Criminal Justice

Watch “Culture of Complicity” link: https://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=https://fod-infobase-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=11854&xtid=188577Links to an external site.

DISCUSS the role of society and media on rape culture and how this influences sexual assault behaviors and victim reporting. Provide examples from the media separate from those provided in the video.

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ANSWER

The Role of Society and Media on Rape Culture and How This Influences Sexual Assault Behaviors and Victim Reporting

Introduction

Rape culture has been a sociological notion used in explaining rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment as normalized and pervasive due to individual’s attitudes in society (Peterson, 2018). Society and media have also influenced behaviors linked to sexual assault, such as victim-blaming, sex objectification, and trivializing rape. The media have also created myth acceptance among women and men but what is more treacherous are the potential societal influences of the negative approaches being shared on social sites for the people to view. On the other hand, society has created perceptions of female objectification and normalized immoral acts through video games, pornography videos, and advertisements, making sexual assault and rape thrive. This paper will focus on the different roles of society and media on rape culture and how these have influenced sexual assault behaviors and victim reporting.

The culture of complicity examines the toxic culture that has allowed sexual assault and harassment to thrive. Being in a complicit culture means that we are in a culture that perpetuates sexual harassment, witnesses the non-consensual exchanges but decides to ignore them. Having heard of a sexual harassment complaint but ignored it means that one is complicit. Men in positions of influence and power have been using complicity to objectify women and ignoring it, thus reinforcing that their behavior is acceptable. These actions have been considered harmless or well intention by society, but the sustained message conveyed in these actions in real life is harmful and dangerous.

One of the films in the culture of complicity highlights how advertisers have objectified women and the level to which their bodies have been objectified. Advertising practices have used sexualized images of women in various brands that have coincided with the objectification theory. The advertisements show how the women’s body parts are separated and distinguished from her as a person and considered physical objects to meet the sexual desires. The rape culture has been perpetuated through the objectification of women’s bodies in advertisements creating s society that has disregarded women’s safety and rights (Johnson and Johnson, 2021). Ideally, sexual objectification tends to change the way people perceive women by reducing them to sexual objects and denied humanity and unworthy moral concern. Advertisements have represented women as sexual entities that are subordinated to men and entities of sexual violence, thus contributing to the discrimination of women and sexual harassment.

Video games have also portrayed women as sexual objects. The position of women in video games has influenced how video gamers tend to think about themselves and others. The female representation in video games has been an increasingly destructive effect on how women are perceived in society as either a target of violence and sex object. For instance, the female role models in video games are rare since most are heavily sexualized. Ideally, the sexualized media characters in video games have increased rape and sexual assault incidents due to high sexual objectification and reduced body gratification in feminine users. Men exposed to objectification and sexualized female characters in video games have held sexist outlooks towards women in the real-life situation and have accepted the cultural rape norms.

The growth of social networking sites has transformed the way content is being developed and disseminated. Young adults and minors have full control of posting materials since the media has created freedom to develop and distribute sexual content where they feature themselves or others. The mainstream media reinforces and legitimizes this content and builds the rape culture within society (Armstrong and Mahone, 2017). With Young grownups worldwide spending most of their time on social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook they can obtain and share material faster than before. Although the social media platforms come and go, how people participate has created a long-lasting impact and intuitions into their status negotiation, personality formation, and peer-to-peer sociality. The more an individual use applications, the more social collaboration they are obtaining and seeking.  The mainstream cultural norms in media, pornography, and gaming have created an objectified and sexualized image of women, impacted social norms and the behavior of women and men.

Most of the studies have looked at how women represent themselves on social media platforms. Self-objectification in females occurs when they halt seeing themselves as actual individuals and how they think as well as feel about their bodily appearance. Self-portrayal on social media platforms has played a major role in the objectification of women, especially young adults. For instance, some women feel empowered by posting provocative pictures of themselves on social media.

Social media has the power to reinforce the rapture culture and build negative attitudes towards sexual harassment and assault. For instance, ideologies and problematic attitudes of rape culture have been reinforced by the subset of tweets that use words that describe the slut-shaming and money-seeking motives of the victims (Stubbs-Richardson, Rader, and Cosby, 2018). Questioning and victim-blaming on networking sites have been a driving force that has fed into the existing societal ideologies that reinforce rape culture.

