Is "rape culture" responsible for child rape, incest and pedophilia?

[Squinch]

97. How about Sandusky? Do we have a culture that created a situation

where the success of a football team was placed above the welfare of scores of children, who were subsequently abused by a pedophile? Where there many adults in that situation who believed that ending the sexual abuse of scores of children was not quite as important as winning football games? And do you really think that is an isolated incident, and that other influential men do not use their influence to hide these crimes, and they are enabled by those around them?

Have you ever heard a joke that talks about a backward part of the country and includes references to incest in it? You know the kind of joke I mean, the "Uncle Daddy" type jokes. The National Lampoon Vacation movie bit about the child whose father says that sexually, she's the best, that type of thing. These are pretty common examples of our culture minimizing the devastation of incestuous rape.

How about the astonishing proliferation of child pornography. All that child porn is going out to a LOT of people, and its users are growing geometrically. But we are doing almost nothing as a culture to fight it. We just don't care to spend the money and effort.

How about the spate of recent court decisions where the court felt that the perpetrator was "led on" by the child, or could not have been expected to control himself in light of the "sexuality" of the child, and was given a light sentence. You don't see rape culture in that?

How about the sexualization of children? A recent study of children's clothing found that 30% of girls' clothing items had sexualizing characteristics. http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/natural-beauty-fashion/stories/study-30-percent-of-girls-clothing-has-sexualizing-characte This shows us that, as a culture, there are many adults who consider it appropriate to sexualize children. That's a cultural trend that indicates to a pedophile that it is fine to objectify younger and younger children as sexual instruments.

How about the concept, written into our laws for hundreds of years, that "a man's home is his castle." This has more ramifications than Stand Your Ground. See for example the 2005 Supreme Court case Gonzalez vs. Castle Rock. This basically said that police don't need to honor protection orders against violent fathers, and that those fathers have the right to access to their children up to and including the point where they perpetrate a violent crime against them. In the case, the crime was the murder of the children, but it also holds for incestuous rape. So there is a legally protected idea that the father's rights to the children surpasses the children's right to safety from the father. (Or presumably mother, but the case dealt with a father, as do most cases in which "a man's home is his castle" is a factor.)

Shall I go on? Because there's lots more where that came from.