General Discussion

I have to wonder whether anyone involved in vociferously promulgating this idea that there's a 'rape culture' (BTW, is this 'the West', or 'The USA', or 'The World' that supposedly has this 'culture'? I've never been clear on the purported 'scope' ...) going on has given any real thought to the seemingly obvious DOWNSIDE of using this term?

Because quite frankly it seems to me that the much-maligned (here in this thread anyway) RAINN people may actually be one step ahead of some of you.

Now, hear me out.

If 'people' go around insisting that here in the (World? West? USA?) that there's this 'rape culture' and that this is the 'real problem' ... does this NOT 'shift blame' away from the individual criminal involved in perpetrating the act? Does this not provide 'cover' for them? After all, they're 'living in this culture', right? Do we really want to 'tell people' that they live in a culture that condones Rape?

I dunno, I 'get' trying to raise awareness that people at large don't appear to consider the subject as seriously as they should, but I think it's misguided to attack the problem from the 'cultural' level. The way it seems to me, rapists are friggin' criminals, and NOBODY other than criminals 'condones' rape.

Why insist that there's this 'culture of rape' when all that (it seems to me) that's really going to do is a) give cover to the real criminal, and b) potentially irritate people who might otherwise 'agree' with you, but instead feel hostile towards your cause because you're (in most cases, quite wrongly tbh) pointing the finger towards them ('they' being members of the culture at large)?

Consider how our African American brothers and sisters, a few generations back, and LGBT folk more recently, have gone about attaining their proper rights. They did not do so by attacking the entire culture as 'racist' or 'homophobic' ... they went about it more by adopting the position that the individuals who are racist/homophobic, are the OUTLIERS, the 'bad ones', NOT by insisting the whole 'culture' was racist and/or homophobic, right?

I guess I just don't 'get' this particular 'angle' of addressing the issue. Seems counter-productive to me, intuitively, is all I'm saying. I feel like the approach of ostracizing the particular individuals who either actually rape, or don't think it's a 'big deal', is probably the more effective one ... rather than essentially saying 'your whole culture agrees with you, and this is probably why you did it!'.