The Rape Culture Myth
Paper presented at the April 23–24, 2015 symposium, Rape: Challenging the Orthodoxy, at the University of Nottingham School of Law
Introductory Note: In April 2015, I was one of the presenters at a symposium called “Rape: Challenging the Orthodoxy” at the University of Nottingham, organized by Prof. Candida Saunders of the University of Nottingham and Prof. Helen Reece of the London School of Economics (who tragically passed away from cancer at the age of 48 last October). After the symposium, Dr. Reece and Dr. Saunders asked the participants to contribute to a book based on the symposium. Unfortunately, publication plans fell through. I’ve been meaning to publish my essay, though, and it occurred to me that this is the perfect place to do that.
This is written in an academic format, with end notes and no links embedded in the text.
The critique and rebuttal of “rape myths” is a staple of feminist literature on rape. The catalogues of these “myths” — presumably false beliefs about sexual violence — are themselves debatable; they often include statements that are at least somewhat true (e.g., “women ‘cry’ rape”) as well as beliefs that have no cultural currency in modern Western societies (“men can’t be raped,” “most rapes involve black men and white women”). [1] Nonetheless, it is certainly true that as recently as half a century ago, certain stereotypical beliefs about rape — for instance, that claims of rape often stem from women’s hysterical sexual fantasies, that women incite rape with provocative behavior or dress, or that a “real” victim will fight back to the most of her physical ability — often hindered justice in rape cases.[2]
Yet in challenging the old rape myths, the feminist movement has created a set of new ones. For instance, as contrarian feminist Wendy Kaminer wrote in a 1993 essay, “It is a primary article of faith among many feminists that women don’t lie about rape, ever; they lack the dishonesty gene.”[3] On a somewhat less extreme note, much feminist literature, including “rape myth” explainers, assert that only 2 percent of rape reports are false, same as for any other crime.[4] As Massachusetts-based attorney Edward Greer demonstrated in an exhaustive analysis in 2000, this claim has no basis in fact and appears to be a “fictoid” circulating among various ideologically aligned sources.[5] A more modest assertion is that 2 to 8 percent of rape reports are false.[6] But even this claim is based on fuzzy data and rooted in an almost literal presumption of guilt: the belief that in every case in which the truth or falsehood of the accusation cannot be established with full certainty, the accused — even if tried acquitted in court — is guilty.[7]
There are other feminist rape myths — for instance, that only one to three percent of rapists are ever punished.[8] The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” hardly an anti-feminist source, rated this claim as mostly false (with “three Pinocchios” out of a maximum of four).[9] It is based on faulty statistics that not only lump together rape and other forms of sexual assault including threats of sexual violence but disregard the fact that one assailant may have multiple victims.
But the overarching feminist rape myth is the myth of “the rape culture,” at least insofar as this term is applied to contemporary liberal democracies in North America and Western Europe.
Feminist scholars and authors have offered a variety of definitions of “rape culture.” The foreword to the 1993 volume of essays, Transforming a Rape Culture, offers the following:
[Rape culture] is a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.[10]
As one can see, this definition is quite broad, ambiguous, and debatable. Does “male sexual aggression” refer to violent and coercive actions, or to sexual pursuit and initiation? Can modern Western societies be said to support violence against women? Does all sexualization of violence, including consensual rough sex and BDSM (bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism), amount to “rape culture”? Do most women see sexual remarks as part of a “continuum of threatened violence” (and how can rape itself, which is not threatened but actual violence, be considered part of such a continuum)? What is “emotional terrorism”?
The concept of “rape culture” goes back to the mid-1970s. Susan Brownmiller’s 1975 book, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape portrayed rape as the ultimate act of male terror against women. Brownmiller argued that rape had played a “critical function” in patriarchal history as a form of deliberate terrorism: “It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”[11]
The same year, Cambridge Documentary Films, a small outfit run by activist filmmakers Margaret Lazarus and Renner Wunderlich, released a 35-minute film titled Rape Culture. One of its stars was radical feminist theologian and philosopher Mary Daly, who discussed discussing America’s “rapism,” “phallocentric society,” and “unholy trinity of rape, genocide and war.” (In later years, Daly explicitly stated that she is entirely uninterested in men, that she sees males as inherently deadly and destructive in contrast to life-loving women, and that the only hope for the planet’s survival lies in its “decontamination” by means of a “drastic reduction of the population of males.”[12] She also chose to retire from her post at Boston College rather than admit male students to her classes.[13])
Reviewing the documentary for the journal Women & Health, Judy Norsigian of the Boston Women’s Health Collective summed up its message as follows:
In a society where men are taught to be sexually active and aggressive, while women are taught to be sexually passive, it comes as no surprise that rape is a problem. Rape is almost the logical consequence of the extreme acting out of these split sexual roles. We need to learn and re-learn that rape is not primarily the act of an aberrant individual who is behaving in conflict with the predominant values of society. Rape is a pervasive cultural problem, a social ideology regularly sustained and perpetuated by the TV-movie-radio-newspaper-popular culture network.[14]
The feminist critique of attitudes toward rape had some resonance in part because there is no question that the abhorrence of rape in Western society coexisted, for a very long time, with undeniably ugly attitudes. We react with horror today to stories of young women in Third World countries being pressured or even forced to marry their rapists; but similar practices once existed across Europe, and survived into the 1970s in Italy.[15] In the United States, as recently as forty years ago, juries could be formally instructed to consider evidence of a woman’s “unchaste character” — from extramarital liaisons to the use of birth control — as detracting from her credibility as the complainant in a rape case, and the failure to fight back in a demonstrably threatening situation was not uncommonly treated as consent.[16] Some of these practices were related to the legitimate difficulties of sorting out the facts in cases based on conflicting accounts, with little or no physical evidence of force; but they also reflected prejudice against women who were seen as less worthy victims.
Feminist claims about rape culture have been further fueled by cultural tropes that sometimes legitimized or romanticized coercive sex, blurring the lines between male sexual conquest/female “token resistance” and forcible violation. It is worth noting, however, that the most prominent examples of romanticized sexual violence in fiction — from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and its famous film version to pulp romances such as the 1974 best-seller Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers — come from female authors and, in many cases, have been popularized largely by female audiences.[17] This suggests that these scenes represented, more than anything else, a female ravishment fantasy that allows women raised with traditional moral codes to imagine illicit sex without guilt and to feel “swept off their feet” in a safe setting.
In any case, even in less enlightened times, the idea that rape was “a social ideology” in Western culture is absurdly exaggerated and oversimplified. One reason evidentiary standards for rape were so high was that rape carried extremely harsh penalties (for most of American history, it was a capital crime).[18] In popular culture, depictions of rape — including acquaintance rape — as a despicable crime certainly predate modern feminism; acclaimed films such as Johnny Belinda”(1948) and Peyton Place (1957) are among the examples. In the 1959 film Compulsion, a young man’s attempt to force himself on a female friend on a picnic date is unequivocally treated as an assault that he himself knows is wrong and criminal.
As for 21st Century civilization, arguments intended to demonstrate a pervasive rape culture in modern Western societies typically rely on dubious assertions and badly distorted or out-of-context facts.
Thus, the Vancouver, Canada rape crisis center Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) lists “kids who call losing a sports game ‘getting totally raped’” as evidence of “rape culture.”[19] Of course, kids also call losing a sports game “getting slaughtered” or “getting murdered,” and the words “kill” and “torture” are routinely used in a metaphorical sense. Few would argue that this means society condones torture and murder.
In a January 2013 column on the website of the American left-wing magazine, The Nation, feminist pundit Jessica Valenti rattles off a catalogue of examples purporting to show that “rape is as American as apple pie.”[20] Among them:
- “We live in a country where politicians call rape ‘a gift from God.’” This refers to a notorious comment by 2012 United States Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who said in explaining his opposition to abortion even in rape cases that “life is [a] gift from God … even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape.” Besides misrepresenting Mourdock’s remark, Valenti also fails to mention that it sparked widespread outrage and likely cost him the election in a strongly Republican district.[21]
- “[Y] oung men in high school think so little of sexual assault that they thought it was fine — hilarious, even — to post pictures online of a passed out rape victim, and to live-tweet the rape, joking about the victim being urinated on.” Valenti is referring to the notorious 2013 rape case in Steubenville, Ohio, in which two teenage boys were found guilty of digitally penetrating an unconscious or near-unconscious girl at a drunken party. Yet, aside from the fact that her summary is based on highly sensationalized and unreliable accounts,[22] there is nothing new about adolescents flaunting socially unacceptable behavior. Thus, teenage girls have made videos beating up other girls to post them on the Internet.[23] Even as the Steubenville case grabbed headlines, an incident in Homer, Alaska in which a passed-out teenage boy at an alcohol-soaked party was sodomized with a beer bottle while other teens of both sexes watched (and some took pictures) received only scant media attention, perhaps because a case with a male victim does not fit easily into the “rape culture” paradigm.[24]
- “[A] woman’s rape case falls flat because she isn’t married.” That sounds positively medieval — but a look at the story Valenti cites shows a peculiar case hindered by an outdated law and prosecutorial error.[25] The victim, an 18-year-old California woman, fell asleep next to her boyfriend while there were guests at her house; after her boyfriend left, the defendant came in, got in bed with her and initiated sex while she was asleep. Half-awake, the young woman initially responded positively, mistaking the defendant for her boyfriend, then realized that it was another man and tried to resist. Prosecutors charged the defendant with rape by fraud based on his impersonation of the victim’s boyfriend; however, the law on the books at the time, originally crafted in 1872, applied only to impersonating a husband. Because of this, the California Supreme Court reversed the conviction; however, it sent the case back for a retrial, recommending that the defendant be charged with rape based on lack of consent due to unconsciousness. The court also recommended that the statute be revised to include impersonation of a lover, not just a spouse. (The defendant was eventually convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.[26] The law was changed.[27])
Another writer and activist, Soraya Chemaly, sees evidence of rape culture in the alleged fact that 31 states allow rapists who impregnate their victims to sue for custody or visitation if she carries the pregnancy to term.[28] But in reality, these states simply don’t have laws on the books explicitly barring such suits. Even attorney Shauna Pruitt, an activist fighting for such legislation, has written that the problem is not a belief that rapists should have parental rights to children born from the rape, but lack of awareness that this is an issue. Ironically, this is in part due to the assumption that rape victims who conceive will terminate the pregnancy.[29]
Finally, consider some examples offered by feminist writer and activist Zerlina Maxwell in a Time column responding to the argument that rape culture is a mythical moral panic.[30]
- Rape culture is when survivors who come forward are asked, “Were you drinking?”
