During this week’s oral arguments on California’s Prop 8, Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether the court could take a stand […]
Eradicating Rape Culture
By Austin McCoy
The Steubenville rape case and CNN’s disturbing response to the conviction of the two football players illustrate the pervasiveness of rape culture in American society. As Blogger Lauren Nelson highlighted in her piece, “So you’re tired of hearing about rape culture,” politicians, news pundits, athletes, teenagers, men, and women have displayed some or all the characteristics of rape culture recently—victim-blaming, shaming, and (online) bullying, objectifying women, demonizing sexually active women, perpetuating the notion that (young) men, especially athletes, are entitled to act upon women’s bodies without their legal consent, and sympathizing with those judged guilty.
WTF? No, Seriously. WTF?
We at Nursing Clio may be making “WTF? No, Seriously. WTF?” a regular feature — a place to express anger, horror, and disbelief at current news stories.
This is one of those weeks where the news – especially the kind of news circulating on feminist blogs – is making me incredibly angry. There are a lot of those weeks lately. Here are just a couple of the rage-inspiring news stories:
Yes, Virginia, You Can Get Pregnant From Being Raped
In a T.V. interview on Sunday, August 19, Representative Todd Akin stated, “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare…. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” I don’t know whether we should be livid about his qualifying rape into “legitimate” and “illigetimate” (whatever those categories are) or that he is perpetuating a myth- a horrible ignorant fabrication- about pregnancy and rape. Sexual Assault survivors have endured enough after such a traumatic event. Already, rape victims face a society that perpetuates blaming the survivor, as I mentioned in my prior post on Victim Blaming. Do we really need to add even more problems onto their plate?