Inside rape culture’s strong grip

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you are not alone. Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline for help. Call 800.656.HOPE (4673), chat at hotline.RAINN.org or text “HOPE” to 64673. Getting help around the world: If you, or someone you know, is being affected by domestic violence, a worldwide list of directories is provided by UN Women. You can also find a list of national agencies on The Pixel Project.

Tarana Burke thinks those asking if anything has changed since MeToo are posing the wrong question.

The political organizer, who in 2006 started the hashtag that would take off in 2017 amid a mass reckoning with sexual violence, has seen it before. A high-profile episode sparks a new media cycle, new outrage, new pleas for change. Then comes the fatigue — and the question of whether, after all the protests, all the public recountings of harm, anything is better.

Nine years after the explosion of MeToo, an alleged gang rape at a fraternity at Cornell University has roiled the world of higher education and beyond.

For Burke, the question isn’t how much has changed since MeToo, but how much has changed in the decades-long fight against sexual violence. To her, it’s clear that “absolutely, things have changed.” She cited as an example lookback laws passed in several states that grant survivors of sexual abuse more time to file legal claims.

Those involved in the Cornell case are part of what Burke called the “MeToo generation,” growing up amid battles for public accountability against powerful men accused of abuse. Jane Doe, 20 at the time of the incident in 2024, would have been around 13 when MeToo first went mainstream.

The fact that episodes of sexual violence like the gang rape that Doe alleged in her lawsuit still occur is “disheartening,” Burke said, but it’s the response to the Cornell case that shows how much has changed. “The hashtag was never going to be the end-all, be-all for the kind of difference we need to see around sexual and gender-based violence in this country,” she said. “Watching the response to Jane Doe and the Cornell case is really indicative of what MeToo has made possible.” Without MeToo, “would it be this big? Would we be having a sustained national conversation around it? Would people be this bold and responsive to it? Had not we had this movement, I don’t know that we can say that.”

Rape culture is the idea that the world we live in— the jokes, the movies, the power dynamics, the traditions — creates an atmosphere in which women are devalued and sexual violence normalized. The concept seeks to explain why even though society broadly agrees that “rape” is a crime and “rapists” are serious criminals, many or most acts of rape go unpunished or unacknowledged.

The idea took a long time to take hold. In 1957, a study called “Male Sex Aggression on a University Campus,” published by researchers at Indiana University, revealed just how prevalent acts of “erotic aggressiveness” were. In one sign of the times, the study said that girls offended by acts of sexual aggression might be “extremely prudish.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, women’s rights activists worked to change the public conception of rape. Sexual violence wasn’t just a crime committed by strangers against unsuspecting women. It was committed by husbands, fathers, friends, against women in particular (though research also raised awareness of male victims). “Marital rape” was legal in the US until some states began banning it in the 1970s, the same decade that activists opened the country’s first rape crisis centers to provide services for survivors.

A 1975 film called “Rape Culture” popularized the term. Released the same year as Susan Brownmiller’s influential book “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,” the documentary featured interviews with survivors and feminist scholars, as well as men who admitted to raping women, juxtaposed with clips from popular films that romanticize or normalize scenes of sexual violence and coercion. It presents sexual violence as something far from an aberration, but rather the product of a society that treats women as “something to be used and abused,” as one inmate in a group called “Prisoners Against Rape” says in the film. That same year, a Cornell instructor named Lin Farley coined the term “sexual harassment,” inspired by the case of a Cornell administrative assistant harassed by the physics professor who employed her. The term would later reach the Supreme Court and be declared a violation of women’s civil rights.

Rape culture is “this whole set of behaviors and beliefs that erases women’s experience of sexual violence and makes it her fault,” said Sally Kenney, a professor of political science at Tulane University who teaches a course on the politics of rape. “It’s a whole set of structures, of ideas, legal practices, and assumptions that are very intractable.”

Today, “America is steeped in rape culture, and it’s so insidious that we don’t even recognize it,” said Burke. “It’s in our art. It’s in our entertainment. It’s in our books. It’s in our magazines. It’s in our commercials. It’s everywhere.”

One of Burke’s often-cited examples is the hit fantasy TV show “Game of Thrones,” which features dragons, witchcraft and copious scenes of sexual violence. “We can imagine a world with dragons, but we can’t imagine a world without rape,” she said.

