I adamantly believe that men and women should not be sentenced the same based on the crime and all factors should be accounted for. If there are two cases, one where a man rapes a woman and another where a woman rapes a man, each should be prosecuted differently. Was the man who raped the woman stronger and able to force her? What was the extent of the abuse? Was there any hint of it being consensual?
The punishments were also too harsh and cruel. Hammurabi’s code was unfair to women. As it states in law 148 document C, if a wife of a man has a disease and her husband is determined to marry a second wife, he will marry her. However, he will not divorce his first wife. She will live in the house they had built together and he will maintain her as long as she lives.
There are numerous definitions of rape culture. The most accurate definition of rape culture is, “a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women . . . In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself.
Roxane Gay once proclaimed, “Rape culture is a culture where we are inundated, in different ways, by the idea that male aggression and violence towards women is acceptable and often inevitable.” Imagine being attacked, stripped of your identity, and being forced into and blamed for actions you did not give consent to. This is considered normal for many women who experience the appalling act of sexual assault and its effects brought upon through the media’s depiction of rape culture. In The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the protagonist named Hester Prynne is objectified for her act of adultery and forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her bosom for all of eternity. The letter “A” serves as a symbol which outcasts Hester
Within the lines and stanzas of this epic, we also see the roles women represent in Ancient Greece. Females can most often be seen to assume various positions, but specifically within The Odyssey, these forms are taken by the adulteress, the housewife, and the divine goddess. With that in mind, in many a Grecian tale, it is said that women could be categorized as virgin or philanderer, to put it
These cultures often accept and allow the brutalization of women through rape and other forms of sexual or domestic violence. Because of these attitudes, laws that are meant to protect women (if there are any) are not enforced adequately and crimes against women are not regarded with appropriate seriousness. In societies that enforce the subordination of women, rape and sexual violence is used as a means of control and even punishment for women who "misbehave." A lack of education domestically and globally results in the erasure of these gendered issues. Because of this, the oppression occurring in "third world" countries are not regarded with the appropriate urgency and remain unsolved.
Commoners & nobles and men & women were treated differently. For example, crimes against royalty resulted in more severe punishments, while crimes committed by royalty were often swept under the rug. If a case was deemed embarrassing or inconvenient to the prince, then the culprit could be murdered in their cell or exiled without a trail. Women who were raped had to have proof that she cried out, tried to fight the attacker away, and had to report the rape within a limited amount of time after it occurred. Religious authorities also chose when to interfere, and when they’d rather not to; they would often charge a woman with improper behavior and send her to institutions for prostitutes and “fallen women,” which were established by churches and the city.
Once a woman marries, all of her property would go to her husband and she must live under his shadow. If there was a divorce, the children would go to the men, leaving the women with nothing. Men could have premarital sex but women had to be chaste, otherwise they would be seen as sinners. The most degrading thing was their employment. The reason why women could not live a single life was because there would be no way they could make a living.
They believe that this is a hoax or just a ruse made up by people because they want attention. Just last year at Grant High School, a teacher named David Lickey wrote a paper to a group of freshman students stating his views on rape culture claiming that is is not real and calling it “dubious”. A former student was outraged by this because she was a survivor of rape and this felt like a personal attack on her experience (Brabaw, paragraph 3 and 4). This goes to show that not everyone is aware of rape culture and sexual assault, and it can have negative impacts. Another misconception is that only women are victims to rape and sexual assault, but men are also victimized.
In a patriarchal, male-dominated society like Pakistan, where women are treated as a man's property, rape has become a form of not just violence against women, but also revenge against men. It has been used as a means to demean families, subjugate clans, avenge 'lost' honor, teach a lesson, pay debts, and demonstrate superiority. And it has almost always gone unpunished. (Ahmar,