The Real "Rape Culture"

A yearbook photo of my cousin. R.I.P., Roxanne.

When I was 15 years old, my mother told me that something terrible had happened to one of my relatives. She told me that my second cousin had been found dead in a creek bed. Later, we were told that there was evidence that she had been raped and murdered. The police deemed it a suicide and let the case go cold. Twenty-two years later, a man made a death bed confession and said that he had been the one who killed her. The rape aspect was covered up by asserting that the relationship between the victim and her killer was "unclear".

This was my first experience with the idea of rape. My cousin was the same age as me when she was killed. I remember being shocked at the fact that someone would want to have sex with someone so young. I was pretty naive and I didn't know about things like pedophiles and pederasts. It was also 1979 when it happened and rock stars could openly "date" very young women in their early to late teens without anyone batting an eye.

While I can, thankfully, say that I was never raped, I was non-invasively molested when I was 6 or so years old. A teenage boy lured me up to his room while my parents were visiting his parents. He was wearing blue jeans under which he had an erection. He grabbed me and held me on his lap while he banged his covered penis into my covered vagina until I squirmed free and escaped. I was also propositioned by a dirty old man who was a drinking buddy of my father's. He pointed at my pelvic area and asked, "Can I have some of that?" At first, I was confused, and then I was ashamed and humiliated. Both of these experiences occurred while I was alone with the males in question, though not entirely so. The first occurred in the home of my parents' friends while they were downstairs. The second in my own home (in the dining room) while my parents were off doing something outside and imprudently left me alone with that disgusting old pervert.

I didn't tell my parents about either of these experiences. The first time, I had no idea what was happening. I only knew that I didn't like it. The second time, I simply did not want to think about it and my lack of understanding about exactly how perverse this man was made me think I'd somehow gotten it wrong.

These days, with all of the news about women being raped while they are intoxicated, people talk a lot about "rape culture". They speak of an environment in which men (usually) think it is somehow okay to sexually assault women (usually) because they are vulnerable. There is talk about how we must make sure men know that it is "NOT OKAY" to do these things and they need to know they'll be punished. Much is made of this and how we need to stop this mindset which contributes to "rape culture".

Here's the thing. This is not the rape culture we should be directing most of our attention toward. The real rape culture is not in colleges, bars, or frat houses. The biggest circumstances in which rape flourishes are those in which there is isolation, poverty, and a lack of parental oversight or protection due to the types of neglect and ignorance that accompany rural poverty. Because of the focus on rape as an issue for young, affluent (and often white) women, the image most people have of rape is very different from the reality.

Most rapes occur in remote areas in which the rapist can find a victim alone and in circumstances in which crying for help is a useless endeavor. Most rapes occur among people who make $25,000 per year (or less). Most rapes happen because someone isn't paying attention to what is happening to their daughters, sisters, wives, or girlfriends because they are intoxicated, preoccupied, or make an assumption about safety. Most rapes happen in the atmosphere that saw me molested as a little girl and propositioned as a pre-teen. The real rape culture is one in which men know what they are doing is NOT OKAY, but they know that they have the right set of circumstances in which to get away with it. They do it with the knowledge that the chances that they'll pay for it are exceptionally low. This is doubly so because the world, which worries about college rape, is blind to where the bigger problems are occurring.

The overwhelming majority of rapes are not happening to drunken party girls. They are happening to people who are alone and far from help. There's a reason Alaska is the "rape capital of America" and that Native Americans suffer more rapes as a percentage of their population than any other group. It's substance abuse (alcoholism, largely), isolation, and poverty. The Huffington Post posted a list of 50 facts about rape, but failed to include one bit of data about the issue. The word "rural" did not occur anywhere in this long list because nobody gives a damn about the lives of those who exist in remote areas. It's boring and the victims are simply people who are being taken advantage of rather than those who are putting themselves at risk with their actions.

Without the moral ambiguity, there's no argument to be made about "rights" and no privileged environment to argue passionately about. There's just a social problem that emotionally activated people who see themselves as empathetic and involved have no solution for. If they can't talk about it from a position of self-righteousness that allows them to confirm their sense of what a good person they are for being involved in the issue, they have no interest in it. 

The types of people who  believe they are all over social justice are, ironically, extremely worried about the rights of white girls who are affluent enough to go to college to get drunk off their asses and not be assaulted. They'll shout and protest the mentality that allows that sort of thing to happen while remaining utterly ignorant and indifferent to the culture that allowed my cousin to be raped and murdered. Why do they worry so much about the  minority of cases and ignore where far more problems occur? In my opinion, it is that they only care about the part of the problem that they can relate to. They care about the part that affects them or people like them. They talk about social justice, but what they really want is justice for members of their tribe, not the greater number of victims of the real and more common "rape culture".