Crime victims who are intoxicated may be viewed as partially responsible for putting themselves in harm’s way. However, far more prominent recently has been the reverse tendency: “rape-culture feminists” seeking to redefine consensual drunk sex as rape. Thus, in the fall of 2013, activists at the University of Ohio-Athens rallied in support of a female student who accused a male student of rape after the two were caught on camera engaged in a late-night drunken public sex act (the man performed oral sex on the woman and penetrated her with his fingers while she sat on the ledge of a bank window).[31] Both the video and eyewitness testimony showed that, while both students were inebriated, the woman was fully conscious and willing, at one point apparently encouraging the man to continue when he asked if she wanted to stop they were drawing a crowd of onlookers. She also walked away with the man, unassisted, after the act. In view of these facts, the grand jury brought no indictment.[32] Nonetheless, letters to the campus newspaper cited the incident as evidence of “rape culture,” “glamorization of sexual violence,” “survivor-blaming,” and “refusal to take rape accusations seriously.”[33]
- Rape culture is when people say, “she was asking for it.”
Maxwell does not offer a single example of anyone in recent memory saying such a thing about a rape victim.
- Rape culture is when we teach women how to not get raped, instead of teaching men not to rape.
This is a bizarre argument. We also encourage people to avoid pickpockets and to install burglar alarms instead of teaching thieves and burglars not to steal or break into homes. There is a general assumption that crimes are committed by bad people who are not receptive to society’s messages that they should not steal, rob, burgle, or rape — messages that are conveyed, among other things, by penalties for these crimes.
- Rape culture is when the lyrics of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” mirror the words of actual rapists and is still the number one song in the country.
This claim comes from a popular blogpost on the Pacific Standard website comparing the lyrics of the controversial song to words reportedly used by rapists — such as “I know you want it.”[34] But by that standard, “I love you” and “Give me a kiss” can also be considered hallmarks of a rape song: one woman’s account mentions her rapist saying both,[35] and a 2014 post on the website XOJane was titled “My Rapist Said ‘I Love You.’”[36] As National Public Radio critic Ann Powers has pointed out, Thicke’s offending line is no different from lyrics used by a number of female pop stars, including feminist icon Beyoncé Knowles.[37] And some of the other comparisons in the post are dubious at best: thus, “The way you grab me,/Must wanna get nasty” is equated with, “It wasn’t rape. You were being such a tease.”
- Rape culture is when the mainstream media mourns the end of the convicted Steubenville rapists’ football careers and does not mention the young girl who was victimized.
This is an egregious, and widespread, misrepresentation of a CNN segment on the sentencing of the Steubenville perpetrators in March 2013. The segment sparked a storm of social media outrage because correspondent Poppy Harlow, host Candy Crowley, and legal expert Paul Callan were seen as too sympathetic to the offenders in discussing their reaction to the sentence and the effects of the conviction on their lives.[38] The backlash included widely repeated claims that there was “not one word about the victim”[39] from any of the participants — an assertion that also found its way into a petition demanding an apology from CNN.[40]
But in fact, a look at the transcript shows that the segment had extensive references to the victim. [41] After describing one of the young men’s emotional reaction to the sentence, Harlow said, “Very serious crime here. Both found guilty of raping this 16-year-old girl at a series of parties back in August, alcohol-fueled parties.” Crowley then pointed out how young both the perpetrators and the victim were. After Callan discussed the impact on the offenders, Crowley turned back to Harlow with a reminder about “the 16-year-old victim, her life, never the same again.” Harlow agreed and added, “The last thing she wanted to do was sit on that stand and testify. She didn’t want to bring these charges. She said it was up to her parents.” The segment ended with Harlow relaying her conversation with the girl’s mother who said that she felt “pity” for the two young men.
