Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do about It

by Kate Harding

Asked what we should be telling women about rape prevention, if not “Carry a gun,” Maxwell replied, “I don’t think we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there for prevention. . . . You’re talking about it as if there’s some faceless, nameless criminal, when a lot of times it’s someone that you know and trust.”

“Making women the sexual gatekeepers and telling men they just can’t help themselves not only drives home the point that women’s sexuality is unnatural, but also sets up a disturbing dynamic in which women are expected to be responsible for men’s sexual behavior,” writes feminist author Jessica Valenti in The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women.

It’s about teaching our boys to actively oppose sexual violence.

Rape is not a failure of “normal restraint” but of humanity. It’s not a “mistake” but a deliberate decision to treat another person like a soulless object.

contrary to popular opinion, disagreement is allowed within feminism.)

public concern about “young men with little experience, and more vulnerable viewers, accessing sadistic and sexually violent content, which could serve to normalize rape and other forms of violence and offer a distorted view of women.”

The overall problem is one of a culture where instead of seeing women as, you know, people, protagonists of their own stories just like we are of ours, men are taught that women are things to “earn,” to “win.” That if we try hard enough and persist long enough, we’ll get the girl in the end. Like life is a video game and women, like money and status, are just part of the reward we get for doing well.