The backing of rape culture on networking sites has changed how sexual violence is encountered even by the survivor’s aftermath leading to feelings of being re-victimized and worsening their experience (Thacker, 2017). Much of the cyberbullying happening on social media resulting to sexual harassment would be considered sexual violence if it were to happen to an individual. However, due to the comments and retweets, the actions are often normalized and categorized under the cyberbullying umbrella. For instance, an image is extending the horrible experience and the comments that support its proliferation in the form of sexual assault and victim-blaming (Thacker, 2017).

One of the films highlighted unhealthy responses to impractical beauty standards, including girls who have disfigured themselves with dangerous but trendy thigh gaps and pouty lips. The media landscape has been considered one of the distorters of young women’s worldview. For instance, some women believe that the thigh gap is something to get because guys find it incredibly sexy and attractive. The characteristics of the sexual violence victims have held that they are more responsible for being taped. This is because proactively and attractively dressed women have been objectified, thus victims of immoral acts.

Music videos to some extent have been sexually persuaded. In current years, this has become more explicit and, in most cases, inclined into pornography. For instance, women shown to be proactive in different music channels with raunchy costumes and sexiness have influenced the rape culture (Johnson, 2019). Videos have shown a representation of women that conform to a pornographic sort of sexuality that includes sexual servitude and stripping to men. Sex has been displayed as somewhat morally based on female exhibition.

Pornographic videos have also been used to normalize and sensitize the rape culture. Pornography videos have normalized sexual exploitation and violence. For instance, porn viewers are likely to believe that women perceive rape as their fault and desire rape. Pornography videos have constructed sexuality in a way that impacts power inequality between women and men. For instance, girls have been sexualized early and endure sexual violence and pain. At the same time, the boys tend to develop objectification attitudes that believe women and girls are vulnerable for sexual use and thus become perpetrators of sexual violence.

The notion of rape culture has been catalyzed by reluctant authorities that have failed to stop certain behaviors in society. There are fewer consequences and policing, which leads to an increase in rape culture through the notion that society has tolerated sexual violence. Ideally, one of the major causes of rape culture has been passing patriarchal views, misogyny, and gender equality through varying generations. The widespread social and institutional acceptance of rape culture has led to the sexual objectification of women. For instance, in recent days, women have come forward to give their stories of abuse and sexual harassment in the film produced by Harvey Weinstein, thus breaking the long silence surrounding the culture of rape and sexual violence (Peters and Besley, 2019). There seems to be a systematic abuse of power that has been an open secret.

Digital dissemination has led to additional harm to many rape victims. Questioning and victim-blaming have clouded people’s judgment into believing that rape and sexual assault is an individual issue or feminist subculture. However, this remains a systematic problem of society. The rape myths and acceptance among men and social media have led to greater rape bias, leading to the likelihood of rape and sexual harassment.

Conclusion

In summation, the rape culture consists of behaviors and ideologies that normalize and condone sexual violence, including slut-shaming and victim-blaming. Rape culture has been manifested through acceptance of rape ordeal in daily advertisements, video games, music videos, pornography, and social media activities. Therefore, the societal attitudes of gender and sexuality have created a culture of complicity, influencing rape culture, normalized sexual assaults, and victim reporting. Considerably, the trend of expressing sexuality in society through media and online platforms will not stop, but there is a need to understand its impacts and stop tolerating and normalizing unacceptable ideologies and behaviors linked to sexual harassment and assault.

References

Armstrong, C. L., & Mahone, J. (2017). “It’s on us.” The role of social media and rape culture in individual willingness to mobilize against sexual assault. Mass Communication and Society, 20(1), 92-115.

Johnson, A. (2019). We Deserve Better: How Hip Hop Perpetuates the Rape Culture of Black Women. NC Cent. L. Rev., 42, 139.

Johnson, N. L., & Johnson, D. M. (2021). An empirical exploration into the measurement of rape culture. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(1-2), NP70-NP95.

Peters, M. A., & Besley, T. (2019). Weinstein, sexual predation, and ‘Rape Culture’: Public pedagogies and Hashtag Internet activism.

Peterson, K. (2018). Victim Or Villain: The Effects of Rape Culture and Rape Myths on Justice for Rape Victims. Val. UL Rev., 53, 467.

Stubbs-Richardson, M., Rader, N. E., & Cosby, A. G. (2018). Tweeting rape culture: Examining portrayals of victim-blaming in discussions of sexual assault cases on Twitter. Feminism & Psychology, 28(1), 90-108.

Thacker, L. K. (2017). Rape culture, victim-blaming, and the role of media in the criminal justice system. Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship, 1(1), 8.