Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, the Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the controversy at Occidental College.
On the heels of our recent post about an anti-rape ad that did the unusual — target men and tell then not to rape — comes this Scottish ad, sent along by Sociologist Michael Kimmel, that does a fantastic job of mocking the idea that some women are “asking for it”:
Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, the Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the controversy at Occidental College.
Toban B. sent us two pairs of photographs showing feminist activism and backlash (images found here) at the University of Western Ontario. These posters, and their defacement, nicely demonstrate how resistance to oppression is met with counter-resistance. Until inequality is challenged, things often seem to be just fine; when groups stand up and demand equality, we suddenly see how fiercely people will defend their privilege.
Images after the jump (includes language about sexual violence):
Original:
After defacement:
Original:
After defacement:
Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault and rape culture in the aftermath of the Steubenville verdict.
On the heels of yesterday’s cartoon making light of lynching published in Eastern Michigan University’s newspaper, Michaela N. submitted an intended-to-be-humorous visual making light of rape in The Purdue Exponent, the Purdue University student newspaper. Part of a “sex position of the week” series, this one suggests that one man should pass a female partner off to another man without her knowledge.
This is another piece of evidence that suggests that we live in a rape culture: a society that, at best, trivializes and, at worst endorses, sexual assault.
UPDATE: Zoe Hayes, editor-in-chief of The Purdue Exponent, sent along a note asking that we link to their apology. To their credit, unlike the non-apology issues in the case of the lynching cartoon linked to above, they express genuine empathy, remorse, and responsiveness.
For more indications that we live in a rape culture, see our posts on media coverage of a rape video game and the George Sodini murders, rapists as hyperconformists to ideal masculinity, the rape scene in Observe and Report, and t-shirts endorsing sex with “drunk girls”.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, the Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the controversy at Occidental College.
This screenshot of the front page of The Sun is an excellent example of the eroticization of violence against women and our insistent denial of it:
The article is a condemnation of a video game in which the goal is to rape a mother and her two daughters (and force them to have abortions if they get pregnant). They call the game “sick” and “shocking,” but also include a huge picture of the virtual rape victim sexily stripping down to her underwear. Twisty, at I Blame the Patriarchy, observes that “…in terms of screen real estate, titillating images take up more space on the Sun’s web page than actual copy…”
Notice, also, the “related story” about a girl murdered who had reported rape threats and then, to the right of that, a dating advertisement featuring a couple of girls making bedroom eyes at the viewer.
This is what rape culture looks like: a story about a video game that encourages players to rape and otherwise torture women and girls, alongside titillating images from that very game; a story about a “girl” who had actually been murdered, alongside a photo of her looking invitingly into the camera; and a dating website. With this material like this, we learn that sex, violence, and women aren’t separate concepts. Instead of learning to think about sex, violence, and women, we learn to think about, and fantasize about, sexviolencewomen.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, the Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the controversy at Occidental College.
Nizam A. sent in a rather stunning two-minute, 15-second clip put together by Media Matters. It is a montage of the use of rape as a metaphor by right wing pundits (trigger warning). To be fair, I don’t know if a similar video could be made using left wing pundits, so it may be best in comments to stick to a conversation about the metaphor itself.
Why it this such a popular way of talking about the world?
How does it work? Does the metaphor, given that we think of rape as a crime that men do to women, feminize and masculinize? Or is it about a gendering of the very notion of violation and vulnerability? So are these pundits trying to transfer listener’s beliefs about protecting women and girls to other categories (e.g., the rich and the people of New York)?
Does using it as a metaphor give more power to, or trivialize and make invisible, actual rape?
Is there not some irony in how frequently we use it to describe something horribly violating, given the high rates of rape in the U.S., the frequency of non-reporting, our dismal treatment of victims, and the wildly low incidence of trials and convictions?
See also our post on violent metaphors, including rape.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, the Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the controversy at Occidental College.
Women’s vulnerability to men’s violence and harassment is a common topic of public service announcements (PSAs) in industrialized countries. More often than not, however, awareness campaigns are aimed at women and tell them how to avoid victimization. We’ve posted already, for example, on campaigns telling girls and women that they are responsible for stopping internet predators, preventing sexual harassment, and instigating domestic violence.
Critics argue that stopping predation, harassment, and violence by men requires telling men not to do those things and telling women to restrict their activities to avoid men who might victimize them is only doubly oppressive. So, when Jeff H. sent in a nice example of a U.K. anti-rape ad targeting men, we thought it was worthy of a post (and see this anti-domestic violence ad for another example).
In a less complimentary mood, Copyranter noted that the poster was hanging in bathrooms and published in men’s magazines and wondered if anti-rape messages should really be communicated with a women’s nearly-naked navel, crotch, and thighs.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.Yesterday two juvenile men were convicted of rape, one was convicted of distributing a nude photo of a minor (NPR). The response by a segment of society reflects rape culture: “an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture” (source). Below are a series of concrete examples. Trigger warning for rape apologists and victim blaming.
CNN coverage of the verdict spends six minutes on how sad the conviction is for the rapists:
It was incredibly emotional… to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as, as they believed their life fell apart.
A selection of tweets collected by Public Shaming:
A selection of tweets collected by Mommyish:
A selection of tweets collected by Persephone Magazine:
Tweets collected by The Inquisitr:
Great coverage from around the web:
Finally, a satire from The Onion, from two years ago: College Basketball Star Heroically Overcomes Tragic Rape He Committed
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.Cross-posted at Racialicious.
The Harlem Shake is a syncopated dance form that first appeared on the New York hip-hop scene in the early 1980s. In 2012 music producer Baueer created an electronic dance tune, unfortunately calling it The Harlem Shake. Baueer’s song inspired an Internet meme in which people rhythmlessly shake their upper bodies and grind their hips in a tasteless perversion of the original dance.
This fake Harlem Shake meme has become so ubiquitous that it has been “performed” by the English National Ballet, and gone further globally with a video from the Norwegian army, and in Tunisia and Egypt, where the song and imitation dance has become a protest anthem.
The irony of an African-American cultural relic being white-washed to the point where other people of color perform its bastardized version is not lost, and this takes on a whole new level as teams with majority African-American members such as the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets add to the fake Shake canon.
A major problematic of this meme is that it takes an already marginalized group in America, one whose history and culture has often been appropriated and co-opted in fetishistic ways by the white majority, and makes a mockery of not just them, but an entire dance tradition. This is not lost on residents of Harlem, many of whom recognize cultural appropriation and malrepresentation when they see it:
In spite of a number of calls online from African-American writers, artists, scholars and supporters like myself to bring attention to the real Harlem Shake, every day there is instead a new group adding to the misappropriated dance. When you Google “The Harlem Shake” you must scroll through pages before you reach any posts about the actual hip-hop tradition.
This literal erasure of black culture and its replacement with an absurdist movement and meme needs to be considered in light of African-American oppression and institutionalized racism in the United States. Supplanting the sinuous artistry of the Harlem Shake with frenetic styleless arm flailing and hip thrusting is yet another brick in a grand wall of symbolic and structural violence that further relegates an entire culture to the margins, both on and offline.
As the Harlem residents said in response to the meme: “Stop that shit.”
P.S. Here’s how to actually do the Harlem Shake.
Sezin Koehler is a half-American half-Sri Lankan informal ethnographer and novelist living in Lighthouse Point, Florida.
