Ezra Levant writes articles for this site. It's a rightist news site. It should go away.

Rape, along with every other form of violent crime, has been on a steady decline per capita for decades. Of course rape is still a serious issue, as is institutions covering up instances of it to try to protect their reputation. But I don't really think there's some underlying cultural preoccupation for rape in those cases, they'd probably be just as corrupt in covering up an assault or a drug bust.

It reminds me a lot of the "culture of violence" rhetoric we used to hear from the right in their condemning of abortion.

If rape has declined its because of increasing awareness and enforcement- as well as reversing the tradition of blaming the victim.
Now the question of whether there's a 'rape culture' in the west is certainly one for legitimate debate, but she didn't show up there to debate. She showed up to troll.

Or that people are overall less horrible than previous generations, despite the prevalence of 24/7 news media and social media suggesting otherwise? Violent crime has gone down across the board, not just for rape.

But yeah, I agree that this woman was being provocative as hell.

It's both. I agree with Stephen Pinker's theory that people in general are getting better (or less violent anyway) but I also think that rape and sexual harassment have declined specifically because of a concerted change in social awareness and attitudes in gender relations. But let's keep in mind that there is still a wide perception - even here in the enlightened west- that many victims of rape and sexual assault are somehow 'asking for it'.

I attribute that to old fashioned sexism, though. Not necessarily something specific to rape.

Troll or not troll the debate here is if there is a Rap Culture which I don't think there is. She might not go about it the best way but if we were here to debate individuals I agree she goes about it wrong.

So is there a Rape Culture?

Of course there's a rape culture. I think that such a thing is increasingly isolated and hopefully in decline, but as long as there are people who regard women as a commodity, or somehow 'asking for it' by appearance or behavior, or not full social and sexual equals with men, then there is a rape culture.

How many people does it take regarding "women as a commodity, or somehow 'asking for it' by appearance or behavior" for it to become a cultural item vs an issue that needs to be addressed towards the small minority of people that view them that way. Hockey is a Canadian culture. I don't think rape is a Canadian culture. Rape is an issue that we as a culture are working on stopping but it in no way is part of our definition as a country or people.

Hey as long as it's an issue it can also be a culture. Being in the USA I can't speak to Canada, but the lady's sign didn't say 'There is no rape culture in Canada', it said 'There is no rape culture in the west. Here in the US we've got an entire powerful political party with a doctrine of denying women their full humanity and reproductive choices, even actively opposing anti-rape legislation. I don't think it's hyperbolic to consider this a 'rape culture'.

That's just sexism though, isn't it?

just sexism? Where does one stop and the other begin?

...when a man actually rapes a woman?

You described a state of mind where a man views women as disposable, not being a self-actualized person, inferior, meant to be subservient to men. That's sexism. Men who rape don't rape because of a culture of rape, they rape because of a culture of sexism. That's the crux of the issue of rape, sexism. Rape is just a symptom of sexism.

Though I suppose it is possible for a man to rape a woman and not be sexist, specifically. They could generally be a complete sociopath and view everyone as not being a self-actualized person, inferior, meant to be subservient to them.

'Rape culture' is not the same thing as actual rape. It doesn't mean there's billboards proclaiming 'Let's rape women!'. See this is parsing words- I really don't know how the women at this Vancouver event would define the term. But the way I see it- any subculture or subset that creates an environment where rape can in any way be justified, excused, or dismissed could be considered a rape culture. If some want to consider these conditions synonymous with 'sexist culture', I think that's legit.

Fair enough. I think I'm just a bit miffed in all the times I see people bring up 'rape culture' as some synonym for sexual objectification, to which I'm also miffed at the implication that sexual objectification is inherently bad. Tangent on this below*

To bring up Game of Thrones again, some critics have accused it of propagating rape culture because there are depictions of rape. The argument goes that having a rape scene is meant to be titillating, or is used for cheap drama. Maybe so, but the same could be said for all the scenes where someone gets their head cut off. Murder is used as a plot device all the time, why is it so taboo to use rape as a plot device?

