"The Face of Rape Culture" [View all]

[TygrBright]

Yeah, I know that's just a red flag term "rape culture," simply ASKING to start a big fat semantic debate and bring the MRA wackjobs out from under their rocks.

Nevertheless, I want to share this quote from a commentin John Scalzi's blog:

Bill Cosby is a serial rapist. He’s raped dozens of women over his life. And at the center of that, by his own words? Bill Cosby doesn’t think he raped anyone.

We persist, in America, to think of rape as strangers in bushes with knives or guns. But Bill Cosby is the face of the most common rape in America — someone you know, armed only with pressure tactics and some sedatives (booze is a common choice). A guy who believes, until the end, that he just talked you into it. That he ‘set the mood’. That he did nothing wrong.

That’s the culture, the beliefs that feed into the most common forms of rape. The fact that he used pills rather than booze, that he was ‘famous’ and ‘connected’ somehow makes it easier to see than if he was just a guy you were on a date with, who kept pushing drinks on you and wouldn’t leave until you gave in.

Bill Cosby is the face of rape culture. A woman who was raped, and a man who thinks he didn’t do anything wrong.

And good lord, how do you stop THAT? If the criminal literally never thinks what he’s doing is a crime — what reason does he have to stop?

Because this validates my own rape survival and I think it does so for way too many other women as well.

And that's more important to me- that validation- than yet another tedious argument about semantics and legalities.

One more quote, also referred to in the post that comment is from:

"One of the most radical things you can do is believe women when they talk about their experiences."

And way, way, WAY too many of us experience living in a rape culture.

Deal with it.

assertively,
Bright