5 Ways That We As Men Can Start Countering Rape Culture

**This piece contains trigger warnings**

As the title indicates, the post that I offer up today is about the emotionally overpowering and sensitive subject of the rape culture in this country and how we, as men, can begin to counter it and its catastrophic effects. While it affects our entire society as a whole and both men and women can be perpetrators and victims of it, for brevity’s sake in this piece, I concern myself only with the actions of us men as they are and have been directed against women in this country.

My intention with this piece is not to shock or offend anyone but to attack the apathy that so many of us men feel about this subject.

Defining Rape Culture

When defining rape culture, I like to use the definition which comes from the 1993 book, “Transforming a Rape Culture” edited by Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth. It states:

“A rape culture is a complex set of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence s 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.

In a rape culture, both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is, in fact, the expression of values and attitudes that can change.”

While it is my somber belief that most of us, as men, including myself, have in some way helped maintain the rape culture through our words and actions, I also believe that through a concerted effort and a change of attitudes upon our part, we can begin to dismantle it.

Below are five ways I believe that we can begin to counter it starting today.

1. Recognizing That It Exists

Before we can even begin to wage war upon rape culture, we must first acknowledge, as men, that it exists.

This seems to be a hard fact for a lot of us to accept even though from our earliest days as boys we are have been taught and encouraged to accept two of its cornerstone beliefs—that women are not equal to men and that we are entitled to women’s bodies in the sense that they should always be available and open to our sexual suggestions and advances.

The omnipresent normalizations of rape and sexual violence that follow these two concepts are our creations and should be further evidence to us as to the culture’s existence.

2. Believing Women

To start the healing process that is needed to treat the grievous psychological wounds of rape culture, it should be a given that if a woman claims to be a victim of a sexual offense, we, as a default response, should give her the benefit of the doubt, and believe her to the extent that she be heard.

The simple anguish, fear, dread, resistance, ridicule, and hostility that any woman potentially faces by coming forward as a victim should by itself demand that we as individuals and as a society, believe her and take her seriously.

3. Stopping and Considering

It should not be a revelation to any of us that our society deems it perfectly natural, normal, and appropriate for our sexual relations with women to involve aggressive behavior on our part.

What does this mean for us as we take on the task of combating the rape culture?

It means that we should always be stopping and considering our actions and intentions when they are of a sexual nature.

Regardless of what we think or what we have been taught, in a sexual context, “NO” always means “NO”.

4. Holding Yourself and Other Men Accountable

Amongst us men there are few bonds that are stronger or more emotional than the male-to-male bond and one of the more fruitful things that can come out of this is a sense of accountability to each other for our actions.

No lasting effective change to the rape culture is ever going to be possible or sustainable until we as men start holding ourselves and other men accountable for our wrongful sexual actions towards females.

In light of this, we should stand ever at the ready to call out and confront other men over these egregious acts because if we don’t, we are in effect silently condoning their misdeeds and allowing the rape culture to exist unchallenged.

5. Teaching Our Children

A simple definition of the word culture is that it is a way of life of a group of people which encompasses their behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, which are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.

So what does this mean for us as men, in the here and now in 2018 as we fight against the culture of rape that we have all inherited?

It means that to avoid to similarly handing it down to our sons and daughters, we should all be laser-focused on creating and educating our children about a new kind of culture, a consent culture, one in which an individual’s choices in all aspects of their lives, most especially their sexual lives, are heard and honored.

So, here it is my brothers, five ways for us to start deconstructing the insidious entity known as rape culture. Who is with me in this battle?

This piece was previously published on GoodMenProject.com