Carla Schodde's The Epidemic Of Rape

Rape is an epidemic around the world and destroys millions of lives every year. Part of the reason so many women, men, and other genders are raped is because societies around the world, especially America, ignore the issue and do not help to resolve it. Girls in America are taught ways to protect themselves from rape, but as soon as they are actually raped it becomes a guessing game of “what did she do to get herself raped”, which can include what the girl was wearing, her intoxication level, and even if she was nice to the rapist beforehand. All of this happens on a daily basis while male rape victims are told that they were not even raped at all, and that they probably enjoyed it. Both female and male rape victims are continually swept under

In almost all of their texts, paradoxically, the rapist is the first person to suffer. Apollo is painfully shot with Cupid’s arrow before his attempted rape of Daphne, Pluto was pierced deep in his heart before his rape of an unknown woman, and Jupiter felt a fire burn his marrow, to name a few examples. Carla Schodde theorizes that these texts all hurt the rapist before he rapes is to gain sympathy with the reader before he commits the act, and therefore reducing the evil of the act, because the reader sees the character as someone to sympathize with. Another trope that is popular in ancient mythological rapes is the tone and word choice in the text. Jupiter, after overpowering Castillo, is named the victor, and “as soon as Tereus had seized Philomela from her father, he exclaimed “I have won!” (“vicimus!”)” (Schodde). Carla Schodde believes, “These observations imply that the Greeks and Romans saw a connection between the desire to rape and the desire to win and the myths accentuate the virility and might of the rapist. Thus the victorious rapist is no longer the passive sufferer of empty ambition, but the aggressive taker of his objective” (Schodde). Overall, ancient mythology glorifies rapists, gets their readers to sympathize with the rapist before the act, and portrays the victims as not important and

This response clearly explains that rape is the worst thing that can happen to a woman because men see women as only her sexual purity, because it is the only part of her they care about. Claiming the rape is the worst thing that can happen to a woman but not a man maintains rape culture 's belief that men cannot be raped and that women solely exist for men’s pleasure. These beliefs are toxic to young adults and children because it encourages males to never speak up if they are raped, because they will be made fun of and called liars, and encourages females to believe that they are only worth something if a man says or believes so. Overall the beliefs that only women can be raped and that men never are can affect people for the rest of their lives and cause victims to suffer in