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“What Is Rape Culture?” by Ryan Broderick, Jessica Testa, and Heben Nigatu outlines the ideas of the rape culture that exist in America today. Rape culture is defined as a culture where sexual violence is a societal normalcy. In the United States, someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes, creating a one in five chance of a woman being attacked at any given moment. One survey from the U.K. suggested that about one-third of young people do not learn about rape during their health or sexual education class. Campaigns such as “‘no’ means ‘no’” are ineffective because if someone is intoxicated or unconscious and incapable of giving consent, it is still rape. Victim blaming is a huge issue for rape culture because it is standard to blame the victim for going out in provocative clothes, in dangerous areas, or at the wrong time of night. In recent rape cases, such as the Steubenville rapists that raped a young girl while she was unconscious, victims have been told they were at fault because they should not have gotten drunk or passed out. In any scenario, it is the rapist who is at fault, but people continue to try to blame the victim in any way they can. While street harassment is not technically sexual violence, it contributes to rape culture because “ A man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting.” The tolerance of cat-calling shows men that it is okay to violate a woman’s “right to be left alone.” Many feminists also advocate for the demolition of rape jokes, which cause “people to laugh at the idea of sexual violence.” The other side of the argument often talks about women falsely accusing men of rape in order to ruin their lives or gain attention. However, the FBI has claimed that the statistic for the percentage of rapes that are false accusations is virtually “meaningless.”

Broderick, Ryan, Jessica Testa, and Heben Nigatu. "What Is Rape Culture?" //BuzzFeed //. N.p., 5 Feb. 2014. Web. 03 June 2014.