Role-reversal is an effective tool in working to understand why an action, behavior, or cultural dynamic is problematic. When it comes to street harassment, Twitter user @ElonJames created the hashtag #DudesGreetingDudes to highlight the absurdity of men who argue that their behavior isn’t sexually motivated, isn’t intended to bother women, and should be taken as…
In a speech in 1983, titled, “I want a 24-hour truce in which there is no rape,” radical feminist Andrea Dworkin hit the nail on the head of rape culture, “And the problem is that you think it’s out there: and it’s not out there. It’s in you.” 33 years later, the entire length of…
Men’s violence against women has become such an ingrained dynamic of our culture, we often fail to see the ways in which it has become normalized and invisiblized. Everything from pop culture to the way language is constructed about domestic violence and sexual assault serves to hide men as perpetrators, placing the onus of responsibility…
In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, Soraya Chemaly works to connect the dots between white male socialization–entitlement, power, control–and mass shootings that occur as a result of “aggrieved entitlement” when reality does not meet expectation. Elements of sexual and domestic violence can be seen in the histories of mass shooters. Without…
In the United States, power-based interpersonal violence, including domestic and sexual violence, occurs in every community, among every demographic of people. However, there are unique manifestations of violence perpetrated by white men. While it often begins intimately–targeting a partner or family member–it may carry over into the public sphere. With few notable exceptions, acts of…
Having become so normalized that we fail to see it, fail to recognize the ways we are complicit in its perpetuation, fail to acknowledge the ways–both subtle and overt–that we uphold it, rape culture requires direct and explicit naming. Shakesville provides an essential, and brutally direct, explanation defining rape culture. – Brett Goldberg Read the…
We speak of rape culture because it is crucial to recognize the often public nature of normalized violence in the United States. Street harassment for example occurs in public, in plain view of bystanders and witnesses. It can be argued, as scholar Michael Flood does, that the performance of masculinity, as evidences by acts of…