In her effort to prove that rape culture is real, Maxwell also invokes dire statistics: “Is 1 in 5 American women surviving rape or attempted rape a cultural norm?” But that figure is based on a Centers for Disease Control survey loaded with leading questions so shoddily worded that they are very likely to elicit responses based on consensual drunk sex. Ironically, based on the same questions, men report being “forced to penetrate” a woman during the past twelve months as frequently as women report being raped by a man.[42] Either the CDC numbers considerably overstate sexual violence, or “rape culture” is a two-way street.
The issue of male victims highlights another problem with rape-culture theory. Early feminist polemics against “rape culture” tended to argue that child sexual abuse was another form of patriarchal violence targeting female victims. Thus, in the introduction to the 1982 collection, “Voices in the Night: Women Speaking About Incest,” editors Toni McNaron and Yarrow Morgan asserted that “approximately one out of three girl children experiences sexual abuse in her family” and that “approximately 97% of all victims of sexual abuse are girls and not boys,” which they concluded must “place incest within the context of a sexist culture.”[43] Such a claim cannot be sustained today when sexual victimization of boys has been studied far more extensively. Maxwell states that one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. But if such abuse is also part of “the rape culture,” this raises confusing questions about the feminist analysis: why would a misogynistic and homophobic patriarchy condone the sexual abuse of male children, mostly by other males?
While the existence of a “rape culture” in modern liberal democracies is a myth sustained by misinformation, this myth has real and dangerous consequences.
For one, the rape culture myth is highly damaging to the basic principles of fairness to the accused, since these principles themselves — such as according the accused the presumption of innocence instead of “believing the survivor,” or using the accuser’s conduct to assess her credibility or her consent — are viewed as a part of “rape culture.” According to Maxwell, “We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says.”[44] On a similar note, writer and Humanist Society activist Ashley Jordan writes that in order to end rape culture, we must “stop wondering if a victim is telling the truth or not.” (“Victim,” of course, is anyone claiming to have been raped.)[45]
The National Organization for Women, America’s premier feminist group, seems willing to extend the benefit of the doubt even to a proven liar such as “Jackie,” the young woman whose story of a brutal fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia was exposed as a hoax shortly after being published in Rolling Stone magazine in 2014.[46] In early 2016, the organization publicly deplored the fact that UVA dean Nicole Eramo, who had sued Rolling Stone for defamation over her portrayal as a callous bureaucrat, wanted Jackie to turn over her communications with the magazine and with others related to her claim of rape. In an open letter to UVA president Teresa Sullivan, NOW wrote, “It is exactly this kind of victim blaming and shaming that fosters rape culture, re-victimizes those brave enough to have come forward, and silences countless other victims.”[47]
While there no rape suspects in the UVA case, the same mentality can certainly affect cases in which specific men are accused.
In 2013, Columbia University student Paul Nungesser was accused by fellow student Emma Sulkowicz of brutally attacking her in the midst of an encounter that had begun as consensual; Sulkowicz claimed that Nungesser hit her in the face, choked her, and anally penetrated her against her will. Nungesser was cleared by a college hearing despite procedural rules heavily favoring the complainant. Sulkowicz then went public, taking her grievance to the media, and eventually garnered notoriety by carrying a mattress around campus as a symbol of her victimization.[48] Nungesser, named as a rapist in bathroom graffiti and increasingly ostracized on campus, eventually spoke to the press as well. An article by the present author revealed that Sulkowicz remained friendly with him for weeks after the alleged rape, as shown by Facebook messages in which she accepted his invitation to a party (even agreeing to bring other young women with her), invited him to “hang out” and have a “chill sesh,” and responded to his birthday wishes with, “I love you Paul!”[49]
In the legal system, this would have been seen as extremely strong exculpatory evidence — almost certainly leading to an acquittal or, more likely, a dismissal of the charges without trial. (Interestingly, the campus panel that exonerated Nungesser did not see these messages, excluded from evidence under the rules of the disciplinary proceedings.) Yet feminists overwhelmingly rallied to Sulkowicz’s defense, arguing that her behavior should not be seen as evidence in Nungesser’s favor since women usually don’t act like “perfect victims” after a rape.[50]
More recently, after pornographic film actor James Deen was accused of rape by a former girlfriend, a fellow adult performer known as Stoya, feminist comedian and activist Gaby Dunn told several people in private communications that were later leaked that she had strong reasons to think Stoya was lying. Yet she would not say so publicly, despite the fact that Deen was a friend. Dunn explained her motives thus:
I think women should be believed when they make accusations. I just happen to know this is the rare 1 percent of situations in which this is false. But more than that, I don’t want to contribute to a culture where people accuse women of lying about sexual assault. I understand why people believe Stoya and they should believe sex workers can be raped. They should believe women. It has a larger impact on all victims to say she is lying so I won’t do it publicly. The damage is done to him. But I don’t want there to be more damage to real victims by disparaging Stoya.[55]
Whether Dunn actually knows something that undercuts Stoya’s claim is impossible to tell. (Deen was later accused of sexual assault or misconduct by several other women; however, none of them filed a formal complaint, and a look at those claims reveals serious credibility problems for at least some accusers.)[56] But the mere fact that someone believes she has information that exonerates a person accused of a repugnant crime yet chooses to withhold that information for ideological reasons illustrates the dangerous zealotry of rape-culture feminism.
For now, this ideology has had limited impact on the judicial system, though it has strongly affected college disciplinary proceedings. But its potential cultural impact goes beyond that. Since films, songs, and other forms of art and entertainment are seen as perpetuating “rape culture,” this zealotry is a powerful call for ideological culture-policing. The backlash against “Blurred Lines,” banned from many college campuses, is one clear example of this.[57] Films such as Say Anything, American Pie, and The Notebook have been denounced as rape-culture vehicles because they show men romantically pursuing women after a rejection, or show a “nerdy” unattractive man winning the love of a gorgeous woman (which supposedly feeds a mentality of “male entitlement”), or portray men “drinking and finding a girl to hook up with.”[58]
Outside entertainment, too, the rape culture myth has a pernicious effect on freedom of speech — particularly on campus. One of the tenets of rape-culture ideology, after all, is that the denial of rape culture it itself contributes to rape culture. Thus, in the aftermath of the Ohio University “rape” in October 2013, a letter in the student newspaper from journalism major Tom Pernecker questioned the existence of a pervasive “culture of rape” and suggested that a drunken sexual encounter should not be equated with rape.[59] A response from another student promptly accused Pernecker himself of “perpetuating” rape culture in his letter.[60]
Around the same time, The Badger Herald, the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, published a letter by junior David Hookstead titled, “‘Rape Culture’ Does Not Exist.” Among its arguments: rape happens because “bad people exist,” not because our culture condones it; song lyrics that sexually degrade women do not prove the existence of a “rape culture” in America any more than song lyrics glorifying killers prove the existence of a “murder culture”; slogans such as “we must teach our sons not to rape” disregard the fact that everyone knows rape is illegal and that people also rob and steal despite being taught not to; sometimes, women who regret having drunk sex claim they were too drunk to remember what happened.[61]
The outrage that followed was so strong that the next day, the paper’s editor-in-chief Katherine Krueger penned a column explaining her decision to run the letter. Krueger described Hookstead’s opinions as “morally repugnant,” “offensive,” “horrifically misguided,” “repellent,” “hateful,” “ugly,” and “reprehensible.” She also assured readers that the letter was published “after careful deliberation and debate” with other editors, in order to shine the light of day on such hideous ideas and allow them to be “torn limb from limb.” Indeed, Krueger asserted that the letter itself was evidence that “rape culture is alive, well and thriving on the University of Wisconsin campus.”[62]
In this atmosphere, it’s hardly surprising that a debate held at Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) in November 2014 between feminist author Jessica Valenti and individualist feminist Wendy McElroy, who is critical of the concept of “rape culture,” drew impassioned protests from students upset that McElroy would be allowed to present her point of view. While the school scheduled an alternative lecture on “the rape culture” in the same time slot and provided a “safe space” counseling session for students traumatized by the debate, many activists were still unhappy that the event was taking place: according to Undergraduate Council of Students president Maahika Srinivasan, it meant “backtracking from the forward direction that we’ve been moving in.”[63]
At least on that occasion, the campus newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald, backed free speech.[64] In April 2015, when Georgetown University College Republicans in Washington, DC invited contrarian feminist author Christina Hoff Sommers — a critic of the concept of “rape culture” — to speak, the campus daily, The Hoya, published an editorial asserting that “[b]y giving Sommers a platform, GUCR has knowingly endorsed a harmful conversation on the serious topic of sexual assault.” According to the editorial, “Rape culture is a system that thrives on silence. Students cannot allow Georgetown’s sexual assault discourse to be subdued by those who would downplay the problem at hand.”
Of course, discourse can hardly be “subdued” by a speaker with a differing viewpoint. But given how much “rape culture” rhetoric relies on misinformation and distortion, it is hardly surprising that its proponents would seek to silence debate. It is all the more imperative for those with a commitment to facts and freedom to challenge this narrative.
END NOTES
[1] See, e.g., “List of Rape Myths,” University of Minnesota-Duluth. Online at http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/myths.html
[2] For an overview see Vivian Berger, “Man’s Trial, Woman’s Tribulation: Rape Cases in the Courtroom,” Columbia Law Review 77, 1977, pp. 2–103, and Susan Estrich, “Rape,” Yale Law Journal 95, 1986, pp. 1087–1184.
[3] Wendy Kaminer, “Feminism’s Identity Crisis,” The Atlantic, October 1993. Online at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/10/feminisms-identity-crisis/304921/
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[4] See, e.g., “List of Rape Myths,” University of Minnesota-Duluth. An overview of these claims can be found in Edward Greer, “The Truth behind Legal Dominance Feminism’s Two Percent False Rape Claim Figure,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 33, 2000, pp. 947–972. Online at http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol33/iss3/3/
[5] Greer, “The Truth behind Legal Dominance Feminism’s Two Percent False Rape Claim Figure.”
[6] See, e.g., Amanda Marcotte, “4 Things You Should Know About Fake Rape Accusations,” AlterNet, December 10, 2014. Online at http://www.alternet.org/gender/4-things-you-should-know-about-fake-rape-accusations
[7] See Cathy Young, “Crying Rape: False Accusations Exist, and They Are a Serious Problem,” Slate, September 18, 2014. Online at http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/09/false_rape_accusations_why_must_be_pretend_they_never_happen.html
[8] Sarah Beaulieu, “The Truth About False Accusation,” The Enliven Project, December 1, 2012, online at http://theenlivenproject.com/the-truth-about-false-accusation/; “97 of Every 100 Rapists Receive No Punishment, RAINN Analysis Shows,” RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), undated, online at https://rainn.org/news-room/97-of-every-100-rapists-receive-no-punishment.
[9] Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “The truth about a viral graphic on rape statistics,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2014, online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/09/the-truth-about-a-viral-graphic-on-rape-statistics/
[10] Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth (eds.), Transforming a Rape Culture; Minneapolis (MN): Milkwood Editions, 1993, p. vii.
[11] Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. New York: Ballantine, 1993 (reprinted edition), p. 15.
[12] See Susan Bridle, “No Man’s Land: An Interview with Mary Daly,” Enlighten Next magazine, Fall/Winter 1999.
[13] See Margalit Fox, “Mary Daly, a Leader in Feminist Theology, Dies at 81,” The New York Times, January 6, 2010, p. B20.
[14] Judy Norsigian, “Rape Culture,” Women & Health, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1975, pp. 29–30. Accessed online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J013v01n01_07#preview.
[15] See Mario B. Mignone, Italy Today: Facing the Challenges of the New Millennium; New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008, p. 238.
[16] See, e.g., Berger, “Man’s Trial, Woman’s Tribulation,” and Estrich, “Rape.”
[17] Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York: Scribner, 1936; Rosemary Rogers, Sweet Savage Love, New York: Avon, 1974.
[18] See, e.g., David G. Savage, “Death for Rape: An Echo of the Past,” ABA Journal, April 1, 2008, online at http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/death_for_rape_an_echo_of_the_past
[19] Alana Prochuk, “Rape Culture is Real — And Yes, We’ve Had Enough,” WAVAW.ca, April 18, 2013. Online at http://www.wavaw.ca/rape-culture-is-real-and-yes-weve-had-enough/
[20] Jessica Valenti, “America’s Rape Problem: We Refuse to Admit That There Is One,” TheNation.com, January 4, 2013. Online at http://www.thenation.com/blog/172024/americas-rape-problem-we-refuse-admit-there-one.
[21] See Kim Geiger, “Joe Donnelly triumphs over Richard Mourdock in Indiana Senate race,” Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2012.
[22] See Ariel Levy, “Trial by Twitter,” The New Yorker, August 5, 2013, p. 38.
[23] See, e.g., “Girls Beat Up Classmate, Post Video Online,” NBC Bay Area, November 30, 2009, online at http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Girls-Beat-Up-Classmate-Posted-Video-Online-78136947.html; Mike Celizic, “Teens videotape beating as revenge for online posts,” Today News (NBC), April 8, 2008, online at http://www.today.com/id/24009077/ns/today-today_news/t/teens-videotape-beating-revenge-online-posts/
[24] See David Lohr, “Anthony Resetarits, Joseph Resetarits Charged In Beer Bottle Sodomy Of Juvenile,” The Huffington Post, October 10, 2012; online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/anthony-joseph-resetarits-beer-bottle-sodomy_n_1955080.html. The case eventually ended with guilty pleas to minor charges of harassment. Carey Restino, “Resetarits brothers plead guilty to lesser charges,” Homer Tribune, March 13, 2015.
[25] Irin Carmon, “California court: Victim wasn’t married, rape conviction reversed,” Salon, January 4, 2013, online at http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/california_court_victim_wasnt_married_rape_conviction_reversed/.
[26] Dennis Romero, “Julio Morales, Once Freed After Raping a Sleeping Woman, Heads to Prison,” LA Weekly, May 9, 2014; online at http://www.laweekly.com/news/julio-morales-once-freed-after-raping-a-sleeping-woman-heads-to-prison-4641495
[27] “California Rape Loophole Closed Thanks To New Law Signed By Gov. Jerry Brown,” The Huffington Post, September 19, 2013, online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/10/california-rape-loophole_n_3902734.html. See also Sherry F. Colb, Rape by Deception, Rape by Impersonation, and a New California Bill,” Justia.com, May 1, 2013, online at https://verdict.justia.com/2013/05/01/rape-by-deception-rape-by-impersonation-and-a-new-california-bill.
