Rape: A Carefully Scripted Storyline
By: Elsie Tape
Tags: Drinking, Slut Shaming, Masculinity, Victim Blaming, Rape

Insight on how to deter and define rape.

Complicated cases often occur between two people who know each other well.

Rape culture today is perpetuated through victim blaming, slut-shaming, and misogynistic behaviors. All of which conclusively discredit women as rape victims, and place them under a negative light. This unlawful sexual advance has always been deeply rooted on the sexual objectification and degradation of women. Consequently, all rape cases share a common structure and underlying factors. However, the way in which rape takes place, and its arrangement of relations between the victim and assailant is very complex. The way in which an attacker goes about his victim varies from case to case, making it difficult to define rape.

For example, in many rape cases, women are forced to take a passive-aggressive position. Because it is hard for women to physically defend themselves against men, they physically take a submissive stand point. Women assume that it is safer to comply with the command of their attacker, rather than fight him off. This decision is made out of fear that the situation will escalate negatively, or that he will use violence against her for more control, making the situation more violent and or painful.

Showing compliance to one’s attacker brings a great deal of emotional toll on victims. However, as a woman, it takes mental strength to simply accept or yield to a superior force and allow them to have their way with you. This same mental strength however, can be used to deter an assailant before casual circumstances intensify into more suggestive scenarios which in turn lead to lewd unwanted advances against victims. However, many victims are docile as a result of overexposure to rape. These women are desensitized to rape and view it as something that is bound to happen between a man and a women. Mary E. Hawkesworth describes this manner of thinking when she pinpoints the belief that women are always in one of two positions: already raped or already rapable. Unfortunately, many women share this belief. What they fail to realize is that being able to identify the actions that lead to rape and then being able to stop these actions and completely deter an attacker makes that much of a difference.

As a woman, it is important to be able to tell when a man is laying out a platform that favors his desires while going against yours. This way, you can easily remove yourself from the situation as whole. Eliminating the issue of “miscommunication.” Oftentimes, especially when there is lack of consent, or the “absence of a no,” attackers assume that they can have their way with victims. They use suggestive strategies as ways to get permission without explicitly getting sexual approval, slowly roping in their victims and constructing a platform where rape is feasible. And, because rape isn’t planned, and women don’t become victims until the moment they engage in sexual intercourse by force, assailant’s unlawful sexual advances are facilitated in this manner, as Sharon Marcus suggests in “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics and Rape Prevention.“

Time and time again, men assume that a “lack of” any confirmation is a “permission” to continue using this as a reason or justification for their sexual advances. What starts off as casual and friendly to a woman can be perceived as suggestive and welcoming to a man. Because of this visual and social disconnect as well as the lack of consent, it is easy for miscommunication to occur. However, for some reason this miscommunication is always in favor of the male and disadvantages the woman. This is ultimately because all gestures attackers make towards potential victims has an underlying preconception that follows or corresponds. Although that may not be clear to the victim, it is undoubtedly scripted in the assailant’s head, as if he has the power to dictate what a woman’s actions mean.

The judicial system does not always serve complete justice for victims of rape. The system is only so effective for rape cases that are complicated and slowly carried out. Not all cases are violent and abrupt, with clear-cut elements of unlawful sexual advances. There are cases where victims are or happen to be unconscious, coerced, deluded, and so on. In addition to these varying states of mind, the lack of proper communication is also what makes these cases so unclear. But what is so unclear about the absence of a yes? The power dynamic associated with men or masculinity must be dismantled so that there is room for women to stand up for themselves. Women are only granted a sense of power after having been raped, once the case is taken to court. Marcus touches on this affair by pinpointing that it is assumed that men are granted the power to rape and that only the best of them are dissuaded not to, as if the matter itself isn’t wrong and isn’t for the woman to decide upon. Their interactions are scripted, she says, as if rape is supposed to be a trick or catch for women. A scheme the man creates to sway women against their own interests. Marcus asserts that an assailant’s tactics will fail if the victim fails to follow her expected course of actions. In such a stratagem rape becomes a process of sexist gendering as Marcus defines it. Because the system is so effective and men are only so noble, women cannot rely on neither to come to their senses and save them. Victims must strategize just as much as their attackers, if not more.