You can also see rape culture in the political ascension of those who have been accused of sexual violence, said Burke.

“There’s not a far line between ‘grabbing by the pussy’ and ‘free pussy,’” she said, referencing the 2005 comments by Donald Trump before he became president and a comment made in a Snapchat groupchat by members of the fraternity accused in the alleged Cornell assault. “If people can’t see that, I mean, to me, that’s just like, a hammer over the head, right?”

The feminist concept of rape culture developed at the same time as a body of research showed that sexual violence was shockingly common.

A 1985 report about gang rape on college campuses, part of the Association of American College’s Project on the Status and Education of Women, recorded more than 50 incidents that took place at colleges big and small, private and public. What the authors named “acquaintance gang rape,” they said, was “not isolated or rare” but rather surprisingly common. The incidents often included similar elements: drugs and alcohol, fraternities and victims who knew the men they say assaulted them. They also noted that “most stranger rapists appear to be normal men from all ethnic groups, all socio-economic levels, all professions” — a contrast to the myth, they wrote, that all “rapists are insane.”

Heather Ainsworth/AP

Alleged gang rape at Cornell turns spotlight on campus sexual assault

Two years after that campus gang rape report, the first national study on rape among college students was published. Instead of asking respondents if they had been raped, the study asked in plainer language if they had experienced acts of nonconsensual sex. The findings were astounding. One in four female college students had been raped, even if they didn’t use the term themselves, a phenomenon psychologist Mary P. Koss dubbed “the unacknowledged rape.”

Still, despite these reckonings over the widespread nature of sexual violence on college campuses and beyond, it took a while for colleges to see it as their responsibility. In 1972, the federal government enacted Title IX, the landmark federal civil rights law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in schools or educational programs that receive federal funding. But it wasn’t until around 1980 that the law became “seen as relevant to sexual harassment, and even then, at that point, it was understood mostly as relevant to faculty-on-student,” said Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who studies sexual violence and higher education.

The law only became deployed as a vehicle for students to pursue claims of violence or harassment against other students in the 2000s, Armstrong said. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights under the Obama administration released what became known as the “Dear Colleague Letter,” a document that explicitly named preventing sexual violence as part of universities’ responsibilities under Title IX.

It was “a major, major historical turning point where universities had to really start paying attention,” said Armstrong. Universities started enacting trainings about consent and bystander intervention. Many, Cornell among them, adopted affirmative consent codes that stipulate consensual sex requires a clear “yes,” not just the absence of a “no.”

The 2017 MeToo movement was one intense arc of media attention and legislative furor that seemed to break the surface, puncturing the otherwise mundane backdrop of sexual violence in the US and driving calls for real accountability. But in the years since, men accused of sexual violence have rejoined the public sphere, the manosphere has exploded and the Jeffrey Epstein investigation has revealed acceptance of or participation in sexual exploitation at the highest levels of society. And Title IX, under Trump’s administration, was defanged, with Obama-era guidelines rewritten.

For women and survivors of sexual assault, the ever-repeating cycle of scandals over sexual violence without meaningful change is painful and exhausting.

“There’s that kind of cumulation of rage,” said Kenney. After “all of this work that’s gone into legal reform and training the police and educating people, it’s very frustrating when it appears to not move the needle.”

Burke sees it differently. That backlash itself is a sign that something is working.

“Backlash to me is always a signal that there’s movement,” she said. “They’re responding to something.”

编者按：如果您或您认识的人曾遭受性侵犯，请记住，您并不孤单。请访问RAINN全国性侵犯热线寻求帮助。您可以拨打800.656.HOPE (4673)，访问hotline.RAINN.org进行在线聊天，或发送短信“HOPE”至64673。获取全球范围内的帮助：如果您或您认识的人正遭受家庭暴力，联合国妇女署提供了一份全球机构名录。您也可以在Pixel Project网站上找到各国机构的列表。

塔拉娜·伯克认为，那些询问“我也是”运动以来是否有所改变的人问错了问题。

这位政治组织者早在2006年就发起了##话题标签活动，该活动在2017年一场大规模的性暴力反思浪潮中迅速走红。她对此并不陌生。一起备受瞩目的事件会引发新一轮的媒体热潮、新的愤怒和新的变革呼声。随后便是疲惫——以及一个疑问：在经历了所有的抗议和公众对伤害的讲述之后，情况是否有所改善？