[28] Soraya Chemaly, “Number of States in Which Rapists Can Sue For Custody and Visitation Rights — 31 — and Other Shocking Rape Facts,” Alternet.org, October 28, 2012. Online at http://www.alternet.org/gender/number-states-which-rapists-can-sue-custody-and-visitation-rights-31-and-other-shocking-rape
[29] Shauna R. Prewitt, “Giving Birth to a ‘Rapist’s Child’: A Discussion and Analysis of the Limited Legal Protections Afforded to Women Who Become Mothers Through Rape,” The Georgetown Law Journal, v. 98, 2010, pp. 827–262. Whether the problem does, in fact, exist is unclear: Prewitt mentions several women who have written to her about having to share custody with men who raped them, but it appears that none of these examples involve convicted rapists. Id., pp. 832–833.
[30] Zerlina Maxwell, “Rape Culture Is Real,” Time.com, March 27, 2014, online at http://time.com/40110/rape-culture-is-real/ See also Caroline Kitchens, “It’s Time to End ‘Rape Culture’ Hysteria,” Time.com, March 20, 2014, online at http://time.com/30545/its-time-to-end-rape-culture-hysteria/
[31] Allan Smith, “Onlookers Detail Alleged Court Street Rape,” The Post (Athens, Ohio), October 17, 2013. Online at http://www.thepostathens.com/news/local/article_48c7494f-655b-580c-ada5-69dbd198a8db.html
[32] Jim Phillips, “Grand jury says no charges warranted in controversial uptown public sex incident,” The Athens News, October 28, 2013. Accessed at http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-40973-grand-jury-says-no-charges-warranted-in-controversial-uptown-public-sex-incident.html.
[33] Molly Risola, “‘Rape culture’ term does apply to OU” (letter to the editor), The Post, January 28, 2014. Accessed at http://www.thepostathens.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_ed3412a1-db0a-549f-a8f3-0b66008811d3.html
[34] Sezin Koehler, “From the Mouths of Rapists: The Lyrics of Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’,” Pacific Standard, September 19, 2013, online at http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/mouths-rapists-lyrics-robin-thickes-blurred-lines-66569.
[35] “My Story by ‘Jane,’” Sexual Assault Support Services of Midcoast Maine, 2011, online at http://sassmm.org/my-story-by-jane/.
[36] “It Happened To Me: My Rapist Said ‘I Love You,’” XOJane, August 29, 2014, online at http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/rapist-said-i-love-you
[37] Ann Powers, “When Pop Stars Flirt With Bad Taste,” NPR.org, August 13, 2013, online at http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2013/07/02/198097817/the-record-when-pop-stars-flirt-with-danger.
[38] See Erik Wemple, “CNN is getting hammered for Steubenville coverage,” The Washington Post, March 18, 2012, online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/03/18/cnn-is-getting-hammered-for-steubenville-coverage/; Anita Li, “CNN Reporter Labeled ‘Rape Apologist’ After Steubenville Comments,” Mashable, March 18, 2013, online at http://mashable.com/2013/03/18/cnn-rape-apologist-steubenville/.
[39] Tweet by UniteWomenOrg, March 17, 2013, online at https://twitter.com/UniteWomenOrg/status/313486036913225729.
[40] “Petitioning CNN: Apologize on air for sympathizing with the Steubenville rapists,” Change.org, March 18, 2013, online at https://www.change.org/p/cnn-apologize-on-air-for-sympathizing-with-the-steubenville-rapists
[41] CNN Reliable Sources, March 17, 2013, transcript at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1303/17/rs.01.html.
[42] For a detailed analysis see Cathy Young, “The CDC’s Rape Numbers Are Misleading,” Time.com, September 17, 2014, online at http://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/ For the CDC study see Matthew Breiding et al., “Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization — National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), September 5, 2014, v. 63, pp. 1–18; online at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm
[43] Toni A.H. McNaron and Yarrow Morgan (eds.), Voices in the Night: Women Speaking About Incest, Minneapolis, Minn.: Cleis Press, 1982, pp. 14–15. Quoted in Tomoko Kuribayashi and Julie Ann Tharp (eds.), Creating Safe Space: Violence and Women’s Writing, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997, p. 3.
[44] Zerlina Maxwell, “No matter what Jackie said, we should generally believe rape claims,” The Washington Post, December 6, 2014, online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/no-matter-what-jackie-said-we-should-automatically-believe-rape-claims/. The original headline on the article read, “No matter what Jackie said, we should automatically believe rape claims.”
