Rape culture exists in North America

This is my final rebuttal of the debate. Definitions will be very important for my arguments. From Round 1, we have the following definitions:Rape CultureThe beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place or time that trivialize rape, or suggest that rape is acceptable in certain circumstancesRapeUnlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will of a person or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consentThese two definitions are agreed upon by both Pro and Con, and are not up for debate.I will add a third definition:TrivializeTo make something seem less important or serious than it actually is [22, 23]With those defined, I will move on to my rebuttal of Con's arguments from last round, in reverse order.Rebuttal of Con's ArgumentsAs per the definition, an aspect of rape culture is the trivialization of rape. This means making unlawful sexual activity seem less serious than it actually is. Con wrote "[Trump] was stating that his words were not serious." This is true. In 2005, Donald Trump said that he sexually assaults women. [14] Then in 2016, he said that was just joking about sexual assault [17. 18], as if this cleared him from promoting rape culture. But it doesn't.Joking about sexual assault is making it seem less serious than it is. That is trivializing sexual assault. That is rape culture. Saying he regrets it is not enough. Of course he regrets it, it severely hurt him in the polls. Saying he wasn't proud of it is not enough, either. As long as he keeps trivializing sexual assault by using the "locker room talk" excuse, he is still promoting rape culture. The remainder of my argument still stands: Those voting for Trump are working to put a leader and role model in office who promotes rape culture. Therefore, by simply supporting Trump, they are furthering rape culture in America. I'll repeat the analogy I used in the last round:"To put it a different way, everyone who voted for Hitler furthered the anti-Semitic cause, even if they themselves were not anti-Semitic. Similarly, over 40% of Americans polled are contributing to the promotion of rape culture, even though many may not personally agree with the idea."---Con said it was likely "that many people who supported [Trump] didn't think that he was serious too, they perhaps thoughts he was joking around."The definition of rape culture includes trivializing (e.g. joking) about sexual assault. Therefore, the belief that joking about sexual assault acceptable is a belief grounded in rape culture. Trump supporters who believe this, then, are continuing to foster rape culture.To provide another analogy, joking about lynch mobbing African Americans and hanging them contributes to anti-Black culture. So it is with jokes about sexual assault and rape culture.---In the previous round, I cited statistics that showed 47% of American voters admitted that American men, as a whole, make jokes about sexual assault, which as I showed above, promotes rape culture. Con had a couple of rebuttals of this point:"I went to the site and it said that it was 47% of voters, not Americans. I checked and roughly 200 million people in the US are voters. 47% of that is 28.9% of Americans, using America's population."Agreed. 47% of U.S. voters represents approximately 29% of all Americans. However, it is reasonable to extrapolate that the beliefs of voting Americans are roughly representative of the country as a whole. The only way you can say that only 29% of Americans don't believe American men make jokes about sexual assault is if you can prove 100% of non-voters don't believe it, which is absurdly unlikely. Regardless, both 47% and 29% fit the requirement for "Significant Minority" as set out at the beginning of the debate. "Moreover, how do we know these voters in these polls were supporting Trump's words? It is a total value, therefore including women. Some of that 28.9% may have been women expressing sexist views."Unlike my previous argument, this argument has nothing to do with supporting Trump or his words. My argument here is that over 40% of Americans believe that American men promote rape culture. You are right, in that this is not proof. They could all be wrong, or biased. However, Occam's Razor says that most likely, the majority of them are simply reporting what they see and experience in their everyday lives. Or, in other words, a significant minority of Americans see men promoting rape culture in the U.S. And that is not even considering the unreported population of women who promote rape culture. ---In the previous round we discussed rape threats, and what constitutes a threat. Con wrote:"[Threats] only constitute towards rape culture if the author of those threats expressed legitimate intention to rape. This has not been proven, all that has been proven is that they had extreme emotion towards the victim."I completely disagree and argue the exact opposite. There is absolutely no way of knowing the emotion of a writer on the internet. Someone writing a rape threat could be angry, or depressed, or excited, or horny, or sleepy. Heck, some of those rape threats could have been written by bots that have no emotion whatsoever. I can write "I AM SO ANGRY AT YOU!", and you have no idea whether I'm telling the truth, especially if that's all I write. When communicating over the internet, all we have are the words that are written, and so the words themselves are all that matter.I want to address what Con calls "legitimate intention". Writing "I will do X" states intention to do X. [24] On the internet, because we only have written words to go by, any reasonably feasible statement of intention cannot be dismissed as non-legitimate. If I write "After writing this, I will turn into a zebra", you can be pretty sure that's not legitimate. However, if I write "After writing this, I will go eat a sandwich", there is no evidence to be able to say that it is not my legitimate intention to do so. So it is with rape threats.When someone on the internet says "I will find you and rape you" there is no way to tell if the person writing it is serious or not. This can be especially troubling for someone whose name is known, or whose place of employment is known, or someone who goes to public events. Each of the three people I mentioned in Round 2 are well known in their communities, so finding them is not a difficult task. In other words, they have no proof that the threat is not "legitimate". Furthermore, even if one argues that "non-legitimate" rape threats are not serious, it is still rape culture. This is because saying they are not serious is trivializing rape, which is rape culture. ConclusionI have shown that Donald Trump promotes rape culture by trivializing his comments about sexual assault. The significant minority of Americans who support him are legitimizing his words and actions, and are thus promoting rape culture.Separately, I have shown that a significant minority of Americans report that rape culture is a regular feature in the United States, even though they themselves might not call it such.Finally, I have shown that the numerous cases of rape threats online are a part of rape culture, regardless of the intent of the writer.I have enjoyed debating with Con, and I thank Heirio for this opportunity. I am glad to see that we both agree rape culture exists in the United States, and I really appreciate how well Heirio represented my side in the comments, even if Heirio was not in full agreement of it.I wish Con a good Round 4, and I look forward to reading the feedback in the voting stage.---P.S. In the comments someone pointed out that I used a biased source, rt.com, for one example of rape threats against women (Round 2). I officially replace that citation with the following five others [25, 26, 27, 28, 29].22. http://www.merriam-webster.com...23. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com...24. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com...25. http://www.telegraph.co.uk...26. http://www.thetimes.co.uk... 27. http://www.keighleyonline.co.uk...28. http://www.portlandmercury.com...29. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk...