This is something that happens, pretty much, just to women. Slut Shaming is when women and girls are attacked, put down, gossiped about and laughed at for breaking the ‘supposed rules’ of being a female in this world. A girl or woman might be called nasty words for having consensual sex, she might be called the s-l-u-t word because there are rumours or people think that she is having sex or engaging in sexual activity. She might cop slut shaming for flirting with someone she likes, or for wearing a skirt or worst of all, for having non-consensual sex (that means a girl/ woman who is raped gets called a s-l-u-t/ w-h-o-r-e/ other-horrible-name).
It’s pretty silly isn’t it? It’s not just in music vids though – it seems that a lot of popular culture believes that women should be half (or mostly!) naked while the men that they are dancing around are fully clothed. This buys in to the idea that women are sexually available ALL of the time and that men want sex ALL of the time and are entitled to sex all of the time – but not with real women, only with sexually available women who are skinny, tanned, big breasted, big bootied and very flexible. Doesn’t sound much like real life does it?
Lots of people who make jokes about rape probably really hate the idea of rape but because it’s a joke, it seems ok. When we make jokes about rape – even if we know that rape is wrong – we are telling potential rapists and victims that hear the joke, that rape is not something that is taken seriously. We are re-enforcing that victims of rape should not tell anyone and there’s nothing really wrong with it anyway. Rape jokes make light of rape and rape in any circumstance, is not funny.
Rape culture is a complex series of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy. In a rape culture, both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life and that there is nothing that anyone can do to change that. It’s a culture that teaches, “Don’t get raped” instead of “Don’t rape”. It is a culture where men are expected to be hyper-masculine (aggressive, tough, and violent) and women are expected to be submissive and sexually objectified (compliant, passive, and sexually available). Clearly, this belief is wrong. Most men are not sexually violent. And no woman ever ‘asks’ to be raped. The problem is that rape culture limits us to behaving in one particular way and people are so much more than some dumb stereotype sold to us by people that want our money.