[45] Ashley Jordan, “TIME Magazine is Wrong. Rape Culture Does Exist,” TheHumanist.com, April 3, 2014. Online at http://thehumanist.com/commentary/time-magazine-is-wrong-rape-culture-does-exist
[46] See Cathy Young, “Why Can’t We Call the UVA Case a Hoax?”, Reason.com, April 1, 2015, online at https://reason.com/archives/2015/04/01/why-cant-we-call-the-uva-case-a-hoax
[47] Dean Seal, “NOW says UVA dean’s strategy in lawsuit ‘undermines’ sexual assault victims,” The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress, January 8, 2016. Online at http://www.roanoke.com/news/virginia/now-says-uva-dean-s-strategy-in-lawsuit-undermines-sexual/article_082e5f35-2ed0-5167-8a96-344df51092dc.html
[48] Vanessa Grigoriadis, “Meet the College Women Who Are Starting a Revolution Against Campus Sexual Assault,” New York, September 21, 2014; online at http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/09/emma-sulkowicz-campus-sexual-assault-activism.html
[49] Cathy Young, “Columbia Student: I Didn’t Rape Her,” The Daily Beast, February 3, 2015. Online at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/03/columbia-student-i-didn-t-rape-her.html
[50] For a summary of these reactions see Cathy Young, “Flawed Narratives, Pefect Victims, and the Columbia Rape Allegations,” RealClearPolitics, February 5, 2015, online at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/02/05/flawed_narratives_perfect_victims_and_the_columbia_rape_allegations_125509.html
[51] Allan Smith, “Onlookers Detail Alleged Court Street Rape,” The Post (Athens, Ohio), October 17, 2013. Online at http://www.thepostathens.com/news/local/article_48c7494f-655b-580c-ada5-69dbd198a8db.html
[52] Jim Phillips, “Grand jury says no charges warranted in controversial uptown public sex incident,” The Athens News, October 28, 2013. Online at http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-40973-grand-jury-says-no-charges-warranted-in-controversial-uptown-public-sex-incident.html.
[53] Allan Smith, “Notes left on bank lead to complaint against APD officer,” The Post, October 28, 2013. Online at http://www.thepostathens.com/news/article_006953af-f6eb-5399-8a10-835729f054d4.html
[54] Molly Risola, “‘Rape culture’ term does apply to OU” (letter to the editor), The Post, January 28, 2014. Online at http://www.thepostathens.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_ed3412a1-db0a-549f-a8f3-0b66008811d3.html
[55] Cathy Young, “James Deen Rape Allegations: Reasonable Doubt in a Broken Media Narrative,” Medium, December 18, 2015. Online at https://medium.com/@CathyYoung63/james-deen-rape-allegations-reasonable-doubt-in-a-broken-media-narrative-104fd6064c09
[56] Young, ibid.
[57] “Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines gets banned at another university: More than 20 university unions around Britain have now banned Robin Thicke’s hit for its sexual politics,” The Guardian, November 12, 2013, online at http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/12/robin-thicke-blurred-lines-banned-another-university. See also Eric Owens, “North Carolina student gets DJ banned over ‘Blurred Lines’ because of ‘rape culture’,” The Daily Caller, April 10, 2014, online at
[58] For one of many examples of such critiques see Zerlina Maxwell, “Rape Culture Is Everywhere Our Children Can See — Watch Your Favorite Movies Prove It,” Mic.com, July 30, 2014. Online at http://mic.com/articles/94844/rape-culture-is-everywhere-our-children-can-see-watch-your-favorite-movies-prove-it
[59] Tom Pernecker, “Rape culture not prevalent on OU campus” (letter to the editor), The Post, October 16, 2013. Online at http://www.thepostathens.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_57cc3882-35f9-58e5-925d-617ddbba2885.html
[60] Ashley Labaki, “Rape culture is certainly prevalent,” The Post, October 16, 2013. Online at http://www.thepostathens.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_60fd99c0-85fd-508b-b19c-e1fd43395b7d.html
[61] Letter to the Editor, “‘Rape culture’ does not exist,” The Badger Herald, November 4, 2013. Accessed online at http://badgerherald.com/oped/2013/11/04/rape-culture-does-not-exist/
[62] Katherine Krueger, “Letter serves as ugly reminder of rape culture on campus,” The Badger Herald, November 5, 2013. Accessed online at http://badgerherald.com/oped/2013/11/05/letter-serves-ugly-reminder-rape-culture-campus/
[63] Camilla Brandfield-Harvey and Caroline Kelly, “Janus Forum sexual assault event sparks controversy,” The Brown Daily Herald, November 17, 2014; online at http://www.browndailyherald.com/2014/11/17/janus-forum-sexual-assault-event-sparks-controversy/.
[64] “Editorial: Janus Forum and the freedom of expression,” Brown Daily Herald, November 18, 2014.
