Ending Rape Culture: The Fight to Equality

By: Nina Borzekowski

Every 92 seconds, an American is raped. That’s 939 incidents every 24 hours. In various ways, we are all partially to blame for these attacks, but we also have the power to change them by speaking up.

Lady Gaga, Gabrielle Union, Amy Schumer, Terry Crews, Cara Delevingne, Molly Ringwald and so many more are all victims of sexual assault. Out of every 100 incidents of sexual assault, 84 of those were reported by women according to the article “What We Know About Victims of Sexual Assault in America” by Kathryn Casteel, Julia Wolfe, and Mai Nguyen. Obviously, sexaul assault is an immense issue in our society.

These rapes are caused by a number of things, the main one being rape culture in society today. Rape culture is all around us in the things we do and the things we say. We all contribute to it. When we say "that's what she said" jokes, we're indulging those harmful stereotypes.

By putting constant pressure on gender norms and defining genders in such specific ways, we are succumbing to the problem instead of fixing it. When we define being a man as being tough, insensitive, and dominant we're creating men who become those characteristics. When we define being a woman as being sexy but also submissive and quiet, we are subjecting women to victimization unconsciously.

We, society, applaud men for being with lots of girls but when a women does the same thing, she is called a “slut” or a “ho.” We create these double-standards but don't approve when people try to break out of them. Rape culture is all around us, most of it going under the radar; still, the parts that are noticed go without punishment.

Some people might say that a joke is just harmless. However, when people laugh at those jokes, it tells them that what they said is funny and that it is ok, when in reality it’s spreading those stereotypes and ingraining them further and deeper into the minds of society.  

We need to change the social acceptability of these jokes and the effects they have on the imbalance between genders. There are all these stereotypes that add to the dominant/submissive nature of relationships and in which genders are "supposed" to fill each role. We need to start holding people accountable for their contributions to Rape Culture.

We need to start calling each other out when an inappropriate joke is made, or a comment on someone's clothing. We need to avoid using degrading language against genders and not let stereotypes define us. Speak up!