Attempts were made by the faculty including the superintendent to wipe out any evidence of the incident while the town residents neglected the girl and instead pitied the death of the football stars’ careers. Forget the lifelong depression, trust issues, and overall poor mental and emotional health the girl will face, but God forbid the boys who humiliated and assaulted her repeatedly be denied the future they’ve been working for.

 

This is an instance of rape culture—a social phenomenon that blames the victims of rape and other forms of sexual assault instead of prosecuting the guilty for their atrocities. This is a very common and problematic aspect of today’s society that promotes injustice and distrust within peers. Much of this misguided victim blaming is internalized, meaning that so much of it has penetrated the constructs of society that it’s thought to be normal.

 

Many deny the existence of rape culture because the definition of “sexual assault” is commonly mistaken to be limited to rape (nonconsensual sex).  But in fact, sexual assault is a broad term that revolves around sexual behaviors and actions that lack consent and causes a level of discomfort, sometimes to the extreme extent of physical pain, within the victim. This includes, but is not limited to: forced sexual acts, physical abuse in a sexual manner, blackmail and threats using personal provocative media, and even catcalling.

 

“I often walk to school and it’s disgusting how common it is to hear a wolf whistle out of a car before the clock even reads 8. What disturbs me the most is that every single time it happens, the whistles come out of a man who could pass off as my dad. Like, it’s obvious that I’m a high school student, but I guess they don’t understand that what they’re doing is sexually harassing a minor,” said an anonymous source.

 

If “harmless” catcalls falling under sexual assault comes off as a surprise, it goes to show how detrimental the way society has our brains wired. Give it a thought, a man goes out of his way to give what he may think is a compliment to a woman. It then usually leads to him pestering his target until she agrees to exchange numbers or until she turns him down, in which he will then most likely slander her to avoid embarrassment, creating a very uncomfortable situation for the woman.

 

It is the woman who, in most cases, is the dismissed and wrongfully blamed victim. In a rape case, whether in court or even just in hearsay, the attacker is seldom questioned about his motive, his intentions, and his thought process when concluding that their offense was justifiable. 

Rather, it is the victim who is asked about her awareness of the situation, her amount—or lack, thereof—of clothing during the incident, her level of sobriety, and/or what message she was really sending; the common statement made about the victim is that she was, in one way or another, “asking for it”.

 

Of course, the link between rape culture and the patriarchy through misogyny is not exclusive to the plethora of cases that describe men taking advantage of women. Men who have been assaulted sexually are hushed and blatantly ignored under strict rules of the patriarchy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s time to take a firm stand against the denial of these victims’ rights; they require more support. The most important thing to do is educate yourselves more about this matter and raise awareness in order to shift the social paradigm. The way that victims of sexual assault are currently viewed do nothing but alienate and strip them of their basic human right to the pursuit of happiness.