Conception Of Society's Perception Of Rape Culture

According to academic professor Ann Burnett (2009), describes the concept of rape culture by how society tends to perceive and behave towards rape victims and the perpetrators (Gordon and Riger, 1991; Burnett, 2009). Most accounts of rape myths are for ‘no means yes’, which describes women that they can resist rape if they wanted to and women who are raped are labelled as promiscuous; thus, leading to ‘asking for it’. Moreover, most women would falsely report their rape to the authority to protect their reputation such as, they felt anger and jealously towards the accused rapist and creating a type of repercussion (Brownmiller, 1975; Chasteen, 1982; Gordon and Riger, 1991; Lonsway and Fitzgerald, 1994: p. 134; Burnett, 2009). Additionally,

They would have reflected upon themselves as a person who is ashamed of the incident happening to them, therefore unable to fit in the ideology of someone who should be stereotypical ‘pure and a virgin’, which men would want in a woman (Bell et al., 1994). Also, the victim that decided to come forward of their rape, some people would feel that they will be under scrutiny and they would have to prove that the rape had happened (Gordon and Riger, 1991; Maschke, 1997; Burnett,

As a result of the study, heterosexual men tend to be less empathetic and blamed the victim. This lead to heterosexual men believing the rape myths and not contemplating the seriousness of the assaults (Davies and McCartney, 2003: p. 393). This caused a form of societal pressure in which men are deemed to be assertive and tough; whereas, not considering the side of passiveness and being gentle (Pino and Meier, 1999: p. 980; Davies and McCartney, 2003: p. 392). Another negative repercussion that male rape victims receive is the association of homophobia. As reported by Davies and McCartney (2003) in their study, they believed that there was a link between victim-blaming and homophobia, by suggesting that male rape only occurs when there is a non-consensual sex between two men. Furthermore, the study also indicated that if the male victim was a homosexual, heterosexual men were against them (Davies and McCartney, 2003: p. 392). This entails some similarity within female rape victims, as homosexual men had felt that they caused the rape to happen by the way they behaved in the first place (Struckman-Johnson, 1992). In accordance with sociologist, Dianne Herman (1989), the concept of date rape is considered when a man had felt that they put a lot of effort into the outing that they