Rape culture is an issue all over America. It usually comes to light when a victim of sexual assault comes forward to talk about their experience and what occurred during the event. Rape culture is also embedded in today’s society, it can happen in an everyday setting with social media posts as well as the toxic masculinity that is taught and displayed throughout all of a young man’s life. However, not a lot of people are aware of how rape culture affects everyday life. The way to make people aware of what they’re doing to contribute to the problem is to educate the general public about rape culture and how it affects a victim’s life. We can also ensure victim’s safety by implementing stronger consequences against those accused of rape.
Odysseus is portrayed as a handsome man in the Odyssey because during the Mycenaean and Homeric period men that had any trace of an athlete in them were considered to be good looking because of their masculinity, strength and toned bodies. Whereas in the Penelopiad, Odysseus is portrayed to be the opposite of that. Because Atwood has drawn from the information given in the Odyssey, there is not a clear picture drawn of Odysseus excluding the influence of society’s views during the time, so Atwood has portrayed Odysseus in a way that she sees him. In the 21st Century BCE most men whose strength is in throwing events, like Odysseus, are seen to be short and stocky which is what is seen of where Atwood draws Odysseus’ looks from.
In society and college campuses, sexual assault occurs quite frequently. According to an estimation one third of women experience a forced sexual experience at least once in their life and most of the time it occurs in colleges. Men have also been reported to be victim of sexual assaults mostly by other men. Most of the time the sexual assault is planned and perpetrated by a third person, who is known to the victim of incident. Drug and alcohol use play role in this issue and contribute to the problem as most of the time the victim and perpetrators are under the effect of alcohol or any other drug during the incident. It looks scary how vulnerable the survivor can be at the time of assault. However, as long as the matter of violence is associated, the students at college campuses are safer than their non-college mates. Some training and education has been administrated to the students for awareness about the violence and sexual assaults. Even, with increased training and education, most of the college campuses have much longer way to go for decreasing the intensity and number of assaults and the incidents have immense negative impact on the society and people around us.
In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” the knight’s punishment for raping a girl is to set out on a year long journey to find out what women desire most. This story is sexist portraying women in a negative light.
Many people have heard that women in the seventeenth century had little to no rights, and that would be almost correct. In Amsterdam, women had more rights than most of the women in Europe at the time, which really, was not much. An unmarried woman had more freedoms than their married counterparts, but being unmarried in this century still had downfalls. If an unmarried woman never wed or had children in her lifetime many people considered it to be a waste of her life. An unmarried woman was allowed her own property and businesses but if she was to ever marry, then the husband would assume ownership of it all. Women during this time were told to remain silent, to be seen but not heard. Women were often controlled by their fathers, brothers
In Candide Voltaire discusses the exploitation of the female race in the eighteenth century through the women in the novel. Cunegonde, Paquette, and the Old Woman suffer through rape and sexual exploitation regardless of wealth or political connections. These characters possess very little complexity or importance in Candide. With his characterization of Cunegonde, Paquette, and the Old Woman Voltaire satirizes gender roles and highlights the impotence of women in the 1800s.
Recent headlines have highlighted the fact that rape culture is prevalent in our society, most noticeably on college campuses. To understand why this is a social issue we first have to understand what rape culture entails. Rape culture is a set of assumptions that reinforces male sexual aggression and disregards violence against females (Hildebrand & Najdowski, 2015, p. 1062). Simplified, it is an environment where sexual violence is normalized and most of the time excused.
Rape is unique. No other violent crime is so fraught with controversy, so enmeshed in dispute and in the politics of gender and sexuality… And within the domain of rape, the most highly charged area of debate concerns the issue of false allegations. For centuries, it has been asserted and assumed that women “cry rape,” that a large proportion of rape allegations are maliciously concocted for purposes of revenge or other motives.
