I’m not the only one to have stumbled upon countless articles offering advice for rape prevention. These commentaries often provide tips for women as potential victims, urging them to keep their clothing in mind and to avoid loitering in open public spaces such as grocery store parking lots.
Is this really the solution? To invoke fear in female victims that she’s unknowingly “asking for it” based on her hairstyle or the length of her skirt?
This places pressure on potential victims to prevent rape rather than targeting and treating potential perpetrators. Doing so gives women responsibility over an event they have little control over and sidelines the true cause of rape.
Many believe rape is committed in pursuit of sexual gratification, but it’s actually a struggle for power and control, often stemming from a perpetrator’s lack of control in their own lives or from being a victim of abuse as a child. This is the greatest myth: that rapists pursue forced sex because they can’t get it anywhere else. This is not the motive says A. Nicholas Groth, author of the 1979 book Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender. In it he explains three main types: the anger rapist, the power rapist and the sadist. Each of these categories is pretty self-explanatory. Anger rape is fueled by rage and physical brutality, power rape by a feeling of inadequacy and sadism by an eroticization of forced sex.
According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, an American is sexually assaulted every two minutes, and 60 percent of sexual assaults aren’t reported to the police. This may be because two-thirds of sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows. In today’s world, it’s no longer more common to be attacked by a stranger in an underground parking lot. Now, more than ever, rapes occur at parties and in friends’ houses, an act which violates both the victim’s physical and mental well-being.
How can our trust be breached by those closest to us? The answer is simple: as forward-thinking as United States’ society may be, we are still plagued by archaic instances of women being disenfranchised by rampant patriarchy.
Historically, women were regarded as men’s property, and while that’s no longer the case, gender inequality is still an issue in terms of salary and employment opportunities. Socially, this is also evident in the oversexualization of women in advertisements, which portray females as objects and further the idea that they exist solely for men’s use.
I’ll admit women aren’t the only victims — three percent of American men will experience rape or a rape attempt in their lifetime, according to RAINN. It was only in 2012 that the official definition of rape was changed to include men, previously described as “the carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will,” according to USA Today.
As progressive as “carnal knowledge” sounds, this definition neglects instances of rape without penetration and ignores the thousands of children, elderly and disabled citizens and spouses who also find themselves assaulted by both strangers and acquaintances.
Regardless of demographics, each of us is vulnerable to those who seek to control us through assault. We must provide resources for victims of abuse and for those suffering from conditions that make them susceptible to inciting violence. But just as importantly, we must create a social norm of acceptance and boundaries, where regardless of the way she dresses or the amount of alcohol she’s consumed, a woman isn’t “asking for it.” By understanding the causes of rape, a victim can be empowered against violence rather than powerless in the face of it.
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