-----

*Leering at some random woman on the street is creepy, that's objectification I'm uncomfortable with, because you're treating someone who's just going about their day as an object. Objectifying entertainers is a grey area. Judging every women who goes on state or in front of a camera on her looks is creepy, but leering at women who are performing something specifically meant to be sexually provocative is hunky dory. Drawn or rendered representations of women are perfectly fine to objectify, even if they weren't meant to be sexually provocative. Because they literally are objects.

For the record, I don't think GOT or similar fictitious depictions of rape count as 'rape culture', any more than Mattress Girl's 'rape video'. And as for objectification- I'll confess to having a wandering eye as much as any dirty middle-aged heterosexual man. I try to be cool about it and certainly don't regard women I might leer at as potential conquests. And as for the subset of radical feminists that regard all men as potential rapists, no. That's just wrong.

As a male, I prefer the 'all men are potential rapists' view. Or rather 'a rapist could be anyone'. Our belief of who is capable or not is just bad. I just want the attitude of "William is a good guy, and not a creepy assault from bushes-rapist" to go away.

It does not mean that I, as a feminist, believe you could have everyone to be a rapist. But I believe anyone could be one. See the difference?

Do you also believe all men are potential murderers?

I mean, yeah, that's technically true, but I don't see it as being a healthy mindset. It's like that "stranger danger" hysteria. You see every stranger as someone who might abduct your children, so you become a paranoid wreck when out in public or pretty much whenever your kids are out of your line of sight for more than a second.

I believe that a murderer could be anyone. Just disregarding on investigate 'nice people' makes terrible policework.

I think the other way around. Keep an open mind about those you know.

There's a lot of rape in the show that is not in the books. A lot of consensual sex is being portrayed as rape. Don't quote me on this, but I don't mind rape. I don't mind sex or nudity. I mind rape that serves no purpose and I mind nudity that is just there to cater to my male hetero gaze. And only those gazes.

A thing I got against GoT and a lot of other media is male nudity. Gay males can be nude. Otherwise male nudity is hostile or wierd/comedic.

Female nudity is always young and ample, victimized or just there to make the frame interesting. At least women also get to be nude and erotic.

One thing I thought about. Emilia Clarke was nude quite a bit earlier. In the latest season, she gets to cover up, even during sex scenes. Makes me wonder how her contract changed and the fact that she must have thought being nude on camera was not desirable to begin with.

Actually I'd say there has been a lot more rape and references to rape in the books. Y'know, by virtue of the show omitting like 60% of the named characters. There have only really been two rape scenes that didn't happen in the books. One wasn't even meant to be a rape scene at all, they just flubbed the direction so it seemed like one.

Theon and Daario were shown nude in the show, they aren't gay nor was their nudity meant to be weird or comedic.

Anyway, like I said above, I only find the male gaze to be 'problematic' when it's uninvited. I agree that the media tends to tip the scales disproportionately to catering to the male gaze over the female gaze, but you can't fault someone for giving what the customer wants. There's still some lingering social hangups about women being perverts like men, but it'll come around. Maybe in the next 50 years women will be standing outside a construction site hooting at the sweaty men building something and making them uncomfortable.

As I said. I don't mind rape. I just fail to see the need to rapeyfy things.

Two. Compared to how many women? I get what you are getting at. Gane of thrones in itself is not the problem. How often this happens in media overall is.

And I fail to see why it's imperative to remove rape from narrative works when murder is so prevalent. Yes, there are a lot of stories that include depictions of rape, but it's just a drop in the bucket at how often we see someone shot to death.

The cameraman was pushing his way into other people's personal space, after he was instructed not to. He was technically committing assault, and they were entirely within their rights to use reasonable force, such as a shove, to move him if he refused to do so under his own power.

She defends making rape jokes. Jokes are cultural, ergo rape jokes are quite literally "rape culture." She is herself the very definition of the thing she claims does not exist.

She didn't, as far as I can tell (I'm not willing to sit through her entire incoherent rant) show footage of her sign being torn up, so it's reasonable to conclude she's lying about that.

She was interfering with a legitimate event, on private property, and received no more than a calm dressing down for her inappropriate behaviour.

Seems the slut walk is an exceedingly safe space, even for assholes.

She defends making rape jokes. Jokes are cultural, ergo rape jokes are quite literally "rape culture." She is herself the very definition of the thing she claims does not exist.

That's quite a stretch from what I understand that term to mean. That's there an alleged implicit acceptance of the crime of rape and that people collaborate in the facilitation of rape. Rape is a violent act, people make jokes about every other kind of violent act. Doesn't necessarily mean they supporters of those violent acts. It takes the edge off, so you're not a complete nervous wreck about all the horrible shit that happens every day. It seems like we could do with more rape jokes to take the edge off that. For example, look at Game of Thrones. That is a very violent show, it regularly shows all manner of atrocities mankind is capable of in graphic detail. Torture, slavery, cannibalism, executions, human sacrifice. Etc. One of the big crescendos in a previous season involved a pregnant woman being tabbed repeatedly in her belly. People lost their minds, but mostly because several of the "good guys" were killed in one fell swoop. Fast forward to scenes of rape, or what a lot of people interpreted as a rape. You have people swearing off the show forever, media sites refusing to promote the show every again. Murder a pregnant woman and it's groundbreaking television, but have a girl cry on her wedding night and you've crossed a line.

It's a bit amusing that you don't understand the term but can still personify it.

Help me here.... If anyone makes a joke that is offensive we then live in a culture that supports that type of action?

Does that mean I also personify violence culture for liking everything else about Game of Thrones?

Are Dothraki warlords and wildling raiders real?

No, but I'm pretty sure people really do get stabbed to death in real life.

Are you honestly arguing that people being stabbed with swords is a legitimate social problem?

Time to put the vidya games down.

Ok, I call shenanigans, you're doing this on purpose.

Anyway, I was talking about knives. Characters on Game of Thrones are regularly stabbed to death with knives. In fact, more of the main characters are killed with knives than any other means, I believe. Knives are a real thing.

But that's completely irrelevant. So what if it's fantasy violence? It's still violence. Replace Game of Thrones with any modern set show where everyone is killed with guns then if you want to be so gosh darn pedantic.

Or does that mean I can watch hentai guilt free? Tentacle monsters don't exist in real life, so hentai where school girls are raped by them don't count?

School girls certainly exist.

When was the last time you were legitimately afraid of being stabbed?

Pretty much every day at work. Those crazy bastards in the kitchen point those knives around like they were extensions of their finger, and I have to walk past them like 40 times a day.

But I digress, my personal anecdotes aren't relevant. Yeah, I don't personally feel threatened for my life on a daily basis, but it's rather presumptuous of you to assume that all women do. People get stabbed every day, people get shot every day, people are beaten to within an inch of their life every day, and yes people are raped every day. Those are all real things that the media portrays for entertainment purposes. And people watch them eagerly, because it makes them less afraid of that shit happening to them in real life. Being burned to death by a dragon vs being burned to death by being doused with gasoline is a moot argument. You're still watching someone burn to death for entertainment.

So why is rape so special? Why is fantasy violence excusable but fantasy rape is still rape?

Fantasy violence (and rape, when used to advance the character of the person being raped) isn't the issue. Rape jokes are inherently condoning rape, the same way racists jokes inherently condone racism.

Do you know why mice have such small balls?
Very few of them know how to dance.

Oh darn, I went and inherently condoned something or other, my bad.

Not necessarily on either. Racy jokes can be used to take the sting off the subject matter the same way joking about people getting killed takes the sting off death. A joke where the punchline is someone getting hit by a bus doesn't always mean the person telling it wants someone to get hit by a bus.

Tell you what, from now on in this thread, just call rape "surprise sex" and see how that goes.

I'll fetch up some jokes about lynching black people and those wacky veterans who claim that PTSD is real and we'll have a grand ol' time.

Context is important. I'm not saying all rape jokes are good, or that rape in of itself is funny, just that the subject of rape can be joked about just like anything else.

Good thing you mentioned the wedding night. That never happened in the book.

Yes it did.

Well, yes. But not to... Arg. I know, I know.

Except...



So, yeah, the show cut back on the rape by a significant degree.

That actually was in the show.

Watered down to a significant degree, yeah.

We also didn't hear anything about Ramsay's previous wife, the one he abused so much she ate her fingers. As bad as show Ramsay is, he's a kitten compared to book Ramsay.

I laughed at knock knock jokes as a kid, but I don't believe we're living in a knock knock culture.

