By denying rape culture exists, it only allows for the behavior to continue. Simply ignoring something will never make it go away.

Rape culture is when the media takes a perspective at rapes not for the crime it is, but for the circumstances surrounding it.

On March 20, Time Magazine published an essay by Caroline Kitchens in which she said rape culture doesn’t exist. In the essay, Kitchens said rape culture is only a myth perpetuated by feminist bloggers and lobbyists. But rape culture is not a result of those groups, it is something that affects our entire country every day and fuels the growing rape and sexual assault statistics.

In her essay, Kitchens said rape is a hated crime and that rapists are despised by society, but that isn’t quite true. When someone is a victim, questions start emerging but they usually have nothing to do with what the rapist did.

These questions tackle what a girl was wearing, how much she may have had to drink, what look, gesture or movement may have provoked the attack.

Our society may not say outright that rape is tolerated but its actions prove otherwise. If rape is so despised by our society, then why were there 31 states allowing rapists to sue for custody and visitation of children conceived during rape, according to a The Wire article last August? Why has Rape, Assault and Incest National Network released a study saying there have been 32,000 untested rape kits in the U.S. within the past five years? According to these statistics and many more, our society doesn’t despise rape as much as Kitchens thinks it does.

This is important because it tells girls and women that their voices don’t matter. It tells them that their bodies are commodities. This notion is reflected by the countless advertisements, commercials, movies and other forms of media that perpetuate negative stereotypes of girls. If women are constantly being depicted as irrational liars willing to say or do anything to get attention or revenge, someone is bound to believe that notion. Unfortunately, that someone could easily be a police officer or prosecutor handling a rape casse.

 Kitchens sourced RAINN throughout her essay, but cherry-picks facts to fit her argument. Kitchens took RAINN speaking out about the “unfortunate trend towards blaming ‘rape culture’ for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campus” and saw it as the go-ahead to eradicate the idea of rape culture and dismantle any efforts that go against it.

Well, RAINN also said out of every 100 rapes, only 40 rapists are reported, 10 are arrested, eight are prosecuted, four get a felony conviction and three spend a single day in jail. Let me repeat that: only three out of every 100 rapists spends a single day in jail. Yet Kitchens is more concerned with false rape accusations and hurting men’s feelings.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, two to eight percent of reported rape cases are false. Considering that and the fact that only 46 percent of rape cases are actually reported according to RAINN, we should be more concerned with getting victims to report real assaults than with false reports.

In her essay, Kitchens argued that rape culture turns the “average guy” into a villain. She said that it makes it hard for men to voice their opinion on this topic and implicates all men in a social atrocity. Kitchens’ view, that the hurt feelings of men should supersede the epidemic of rape and the fight to end it, is one thoroughly based in rape culture. The feelings, thoughts and perspectives of men are at the forefront of her mind, even at the cost of the feelings, thoughts and perspectives of sexual assault victims.

No, rape culture doesn’t cause rape. It does, however, influence the ideologies and opinions of our society. It influences the opinion of the police officer who leaves rape kits untested for years. It influences the victims who are too scared or ashamed of what others may think to come forward. And, most importantly, it influences the rapists themselves.

Mandisa Shields is a freshman newspaper and online journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @mandisashields.

Published on March 31, 2014 at 1:00 am