A recent rape trial in Georgia has brought to light modern American rape culture, and illuminated it for what it is—an abhorrent social standard that distorts the role of sexual assault victims from being the victim to being the guilty party.
Four years ago on Oct. 18, William Dumas raped a 24-year-old woman with Down syndrome four times over the course of 24 hours. The victim had been staying in her parent’s home while they were away, and she was accompanied by several other persons, one of them being Dumas. Despite “numerous opportunities” to tell the other houseguests of her abuse she did not report it until the next morning, Oct. 19.
Dumas was charged with rape and sentenced to 25 years in prison on a jury’s guilty verdict, partly achieved with results from an examining physician’s testimony that the victim had been forcibly raped, as well as the victim herself testifying to her sexual abuse.
Georgia Appeals Court Judge McFadden, as of last February, felt the initial trail insufficient and ordered a new trail for Dumas claiming, “At no time prior to her outcry … did (the victim) behave like a victim. Nor did Dumas behave like someone who had recently perpetuated a series of violent crimes against her. It requires more than a bold argument to satisfy this court that it should ignore the fact that, until the outcry, neither of them showed any fear, guilt or inclination to retreat to a place of safety.”
So in Judge McFadden’s world if a woman doesn’t cry rape nonstop after the initial incident, it doesn’t count. What’s more, why is the offender’s lack of fear or guilt towards their act of rape considered evidence that they are innocent? The nauseating answer: rape culture.
“Rape culture” as I will refer to it within this article is defined as: A collective social belief wherein a victim of a sexual assault is seen as the central cause of the assault, and the violence exhibited by the (typically male) offender is defensible, as they hold a manifest right to the victim and were enticed into their action by the victim’s failure to submit to patriarchal codes of conduct.
To civilized society with a basic understanding of sexual violence and its psychology, it is a feat for this victim to have even reported the rape at all much less within some sort of timeline.
The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network data collected over the last five years shows that on average, 60 percent of sexual assaults go unreported. The difficulties faced by victims of sexual offense in reporting the crimes they’ve suffered exist for a variety of emotional and psychological reasons, but are centrally due to the culture in which the victims must speak out.
A few examples of rape culture rhetoric, glibly referred to as “rape-splaining,” that I will dispel as abusive dribble are: The victim was asking for it, men have biological urges to sexually pursue women aggressively (manifest entitlement to the female body in its most glaring form), the victim actually wanted it because she said yes first then no, the victim should have worn a longer skirt or not been drinking or not gone to that party or not been alone, etc.
Yes means yes, and no means no. There are contexts wherein an individual is incapacitated and cannot give a clear answer; in those cases the answer is then no. In our modern culture alcohol excuses inappropriate male sexual advances, but condemns women’s damaged abilities to respond to them? Ring the rape culture alarm bell because that logic is just as flawed as Judge McFadden’s.
Using biological urges as a defense is basically saying the male in question is an uncivilized animal unable to control himself in any manner where his hormones are concerned, which is really no defense at all.
A woman has a right to change her mind at any time for any reason during intimacy. Saying yes once is not a blanket pass to completely disregard a woman’s right to govern her own body.
As for the argument that the victim should have taken some sort of preventative measure to avoid sexual assault; that is telling our youth to make sure he rapes the other girl who is wearing a shorter dress or drinks more at the party, instead of teaching our youth not to rape.
The fact that our culture teaches this rape culture logic is inexcusable. Only when society becomes collectively aware of the misogynistic victim blaming we impose upon sex crime victims can we hope to see the end of stomach churning incidents like the mishandling of the Dumas rape trial.
Whitney Greer is a sophomore English major from Medford, Ore.
