Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Ring the Alarm - A no-nonsense warning on the rise of rape culture.
[center]
[/center]
Rape culture: As far as feminist jargon goes, it’s a phrase that’s up there with patriarchy or male privilege in creating a surefire deflection response in broad swaths of the public. But in her new book Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—and What We Can Do About It, writer Kate Harding doesn’t hide from the term, employ euphemism, or otherwise mollycoddle her audience. In placing the words rape culture front and center in both her title and first sentence, she sets the tone for the rest of her book, a no-nonsense examination of sexual violence in modern America and the widespread cultural complicity that exists around it, whether we want to admit it or not.
In 2009, Harding published Lessons From the Fat-o-Sphere, in which she and co-author Marianne Kirby debunked the cherished myth that fat people can, with just some willpower and a pair of running sneakers, transform themselves permanently into thin people. Now Harding applies that finely honed impatience with bullshit to another great American myth: that we rate rape as a terrible crime and punish it with ferocity. The reality, as Harding details in chapter after chapter, is that rapists generally go unpunished, victims are blamed, and everyone from cable news pundits to TV show writers continues to be confused about the difference between consensual sex and rape, which isn’t actually confusing.
As Harding regularly points out, the explosion of online feminist discourse, as well as the growth in anti-rape activism on campus and elsewhere, has created a continuous public dialogue about rape and sexual assault. That dialogue has led to actual changes both on a cultural level and in policy, as more states start adopting “affirmative consent” standards on campus. But Asking for It serves as a useful reminder of why we still need books—even nonfiction books—in the age of the Internet. Just the sheer volume of stories and examples Harding collects in one place is disquieting and extremely convincing in a way that getting it in pieces through the day-to-day grind of Internet reading will never accomplish.
[center]
[/center]
To be clear, this book is not a chronicle of depressing stories of sexual assault, which would be a miserable read. Harding isn’t here simply to register the existence of crime; she is working as a cultural critic, focusing on the cultural response to and understanding of sexual assault more than the crimes themselves.
[/center]
Rape culture: As far as feminist jargon goes, it’s a phrase that’s up there with patriarchy or male privilege in creating a surefire deflection response in broad swaths of the public. But in her new book Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—and What We Can Do About It, writer Kate Harding doesn’t hide from the term, employ euphemism, or otherwise mollycoddle her audience. In placing the words rape culture front and center in both her title and first sentence, she sets the tone for the rest of her book, a no-nonsense examination of sexual violence in modern America and the widespread cultural complicity that exists around it, whether we want to admit it or not.
In 2009, Harding published Lessons From the Fat-o-Sphere, in which she and co-author Marianne Kirby debunked the cherished myth that fat people can, with just some willpower and a pair of running sneakers, transform themselves permanently into thin people. Now Harding applies that finely honed impatience with bullshit to another great American myth: that we rate rape as a terrible crime and punish it with ferocity. The reality, as Harding details in chapter after chapter, is that rapists generally go unpunished, victims are blamed, and everyone from cable news pundits to TV show writers continues to be confused about the difference between consensual sex and rape, which isn’t actually confusing.
As Harding regularly points out, the explosion of online feminist discourse, as well as the growth in anti-rape activism on campus and elsewhere, has created a continuous public dialogue about rape and sexual assault. That dialogue has led to actual changes both on a cultural level and in policy, as more states start adopting “affirmative consent” standards on campus. But Asking for It serves as a useful reminder of why we still need books—even nonfiction books—in the age of the Internet. Just the sheer volume of stories and examples Harding collects in one place is disquieting and extremely convincing in a way that getting it in pieces through the day-to-day grind of Internet reading will never accomplish.
[center]
[/center]
To be clear, this book is not a chronicle of depressing stories of sexual assault, which would be a miserable read. Harding isn’t here simply to register the existence of crime; she is working as a cultural critic, focusing on the cultural response to and understanding of sexual assault more than the crimes themselves.
Source.
15 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