在“我也是”（#MeToo）运动爆发九年后，康奈尔大学兄弟会发生的一起涉嫌轮奸案震惊了高等教育界乃至更广泛的领域。

对伯克而言，问题不在于“我也是”（#MeToo）运动以来发生了多大变化，而在于数十年来反对性暴力的斗争发生了多大变化。在她看来，答案显而易见：“绝对发生了变化。”她举例说，一些州通过了追溯期法案，给予性虐待幸存者更多时间提起诉讼。

康奈尔事件的当事人属于伯克所说的“#MeToo一代”，他们成长于公众对被控性侵的权势男性进行问责的斗争之中。简·多伊在2024年事发时20岁，而“#MeToo”运动首次成为主流时，她大约只有13岁。

伯克表示，像简·多伊在诉讼中指控的那种轮奸性暴力事件仍然发生，这“令人沮丧”，但康奈尔大学案件的反响表明情况已经发生了多大的变化。“#MeToo#标签从来都不是解决我们在这个国家性暴力和性别暴力问题上所需变革的万能灵药，”她说。“简·多伊和康奈尔大学案件的反响真正体现了#MeToo#运动所带来的影响。”如果没有#MeToo#运动，“它会发展到如此规模吗？我们会就此展开持续的全国性讨论吗？人们会如此勇敢地积极响应吗？如果没有这场运动，我不知道我们能否做出这样的评价。”

强奸文化指的是我们所处的世界——包括笑话、电影、权力关系和传统——营造了一种贬低女性、将性暴力正常化的氛围。这一概念试图解释，尽管社会普遍认同“强奸”是犯罪，“强奸犯”是重罪犯，但为什么许多甚至大多数强奸行为却逍遥法外或无人问津。

这种观念的形成经历了一个漫长的过程。1957年，印第安纳大学的研究人员发表了一项名为《大学校园里的男性性侵犯》的研究，揭示了“性侵犯”行为的普遍程度。该研究也反映了当时的时代背景，指出那些因性侵犯行为而感到冒犯的女生可能“极其保守”。

在20世纪60年代和70年代，女权运动人士致力于改变公众对强奸的认知。性暴力不再仅仅是陌生人对毫无防备的女性实施的犯罪，它也可能是丈夫、父亲、朋友等对女性实施的（尽管研究也提高了人们对男性受害者的认识）。“婚内强奸”在美国曾是合法的，直到20世纪70年代一些州开始禁止它。也是在同一时期，女权运动人士开设了美国首批强奸危机中心，为幸存者提供服务。

1975年上映的纪录片《强奸文化》（Rape Culture）使“强奸文化”一​​词广为人知。该片与苏珊·布朗米勒（Susan Brownmiller）的著作《违背我们的意愿：男人、女人与强奸》（Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape）同年发行。纪录片采访了幸存者、女性主义学者以及承认强奸女性的男性，并穿插播放了一些美化或正常化性暴力和胁迫场景的流行电影片段。影片将性暴力呈现为一种远非异常现象，而是社会将女性视为“可供利用和虐待之物”的产物，正如片中一个名为“囚犯反强奸组织”（Prisoners Against Rape）的囚犯团体的一名成员所说。同年，康奈尔大学讲师林·法利（Lin Farley）创造了“性骚扰”（sexual harassment）一词，其灵感来源于一位康奈尔大学行政助理遭到其物理学教授性骚扰的案件。该术语后来被提交至最高法院，并被裁定侵犯了女性的公民权利。

“强奸文化是一整套行为和信念，它抹杀了女性遭受性暴力的经历，并将责任归咎于女性，”杜兰大学政治学教授萨莉·肯尼说道，她开设了一门关于强奸政治的课程。“它是一整套根深蒂固的结构、观念、法律实践和假设。”

伯克说：“如今，美国充斥着强奸文化，而且这种文化如此根深蒂固，以至于我们根本意识不到它的存在。它存在于我们的艺术中，存在于我们的娱乐中，存在于我们的书籍中，存在于我们的杂志中，存在于我们的广告中。它无处不在。”

