on rape culture

[CakesAreNotTheAnswer]

Just seen this wonderful open letter but am horrified by the actions that prompted it. If it was my daughter who'd been manhandled like that I'd be pressing charges

cjredwine.tumblr.com/post/57670817509/a-letter-to-jake-vale-explaining-rape-culture

That's fucking horrendous. It's a good job he didn't try that on DD1, he'd still be picking his teeth out of his arse.

Idiots like him are why DD will be starting at least Karate (preferably Kick Boxing) at 5. I will teach her that anyone touching her gets 1 warning then gets hurt because (having been assaulted myself) she deserves to be able to walk down the street without being assaulted herself.

Oh FFS, what a dickhead Jake Vale must be.

An excellent piece. Also, when you click it now, the author says that the man in question appears to have learned his lesson, so she has removed his name. I think that's a good thing to do not just for his sake, but because a lot of that letter applies to other men as well, and removing one man's name makes it harder for similar men to go oh, well, nothing to do with me, I'll carry on doing what I like to girls.

If the offence is battery (point 1 in the article), why is it not referred to as battery culture?

I may not express this very well, but I'm thinking that many things feed into 'rape culture' - not just the act of rape itself.

What the blog is saying is that this man thought it was an amusing prank to grab women and run away with them (ie. 'battery')- and called women humourless when they objected. This whole attitude that a man feels he was allowed to manhandle a woman like this is a contributory factor to rape culture. Along with many other things - media representation of women as sex objects, victim blaming and so on.

Because males thinking they can do whatever they feel like to females = rape culture.

If we had to split it

Battery culture
Random man threatening you sexually culture
Being followed culture
Being wanked at culture
Someone sticking their hand up your skirt on the tube culture
Man shouting obscenities from van culture
Being cornered and felt up by a bunch of blokes culture
Rape culture

...

Well if we had to split it all out then we wouldn't easily be able to make connections of females being treated in a certain way by men. If we had to take each incident as unrelated. If a woman had to go through life with the above experiences and say Well OBVIOUSLY these are unrelated crimes with potentially different names and there is no commonality apart from ME so I had better put on a longer skirt and never be out after dark. Hmm. Who would be keen on that result. And why. Interesting.

Because this was done to a number of young women, not to a mixture of young men and women.

Plus what NiceT and Sabrina said.

Great post NiceTabard

Great letter.

So if I understand Tabard's post correctly, there are a number of repetitive male behaviour patterns that have become accepted in society that enable/condone/lead to rape.

There is also the statistic that 1 in 4 women suffer from DV, and 2 women a week are murdered by partners or former partners. Is it therefore fair to say that we live in a DV culture, or a murder culture? Murder seems the most heinous of crimes, given that there are no survivors, as opposed to DV or rape. As the pinnacle of offences in this sense, is murder culture ever used to describe our society? Would it concentrate the public consciousness more on this problem to use the phrase murder culture instead?

CiscoKid wrote - "As the pinnacle of offences in this sense, is murder culture ever used to describe our society?"

Yes, murder culture is sometimes used as a term to describe aspects of various societies. I get the impression that it is used quite regularly by anti-feminists - anti-abortion activists and MRAs.

The MRAs use it to try to deny/minimise/excuse rape culture.

CiscoKid Is it therefore fair to say that we live in a DV culture

Given the way that certain parts of the press treated the DV photographed between Charles Saachti and Nigella Lawson and the slew of 'it's not as bad as it looks' articles in various papers, blogs and in the Twittersphere. As well as when women are killed by their partner or ex partner, they have usually had a 'tempestuous' relationship, which is journalistspeak for a history of DV. When there has to be a concerted campaign in order to get social networking sites to recognise that images of DV and VAW are morally wrong and just not funny then yes, I think it probably IS fair to say that we live in a DV culture when using that phrase in the same way as we use the phrase rape culture. ie. that DV and rape are condoned, minimised and, to a large extent, blamed on the victim.

This thread however, is about rape culture. I'm sure a well reasoned one about DV or murder culture would be interesting though.

Aren't those also connected though?

Rape culture = doing whatever men want to women

Dv culture - doing whatever men want to 'their' women

I think the only real difference is that DV (especially where it comprises EA and financial control) is even harder to identify and deal with, but both cultures essentially condone and excuse the victimisation of women.

Cakes, I agree about the connection, although aren't most rapes committed by men known to the victim? So both are abuses by men to 'their' women in the majority of cases.

However, it is about rape culture in this thread. I wanted to understand the phrase better, not to derail. I understand that it's difficult to discuss without offending or starting a row though.

Thank you for the responses. Plenty to think about.

What an excellent letter. It puts into words what I feel, but have been unable to express, about some bullying jokes and their justifications.

I also like the link to types of laughter. I have noticed teenagers who laugh when being told off where it is a symptom of extreme stress and not a lack of taking the issue seriously. I do this type of laugh myself and it's good to see it recognised. .

This is why I love mumsnet. Thank you for pointing me to read this eloquently put letter.