Rape myths are at the center of the problem of how rape and sexual assault cases are looked at, and treated as in society. Rape myths vary, some excuse the rape, others try to minimize the severity of the situation, while others doubt the act even happened in the first place (Levit and Verchick, 196). Some examples of rape myths include: a victim was “asking for it,” a victim’s previous sexual history, regretful sex is not rape, a woman’s “no” means “yes,” and women lie about rape all the time. Rape myths are targeted towards women, not the rapist. Despite, rape myths being proved false by empirical evidence, they are still prevalent in society. Krakauer uses the example of Missoula police chief, Mark Muir; Muir states, “The rate of false rape claims is around 50 percent” (Krakauer, 116). Muir uses the 2009 article, “False Rape Allegations: An Assault on Justice,” by Bruce Goss, to justify his reasoning. However, the studies used by Goss, have been discredited and highly criticized by other academics. Lisak criticized Eugene J. Kanin’s study, “False Rape Allegations,” one of the studies Goss used in his article, stating that Kanin’s article is an opinion piece, not a scientific study (Krakauer, 117). Despite being debunked, Kanin’s and McDowell’s, the other study Goss uses, their studies are still often used to persuade people that American society suffers from
America the brave, wasn’t so beautiful during its early years. It hasn’t always been the land of the free like how it was instilled in us when we were children. I’ve grown up thinking that America had been such a place. There was countless times that America was faced with making decisions that were incredibly undemocratic. For instance , Women’s rights, religious freedom, and rights for slaves were virtually nonexistent. Occasionally the colonist made the right choices like indentured servants, who were people that worked for a certain amount of time then were allowed to go.People don’t know the truth about the unhinged history of Colonial America.
Michael M. vs Superior Court is the case that brought gender-neutrality in the criminal justice system to the light. Before this case was presented to the court, few states had adopted a gender-neutral statutory rape case and California, where the case took place, was not among them. The defense argued that California’s rape laws went against the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Then there was case of Mary Kay Letourneau, a former schoolteacher that was engaging in a sexual relationship with her 12 year old student. Letourneau was sentenced to 6 moths in jail while Michael M. received 10 years. It’s split into two sides when it comes to the topic of statutory rape and the equality of those involved. Some see it as almost coddling
In the fourteen century, men were always the superior, head of the household, the breadwinner, but women were always inferior, they would stay at home, do the house work, cook, and never would have a job. Well, times have changed. Women are reaching an equal status to men in political, social and economic matters It’s part of the idea called Feminism. In many ways the Wife of Bath displays many characteristic of women in the 21st century. Instead of being directed by men, she views herself as an independent person. Throughout her introduction of the tale, and the story itself, we see the Wife of Bath as an experienced, intellectual woman, who despite living in a world of patriarchal power, provides for herself financially, emotionally, and physically. As a feminist icon, she confronts serious social issues that illustrate the subjugation women faced.
In the text “Broken Sentences,” Anna Deavere Smith is informing the reader of the stories of African American females who are incarcerated. Before Smith incorporates the women’s stories into the text, Smith goes into a backstory of her childhood. She speaks of the quality of her childhood and tells it as not only pure, but also as a revealing time period. Also, she speaks of her experience with the prison setting during her time in the Girl Scouts. Smith encompasses this short anecdote to not only set up an ambience of innocences, but to also foreshadow the testimonies to come. Furthermore, her method of writing in this text is very peculiar because she writes in incomplete or “broken sentences.” Throughout the text, Smith first gives a brief
Medieval society portrayed what love and generosity should be. Older men married young women. Of course women had no choice in who hey married. The dowry benefits family member, not the women. Older men marrying young women had a suffrage of inequality in the relationship. In courts, where dances occur, married women would have affairs with men that are their age.. The conflict begins with a woman’s ability to choose a man she desires, yet she marries an older man with no love. Men accused married woman for being sexual since, supposedly, they are culpable of the marriage. Medieval society portrayed married women as disloyal wives who were unable to their control their sexual desires toward young men.
These flavours of irony are enhanced through characters’ names. “Alec D’Urberville” is a counterfeit D’Urberville whereas “Tess Durbeyfield” is a rightful “D’Urberville”, evoking male perfidy and nobility of the “fallen woman”. Similarly, through the play title “Hedda Gabler”, Ibsen’s refusal to subsume Hedda’s personality into her marital title “Tesman” foregrounds her unorthodox personality, portraying the encumbering marriage facing every Victorian women, in which the limitation of the feminine role is embedded in the very nomenclature of society.