Examining Young Adult Literature And The Portrayals Of Rape Culture

Even if the world steps into the modern era, the false beliefs will not vanish. One of the most false beliefs in the world of chaos is the concept of rape myths. These myths obviously appear throughout literature as seen in Katy Lewis’s research paper (2017). She is a master student from Illinois State University. Lewis explores about rape myths in her research paper “She Wanted It?: Examining Young Adult Literature And Its Portrayals Of Rape Culture (2017).” In this thesis, it consists of four novels which are related to rape myths: Anderson’s Speak (1999), Lynch’s Inexcusable (2005), Quintero’s Gabi, A Girl in Pieces (2014), and Summers’s All The Rage (2015). Lewis studies how the four young adult novels attend to ideologically relate to

The result of this research demonstrates the significance of raping into 5 points: 1) rapists have ill-will and rape victims become stigmatized; 2) rapists are criminals and rape victims are to blame for behavior that violate social norms; 3) rapists and / or rape victims need psychological therapy; 4) rapists belong to an upper social class while rape victims belong to a lower class; 5) rapists and rape victims are worthless. Moreover, this research also explains the writers’ attitude on rape also effects on the rapists’ sexual drive, cause of rape, and the life of rape victim after raping. So, there are issues on the attitude of writers which challenge to criticize: 1) psychological / mental infirmity and disaster in the lives of rapists and rape victims; 2) emotional weakness of rapists and rape victims and their regained self-determination; and 3) rapists’ social privileges in contrast with rape victims’ self-assertion strengthened by their lovers’ morale support. She also concludes that the criticizing on strength and weakness of both rapist and rape victim refers to the significance of reveling the stereotype of sexual assault. Moreover, the objective of writers is to

So, the result of study shows that the idea of patriarchy is still exist in Asia since the ancient time. Therefore, the inequality between men and women always reflects in Asian societies However, its influence in Thailand is gradually dropping while it still powerfully dominates Chinese and Indian societies