Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth by Luke Gittos

Author:Luke Gittos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Rape culture, police, law, justice, legal, convictions, sexism, misogyny, society, culture, sexual violence, prosecution, legal rights, human rights, freedom, intimacy, the state, social media
ISBN: 9781845408855
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2015
Published: 2015-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

2 Sarah Hinchliffe, ‘Rape law reform in Britain’, Society, May/June 2000 http://goo.gl/iBEU9A

3Hansard, 31 March 2003 http://goo.gl/EI4lwA

4Hansard, 31 March 2003 http://goo.gl/EI4lwA

5Hansard, 31 March 2003 http://goo.gl/oTS8jd

6 ‘Sex without consent, I suppose that is rape’: How young people in England understand sexual consent, Office of the Children’s Commissioner, November 2013

7 Sexual Offences Act 1993 http://goo.gl/g13k7t

4. The Impact of Rape Panic

We have considered in some detail the facts about rape. We have seen that, contrary to the idea that we live in a society that trivialises or minimises sexual violence, rape law has expanded significantly over recent decades against a background of state interference in many aspects of intimate life. The absurd moral panic around rape and rape culture has given rise to a litany of misinformation about rape, particularly in the context of the justice system.

In the chapters that follow we will consider the impact that a climate of panic is having on the way we deal with rape cases and the way we live our intimate lives. Firstly, we will consider a brief history of the rape culture argument, which has always sought to cultivate and maintain a damaging sense of vulnerability among those who believe in it. We will then consider how the panic around rape leads to a hysterical, unthinking and often inhumane response to rape cases. The panic around rape, coupled with the belief in an insidious rape ‘culture’, leads some to advocate the abandonment of some key principles of Western civilisation when confronted with rape cases.

Secondly, we will see how the ‘rape culture’ argument is antithetical to freedom. It is deeply censorious and encourages intolerance of any attitude that is seen to offend or even challenge the contemporary consensus around rape. It also encourages both men and women to be constantly deferential to female vulnerability, which has the perverse effect of placing significant power in the hands of men to govern the terms of women’s sex lives.

Lastly, in the chapter that follows, we will see how the rape-culture argument has given rise to its own form of justice, one that prioritises the validation and confirmation of individual experience above the objective establishment of the truth. Not only does the argument that we live in a ‘rape culture’ threaten our capacity to negotiate our intimate lives independently, it also destroys our capacity to deal objectively and effectively with actual allegations of criminality in the intimate setting. Given that one of the key allegations of the rape-culture argument is that the justice system cannot cope with rape, it is, in many ways, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The fearful narcissism of rape culture

An important element in explaining why the argument that we live in a rape culture survives today is understanding that it is a worldview which encourages a deep sense of vulnerability in its adherents. The idea that films, pop songs and off-the-cuff remarks can all ‘normalise’ the crime of rape is an expression of deep distrust and isolation. It suggests that the people around us are incapable of hearing certain lyrics without being encouraged to rape.

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