Rape Culture At It's Finest

Hello again, are you ready for round two? As you may have remembered, I have a passion for discussing rape culture and victim blaming. Here is some previous insight into my research on the topic. To recap, rape culture is a society that tries to justify rape, as well as other forms of sexual assault. Whereas victim blaming is putting blame on the victim as if rape is their fault.

Before I get into my personal research, I also did more online research to get more and more insight into what the internet has on my topic. What I found was a site that showed me common myths about sexual assault. Some included myths about how sexual assault cannot be performed by a spouse,  how people with disabilities are not common to be sexually assaulted, that men are not victims of sexual assault, that if you stay away from strangers you are less likely to be raped. This source showed me common ideas about sexual assault in the world, and it also showed me some statistics to break those myths. For instance, I learned that 60% of child sexual abuse cases are performed by someone the child knows outside the family, and 30% are assaulted by family members. I also learned that a person is sexually assaulted every 107 seconds, which is about a minute and a half.

In my first post, I talked more about examples of rape culture and victim blaming. In the beginning of this post, before my survey results, I am going to share some sad and shocking statistics. In my source, I read statistics that ranged from 2012-2015. Furthermore, I found that 91% of sexual assault are female, and 9% are male. I was also a little surprised to learn that eight out of ten of rape cases, the victim knew their attacker. I found these facts, and more, believably heartbreaking.

Onto my survey. After doing my research on my topic, I was really excited to get my real life research. Get to know what the people thought. Those “people” being my fellow peers in the SLA community. And in order to get the information I wanted, and the information I wanted to get was whether there were examples of rape culture and victim blaming in my own school community. So to get this information, I crafted a survey with five central questions. There was the basic question of what gender people identified with, and then I got into more heavier questions.


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This picture above shows the results from one of my questions. I asked this because I knew it would be a sneaky way of tricking my survey subjects without pressuring them into the answers I wanted. These results show how 15/44 people believe flirtatious behavior is a possible cause of rape, and 13/44 believe that revealing clothing is another cause of rape. These percentages are just to name a few.


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This was another one of my big questions I wanted answered. You might ask why. Why is this question so important? It is so important because results and percentages like are examples of rape culture. Are examples of victim blaming. People that believe modest clothing, less selfies, and ladylike behavior are the people that are representing rape culture in the SLA community.

My survey helped and taught me more about my topic. I mean, I had people I know, my own age, represent rape culture and victim blaming. And that really disappointed, upset, and saddened me. If you would like to view my full survey results, here it is.  

I am still wondering on how I can make a change in rape culture and victim blaming. Whether it be going around school and doing something, or going to a sexual assault crisis center, I am still figuring out what I want to do. What change I want to make on this issue.


For more information, check out my annotated bibliography.

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