Question: Does "rape culture"--the fear of men and their sexuality that has been spread relatively successfully throughout the culture--exist outside of the US? In my experience, not nearly to the same degree.

2014-01-23T09:21:54+00:00

No, is the short answer. Title lX seems to be the problem. In colleges in Europe we do not have it. If a sex assault takes palce in Europe the police are called. If no assault takes place everything carries on as normal. We do not have campus police or campus justice.

avantvernacular · 2014-01-23T14:57:24+00:00

Well, the sad reality is that in America, we have a culture that is extremely paranoid and fearful in general, and of fear of men is one manifestation of our greater culture of fear.

That being said, we do live on a culture that is at hear dismissive, and at worst openly condoning a particular kind of rape. Whole its pretty clear that virtually no where in America is the rape of a woman considered acceptable on a cultural scale, we do live in a rape culture when that rape is that of a man - particularly a man in prison.

On the inside, we don't seriously punish or de-incentivize prison rape, or really make even a half hearted effort to combat it. On the outside, we either dismiss it as unfortunate but not worth caring about, or actively condone it: things like "he's in prison, he deserves to be raped," are considered agreeable statements. If that is not a culture which is permissive if rape, then what is?

Tl;dr: yes we live in a rape culture, but not the one feminists talk about.

2014-01-23T13:22:09+00:00

I can assure you that things are different in most other countries.

In the U.S., "rape" can include things that would not be called rape in, say, France or Italy.

In the U.S., rape covers a wide a range of things. On one end of the spectrum, you have someone forcing sex on someone else with a gun or a knife. On the other end of the spectrum, there's a woman having an unpleasant sexual experience that she wasn't 100% enthusiastic about. That last one is supposed to be a rape too.

If you try telling the police in France that you've been raped because you had sex without saying "yes" enthusiastically enough, you'd get laughed out of the room. But on U.S. college campuses, that's the kind of thing that women are encouraged to see as an assault. Antioch College reacted by taking the thinking to its logical-- and ridiculous-- conclusion: requiring students to obtain verbal consent at each step leading up to a sexual encounter.

Feminists want rape to be two contradictory things at once: On the one hand, they want it to be considered the worst, most traumatic assault possible. On the other hand, they want to expand the definition until it encompasses bad sex after a glass of wine. The point of this is to maximize the number of men who can be charged with rape at a woman's request.

2014-01-23T17:00:44+00:00

The term "rape culture" is just used because it's a powerful statement. The US is NOT a rape culture. Countries in the middle east, Africa, those are rape cultures where women have real, daily fears of being raped, repeatedly. The label is just used here to silence people and put women in the constant victim role to obtain goals.

2014-01-23T16:26:16+00:00

The United States is a fascinating study of How to Go Batshit About Anything in 3 Days or Less. And Americans do set a trend for these kinds of things; if America deems it "cool", why shouldn't everyone else follow it? Certainly, Americans have brought the world some very positive things, but it is so notoriously bad at balance. So many things are black and white in America that it does fairly sicken me.

In my other country, you might see a lot of feminist talk in the newspapers and things - and our stance as a Nordic state aligns us with the likes of Sweden's gender ideologies - but the truth beyond talk is that everyday people are treated with a great degree of respect, regardless of their gender.

There aren't that many of us, really, and nobody has the fire in them to go on hateful rampages against each other the way the U.S. does. Nobody cares if someone thinks that "things are being controlled by The Patriarchy!" When you get an honest lifestyle, and don't get too caught up in what the news says, shit gets mellow pretty fast.

Maybe my countryfolk will tell you this is not true - Icelanders are passionate! Yeah, we can be. Mostly because we get bored. We freak out over the stupidest shit sometimes, but it never lasts. Everyone goes crazy that Denmark hasn't given us points in Eurovision. People grumble about Denmark for a week or two. Then we forget about being passionate about it because we don't need to cling on to stupid grudges. It's the same for more serious matters.

I can't speak for other nations, with the exception of England (my third and final) which is turning into an American lap dog very quickly.

rightsbot · 2014-01-23T08:52:16+00:00

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5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2014-01-23T10:40:35+00:00

Its impossible to say that there is no rape culture.

If you looked at murder culture, there is plenty of culture around it to study, same with drug culture, traffic culture and so on.

If there was no rape in the culture, we would never have head of rape.

You need to go to /r/askfeminists to find out what it means, mra's tend to believe it means they are saying the culture from the top down literally and openly supports violent rapists, which is absurd and why mra's tend to think that the fact rapists are punished disproves the existence of culture surrounding rape.

Spiryt · 2014-01-23T09:23:57+00:00

Not sure exactly how bad it is in USA but it's catching in Britain. Example

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2014-01-23T16:57:08+00:00

I haven't noticed it to be as strong no.

Interestingly enough the other cultures that agree with American feminists that men are by nature rape-machines tend to be highly patriarchal, regressive, theocratic regimes.

An imam in Pakistan and a feminist in Berkley will agree that something needs to be done to protect women from men's natural voracious sexual appetites and lack of self control. They just put the burden of that on different people.

2014-01-23T14:13:21+00:00

Men are dropping out of college and society at a lightning rate. If fewer men go to college will women be able to take up the jobs of scientist, inventor, entrepreneur etc. I would like to think so but I am doubtful. Where does this leave the USA when in the world economy they have to compete with China, Korea, Japan Thailand. Russia etc. In a downward spiral is my guess. Not every female can work for the state. The rape culure that is claimed at USA colleges is puting men off going to University.

Funcuz · 2014-01-23T16:11:32+00:00

Within the Anglosphere there is such thing as a feminist who doesn't believe in a "rape culture".

In other cultures it goes from passive acceptance that such a thing exists to outright rejection of it.

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