User:Jrios23/sandbox

Rape culture
Rape is an illegal act of sexual intercourse where one did not consent and if at any moment one said “no”, “Stop” or tried to get away then it is considered rape. This is what so many people do not understand, a couple could be enjoying themselves with the consent of one another but it can always turn non-consensual, it can always turn into rape. In Kate Harding’s book, Asking For It, she says, “rape is not a failure of  “normal human restraint” but of humanity. It's not a “mistake” but a deliberate decision to treat another person like a soulless object”(120). Our culture plays a big role in the many effects of rape. “I mean, granted, we live in a culture that claims to abhor rape yet adores jokes about the prisoner who “drops the soap,” the trans woman who discloses to a date that she has a penis and gets punished for it, the altar boy who follows a priest into a back room.(1)" “A culture in which most victims of sexual assault and rape never report it because they fear they won’t be believed- and even if they are believed, they're likely to be mortified and harassed, blamed and shamed, throughout a legal process that ultimately leads nowhere”(1) . We live in a culture where we accept and allow physical and emotional terrorism against all victims and portray it as a normal, ordinary, everyday type of thing that is not a big deal when in reality it is not okay and it is a big deal.

Victim Blaming
Rape myths are what causes victim blaming in the first place. Seven of the most basic rape myths are: As Kate Harding puts it, "rape myths vary among societies and cultures. However, they consistently follow a pattern whereby, they blame the victim for their own rape, express a disbelief in claims of rape, exonerate the perpetrator, and allude that only certain types of women are raped”(22) . What makes society truly messed up is that there are expectations for a person who has been sexually assaulted that they have to “fit” in order to be believed and that rapists already know how “the game goes” and use this to get away and be free for as long as they could. It’s no wonder victims are left with traumas, everyone blames them and it all gets to them so suddenly they start to go along with it as well, blaming themselves for a horrible event that was never really their fault.
 * 1) She asked for it
 * 2) It wasn’t really rape
 * 3) He didn’t mean to
 * 4) She wanted it
 * 5) She lied
 * 6) Rape is a trivial event
 * 7) Rape is a deviant event

Stockholm Syndrome
In a case of kidnap where the victim is being raped multiple times, Stockholm syndrome is when the victim starts to  develop feelings of  trust, affection or being helplessly dependent by their captor/rapist. Once these poor brainwashed children are rescued people tend to ask, "well why didn't you try to escape?". According to Kate Harding, “Journalists who harp on this point may believe that they’re only asking what’s on everyone’s mind, but in fact they’re keeping an absurd, offensive question at the foreground of a story that should be about a child who’s been the victim of multiple terrible crimes. Demanding that young people kidnapped as children are held captive for months or years justify their inability to escape is the apex of victim blaming, and it’s grotesque”(144). This all leads back to this culture we have of constant victim blaming where it does not matter if the victim is a grown adult who “is not innocent” a teenager who is “troubled” or  “unstable” or a little child who actually has no fault in any of it, somehow the victim is accused and the perpetrator is exonerated.