伯克经常引用的例子之一是热门奇幻电视剧《权力的游戏》，该剧充斥着龙、巫术和大量的性暴力场景。“我们可以想象一个有龙的世界，但我们无法想象一个没有强奸的世界，”她说。

伯克说，你还可以从那些被指控犯有性暴力罪行的人的政治晋升中看到强奸文化。

“‘抓下体’和‘免费性服务’之间并没有太大区别，”她说道，指的是唐纳德·特朗普在2005年当选总统前的言论，以及涉嫌参与康奈尔大学性侵案的兄弟会成员在Snapchat群聊中发表的评论。“如果人们看不清这一点，我的意思是，对我来说，这就像是当头一棒，对吧？”

女权主义关于强奸文化的概念是在一系列研究表明性暴力现象普遍得令人震惊的情况下发展起来的。

1985年，美国大学协会妇女地位与教育项目发布了一份关于大学校园轮奸案的报告，记录了发生在各种规模、公立和私立大学的50多起案件。报告作者将这种案件称为“熟人轮奸”，他们指出，这种案件“并非孤立或罕见”，而是出人意料地普遍。这些案件通常包含相似的要素：毒品和酒精、兄弟会以及受害者认识施暴者。报告还指出，“大多数陌生人强奸犯看起来都是来自各个种族、各个社会经济阶层、各个职业的普通男性”——这与“所有强奸犯都是疯子”的迷思截然相反。

Heather Ainsworth/美联社

康奈尔大学疑似轮奸案将校园性侵问题推向风口浪尖

在校园轮奸案报告发布两年后，首份关于大学生强奸问题的全国性研究报告出炉。该研究没有直接询问受访者是否曾遭受强奸，而是用更通俗易懂的语言询问她们是否经历过非自愿性行为。研究结果令人震惊：四分之一的女大学生曾遭受过强奸，即使她们自己没有使用“强奸”这​​个词。心理学家玛丽·P·科斯将这种现象称为“未被承认的强奸”。

尽管人们开始反思大学校园内外性暴力问题的普遍性，但高校花了很长时间才意识到这是自身的责任。1972年，联邦政府颁布了具有里程碑意义的联邦民权法案——第九条修正案，该法案禁止在接受联邦资助的学校或教育项目中存在基于性别的歧视。但直到1980年左右，该法案才“被认为与性骚扰相关，即便如此，当时人们也主要将其理解为与教职工对学生的性骚扰有关，”密歇根大学研究性暴力和高等教育的社会学家伊丽莎白·阿姆斯特朗说道。

阿姆斯特朗表示，这项法律直到2000年代才开始被用作学生追究其他学生遭受暴力或骚扰责任的工具。2011年，奥巴马政府时期的美国教育部民权办公室发布了一份后来被称为“致同仁信”的文件，该文件明确指出，根据第九条修正案，防止性暴力是大学的责任之一。

阿姆斯特朗说，这是一个“意义重大的历史转折点，大学必须真正开始重视这个问题”。各大学开始开展关于同意和旁观者干预的培训。许多大学，包括康奈尔大学，都采纳了积极同意准则，规定性行为必须有明确的“是”，而不仅仅是没有“不”。

2017年的“我也是”（#MeToo）运动曾掀起媒体和立法界的轩然大波，仿佛打破了美国性暴力问题的平静，引发了人们对真正问责的呼声。然而，此后几年，被控性暴力的男性重返公众视野，“男性圈”（manosphere）迅速壮大，杰弗里·爱泼斯坦案的调查揭露了社会最高层对性剥削的容忍和参与。此外，在特朗普政府时期，第九条修正案的效力被削弱，奥巴马时代的指导方针也被重新修订。

对于女性和性侵犯幸存者来说，性暴力丑闻不断重演却没有带来实质性改变，这令人痛苦和疲惫。

肯尼说：“这种愤怒情绪一直在积聚。” “在法律改革、警察培训和民众教育方面投入了这么多精力，却似乎没有取得任何进展，这令人非常沮丧。”

伯克的看法则不同。他认为，这种反弹本身就表明某些措施正在奏效。

“在我看来，反弹总是表明某种趋势正在发生，”她说。“他们是在对某些事情做出回应。”