with each other that contains at least two consenting adults engaging in a sexual act is evidence of a society that normalises sexual violence against women begs belief.

Furthermore, idiotic misogynistic males shouting at women on the street and the ridiculous “slut shaming” of women because she made an autonomous decision as to who she should sleep with is not evidence of a culture that normalises rape (which is, in fear of sounding repetitive, the unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim) but a culture of sexual objectification. This to me is undeniable. Sex is not only a fascinating subject but everyone is a sexual object to someone. I am in agreement, I hope, with Catherine that the behaviour of some men on the street and in the home is disgraceful and misogynistic but this behaviour, along with the viewing of pornography, is an example of our culture of sexual objectification.

It is clear that a disclaimer is necessary. This is not a dismissal that rape occurs and this is not a condoning of the disgraceful behaviour that Catherine and many other women have been victims of, but it is not accurate to say that this disgusting side of our sexual objectifying culture is evidence of a culture that sees rape as permissible and in an epidemic. Thus, I agree with Catherine that there “is an insidious thread securely woven into the fabric of our society” but this thread takes the form of a culture of sexual objectification, not rape.

Therefore, I was not denying the existence of misogynistic attitudes that stem from this cultural objectivity and I agree with Catherine that there is a need to tackle this for change. What I often find in these arguments is that we agree on a surprising number of issues and work towards the same goals, but words do matter here.

In order to seriously fight rape  and the misogynistic elements of our culture of objectivity, we must make an honest outline of what actually is rape and what is not. This is a distinction that, once made, will be our greatest weapon in fighting rape on our streets and in our homes. A fight that both myself, Catherine and all good willing civilians are devoted to.