why do you conflate your personal (and therefore inherently biased in a number of ways) anecdotal experience with that of a society and culture of billions of people?

@timothycarter – I’m glad you see the usefulness in rape culture as a schema for understanding the positionality of women; that said, are you sure that the “murder culture” in southern states has to do with murder? who is committing all that murder? could it instead have to do with masculinity? “hegemonic masculinity” is an interesting idea that scholars of sociology have used for situations like that, you might wanna look into it.

I know everyone has said this before but from my assessment the word “feminist” is more trouble than its worth. “Lesbian feminist” or “social constructionist feminist” is specific enough to be useful, but “feminist” alone is giving more ammo to ideological angry people on the internet to work with, than it is useful for unifying (ha, “feminists”, unified?) a movement that needs to be critically rethought in light of modern analyses and research into gender construction. Have you as a psychologist read “The Gender Trap” by Emily D. Kane? How about Cordelia Fine’s “Delusions of Gender”? Or even Lorber’s Breaking the Bowls?

In the sociology course I took this past semester, we examined the history of sexuality in the USA, and two of the articles we read suggested that many of the indigenous American groups along the Atlantic coast did not have rape cultures – something that ironically led the European colonists to consider them sinful savages. I didn’t get a big Noble Savage vibe from either of the texts, so I don’t think they were falling into the trap of idealizing the Other.

I would love to read more about this. Do you remember the sources?

Yes*; fundamentally, a non-rape culture is one in which everyone’s right to bodily autonomy and self-determination is always accepted without question (such a culture would – beyond simply not accepting rape as inevitable – not malign trans people’s rights to bodily agency, women’s right to control their fertility and procreation, children’s rights to self-determination in opposition to their parents’ desires, etc.). It is a culture that does not view sex as something people “get” from each other, but as a shared activity for mutual enjoyment (like riding bikes, for example). It would be characterized by a lack of sexual stigma. (Hetero)Sexual experience and (hetero)sexual performance would not be definitive aspects of masculinity, nor would sexual inexperience and naivete be aspects of femininity (along with the paradoxical objectification and presumed sexual availability of women). Economically, it would be characterized by mutuality and equity – exploitation, gaining an advantage at another’s disadvantage, and simply taking because one can are existing, prevalent, normative, even celebrated (though also widely contested) economic behaviors that are highly congruent with (and I would argue supportive of) extant rape culture. I could go on for a while, but I’ll presume you’re getting the idea.

In the sociology course I took this past semester, we examined the history of sexuality in the USA, and two of the articles we read suggested that many of the indigenous American groups along the Atlantic coast did not have rape cultures – something that ironically led the European colonists to consider them sinful savages. I didn’t get a big Noble Savage vibe from either of the texts, so I don’t think they were falling into the trap of idealizing the Other.

Groups of young children who have not yet been heavily socialized can offer insight into possibilities as well – we see lots of mutual cooperation in play, freedom of association, sharing, and a general lack of coercion, as most young children have not yet learned to (nor how to) coerce and manipulate others (though they pick this one up quickly).

*All of what follows is highly speculative. We’re in the realm of contested cultural theory, here, and much of what I’m suggesting is the result of my own theorizing through a decade in academic Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, and Queer Theory.

I should perhaps note that I am firmly in the camp of believing that sticking one’s finger (or anything else) in ANY orifice of another person without hir consent is unacceptable – that this sort of behavior is FURTHER minimized if it’s not a sexual violation is a distinct, if related, issue we’ll have to address. (And if we focus on bodily autonomy, we can address it at the same time!)

Actually, this is another claim I frequently see (in blog/article comments, far less in professional/academic publications) – that rape is ONLY about power and not sex. I think rape is about using sex as a vector for exercising non-consensual power, for violating someone’s sexual agency. But rape definitionally has something to do with sex: stabbing someone is a violation of bodily autonomy involving non-consensual penetration, but we don’t call it “rape” unless it’s a sexualized orifice that’s stabbed.

I occasionally see the related claim that rape has nothing to do with sex for victims/survivors, even if it does for rapists, but I also dispute this. If a violation of bodily autonomy isn’t experienced as a sexual violation, it’s generally not going to be considered rape – for example, the sense of violation resulting from a “wet willie” non-consensual finger-in-the-ear is not sexualized and is thus (generally) very different from non-consensual penetration of the vagina or anus with a finger.

I see this ALL THE TIME, and it drives me batty, as it functionally reifies what would otherwise be a straw argument. Miri does a great job of teasing out the difference, but I’ve had to point out more than once that we blame people for others breaking into their cars if they leave something visible or for others mugging them if they’re drunk or waking in a “bad neighborhood” at night etc. The fact that victim-blaming is PART of rape culture doesn’t mean it’s UNIQUE to rape culture, and acknowledging this actually strengthens the position, not undermines it.