Did she show up with that sign to try to make a legitimate point or to provoke the participants and make them look bad? Given her history of 'anti-feminism' I suspect the latter.

I was like okay, this is interesting. Let's see their point.

2 paragraph blurb.

I don't think she had a point.

Posted before, but certainly relevant to the discussion-

Inside Amy Schumer - Football Town Nights

Smells a lot like the "racism is dead" talking point.

bad pron? THIS is some Bad pron :(

http://efukt.com/21065_The_Creepiest_Motherfucker_in_Porn.html

Holy shit! Those kinds of shots must be a highly unerotic affair anyways, but those girls seemed really fed up with him.

Go to prison? Don't drop the soap!
Well... She should really not have worn that.
A rapist is some drooling savage that stalks stairwells, right?
Win at online game? Scream about dominating with penis.
They fucked me over.

Plenty rape culture to go around, I'm afraid.

The problem with rape culture is that everybody's got an opinion but nobody's got a definition everybody else would agree to. I've seen at least three of them here.

D1: Rape culture is if you live in a society where rape is technically considered a crime but pretty much all rapists get away scot-free on technicalities and it's hardly a social stigma for the man to "be a stud" whereas raped women suffer ridicule for "complaining about bad sex".

D2: Rape culture means women are routinely sexualized by the media and presented as objects for men to use, and thus encourages rape. Actual rape may be a criminal act, but society still knowingly promotes it.

D3: Society doesn't really consider rape a crime at all unless you're raping a woman "belonging" to another man, in which case you're violating his property and he has every right to enact vengeance upon you. The raped woman is worthless after the act. Women not protected by another man are essentially free game; no one really cares if someone rapes them.

Personally, I use the term referring to the third definition. Most people here seem to follow either the first or the second one.

I would consider the first two to be very much definitions of 'rape culture'. Because it's a culture where rape is normalised. It's considered acceptable by many, if not the majority, and certainly the majority of people in power and authority don't consider it a crime. I'm not sure how you could consider a situation where society 'knowingly promotes' rape as anything other than a 'rape culture'.

That doesn't seem like any society I've ever lived in.

Prison shower. If that phrase summoned images of rape, you live in a culture that normalize rape.

We live in a culture that normalizes all sorts of horrific treatment of prisoners. To which I agree is pretty fucked up, but rape is only a small part of it.

It absolutely doesn't. And that's also why I'm surprised Taleweaver created those two scenarios are examples of things people consider rape culture that he doesn't. one because they seem a lot like rape-tastic dystopias to me and also because they're not really the sort of thing that anyone in a Western country is experiencing.

Remember that in D2, sexualization and objectification are often use as means to the end of marketing and advertising goods. I remember an ad for diamond jewelry that showed a shadowly outline of a woman giving head and using the punchline "Diamonds. She'll pretty much have to." Certainly, the ad is all about entitlement and about men "deserving" sexual favors from women.

Still, someone who insisted a woman he gave diamonds to would please him orally and, if he didn't get what he wanted to, forced himself on her, would still be facing rape charges. I wouldn't say it's rape culture unless a majority of people agreed that, yes indeed, the man had a right to a blowjob.

I think it's a problem if the add, among with loads of other stuff, convinced even a minority that, yes, she pretty much has to.

So culture is now "stuff makes a minority think it's okay to do certain things?"

In that case, we have not only a rape culture but also a murder culture, a pedophile culture, an assholery culture, a racism culture, an apartheid culture, a homosexual culture and a kill-abortion-doctors culture.

If everything's a culture, the expression becomes meaningless.

I said I thought it was a problem. Never said it takes a minority or majority to hold a very extreme view for something to be a culture.

That "ad" was an attempt at humor over a popular series of actual jewelry ads from De Beers.

Argh. I fell victim to the Onion Effect.

That's quite an effect if you thought an ad for jewelry would involve someone getting a blowjob.

It's like Bill Hicks' worst nightmare about advertising. :)

I've seen car ads involving several kinds of snacks involved in crash tests, and ads for home improvement stores featuring a realistic-looking human heart used as a bathroom tile (punchline "Put your heart into your project"). So "She'll pretty much have to" doesn't seem too far-fetched.

For reference: hornbach werbung EIN TEIL VON DIR