By Clara Atwell, Associate Business Editor
Growing up, I’ve always been told not to go out in the city without a buddy — especially at night in certain neighborhoods — and to never drink anything at a party or bar that is not sealed or straight from the bartender. All of these things were told to me out of concern for my safety from the people I care about and love the most.
I never considered that all of these could be forms of victim blaming.
Although I have never fallen victim to an act of sexual misconduct or violence, I’ve grown up in a world surrounded by women and men that have. According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), in the U.S., one in six women and one in 33 men are raped.
These are statistics that haunt us as a society and make us constantly ask the question, “What can we do to prevent this from happening to us?”
Despite this being a well-intended question, this type of thinking actually encourages us to blame survivors of sexual abuse, amplifying their emotional burden significantly by making them feel like they somehow brought on what happened to them.
“Any time someone questions what a survivor could have done differently to prevent a crime there is victim blaming,” marriage and family therapist Nicole Donahue said. “The way we culturally speak about survivors focuses way too much on the survivor’s behavior, emotions, class, race, drug and alcohol usage, sexual orientation, gender expression, etc.”
We deny that we could fall victim to a crime as terrible as rape — believing that rape won’t happen to us so long as we don’t wear that skirt or go to that neighborhood — as long as we don’t “ask for it.”
Many people also don’t understand that 70 percent of rapes are perpetrated by people that the survivor knows.
“Rape culture is one in which we teach survivors to not be raped versus teaching boys and men to not rape,” mental health therapist Tanya Flanagin said. “Rape culture is an example of how our culture offers an antidote to the problem. If we do not wear those pants, go out at night or be promiscuous, then we can avoid getting raped.”
The idea isn’t that our society is being cruel by telling a woman that she should walk with a buddy when it’s dark out. It is that the conditions which make such preventative measures seem necessary shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Take Back the Night is an organization founded on the principle that women should feel safe walking home at night.
According to the Take Back the Night website, the mission of the organization “is to create safe communities and respectful relationships through awareness events and initiatives. [They] seek to end sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse and all other forms of sexual violence.”
“People who have exerted their power over another — whether through sexual assault or domestic violence — have a choice,” Flanagin said. “They are not monsters, nor is it because of mental illness, anger issues, drugs and alcohol, and most importantly, it is not because the survivor asked for it. It is because the violator made a choice.”
But it may be too idealistic to believe that we as a society can simply teach people to make the choice not to rape. However, while violence, especially towards minorities and women, is something that has been ingrained into our culture for centuries, according to researchers at Wake Forest University, it is still a learned behavior.
That is not to say that the efforts of groups like Take Back the Night are futile and not worth undertaking — they do make a difference. It just means that in order to achieve the end goal of eliminating a rape culture that exists on a global scale, we need to find methods that can reach billions of people.
That means we need to be approaching the problem from every possible angle.
One possible point of attack is the collective male standard of hypermasculinity. According to the American Psychological Association, men in our society have an expectation of dominance that leads certain members to feel the need to assert their power in a violent way over another when their dominance is threatened.
There is an understanding within our culture that in order to be masculine a man has a lot of sex. This can cause some men to think that once they get aroused they are obligated to continue despite any objections because they see rejection as a threat to their masculinity.
If young men were taught that they did not have to be dominant in order to be “manly,” it would significantly reduce instances of rape.
Another problem lies in the fact that out of 1,000 rapes, 994 of the perpetrators will not be punished, according to RAINN. A huge part of this is due to the fact that only 31 percent of these cases are reported to the police.
Although there are many reasons survivors do not report cases, it is often due to the survivor having a personal relationship with the perpetrator or worrying about how their case will be dealt with by law enforcement.
On the news, there are frequently horror stories about the way in which police officers blame the victims of rape and sexual assault crimes: these scare away survivors from reaching out for obvious reasons.
For instance, in August 2016 a report came out detailing the way in which the Baltimore City Police Department was dealing with rape survivors. It found that many of the officers were blatantly sexist and instantly disregarded the case the person made.
Rape is not an issue with one quick solution. The problem has developed throughout centuries of civilizations that tolerate the objectification of women and violence.
However, with the rise of feminism and laws that actively prevent rape and sexual assault, education regarding the issue has improved greatly. For example, in the 1930s, my grandmother was only given the advice to “relax and just enjoy it” if she were ever raped.
Now most young girls and boys are taught that there is no circumstance in which rape is OK, no matter what they are wearing, where they are, or if they know the perpetrator. In health class, we learn the rules of consent and what to do if we ever fall victim to rape or sexual assault.
There are still major holes within the way many are educated about rape, but we are making progress. If we grant victims the credibility they deserve — while acknowledging that they did nothing to deserve what happened to them and continue to teach about rape — then someday we may feel comfortable letting our daughters walk home at night alone.