My feminist is showing

I've been taking this Women in Popular Culture class and it's really been changing the way I see the portrayal of minority groups in the eyes of the mainstream culture...almost to a frightening degree.

I don't like to be the party pooper who ruins all the fun, but sometimes I wonder if we even realize how discriminatory we are just in the ways we joke with one another. For instance, many endearing terms for friends is calling them a bitch or a whore. It's violent! All the ways in which we joke about, "if you don't do this, I'll cut you!"

Violence is pervasive in our culture. It's what happens when we live in a rape culture. Have you ever wondered why we ask some of the questions we ask rapees? Like, "What were you wearing?" "What were you doing?" "Were you drinking?" Some of these questions we don't ask for any other crime...so why do we ask?

Because we blame the victim.

And who knows why this is? Maybe because men feel that they are entitled to rape. It shouldn't matter what a woman is wearing, she shouldn't be raped. Men aren't held to the same standards. If I was raped, no one would ask me, "What were you wearing?" It's a great trick my woman studies professor told me about. If you're questioning whether something is belittling to women then just switch the gender and see if it would be fair. Once you switch the roles it can become much more apparent who gets the short end of the stick.

Even in this atrocious New York Times article you can get a taste of what I'm talking about. They blame an 11 year old girl...she's 11! Do you think she asked to get raped?

Rape is rape. It doesn't matter if the girl was drinking and using drugs. If you have sex and the next day she wakes up and said she didn't want it...it was RAPE!

Now, I can't go without talking about the other side. We live in a society where we encourage men to pursue. The proliferation of the idea that "no means maybe" is everywhere! The thing that's wrong about this is that even if she doesn't say no, if she doesn't want it it is rape.

It's difficult to please everyone. There are those really great guys who ask and then the girl uses it against him. Perhaps that's where all of the female degradation of rape stems from...but no one can deny the obvious demeaning of women that occurs in our culture surrounded by rape and violence.

There's so much more I could delve into here...but I'll save it for subsequent blogs. What's important is that we become more understanding of the influence media has on all of us and the enlightenment to the fact that we live in a rape culture. That's where it all begins...and once we begin it we can work towards stamping it out for good.