Summary Of Asking For It: The Alarming Rise Of Rape Culture

Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture - and What We Can Do About It by Kate Harding, illustrates that rape culture is a rapidly growing problem within the United States. Americans have become less sympathetic towards victims, especially in the media. Victims have difficulty talking about their experiences and their stories may be discredited due to excuses made for rapists.

Rape on college campuses is acknowledged by social media, not as an act of sexual battery, but as a youthful indiscretion, causing victims to be ashamed to reveal their encounters. College students, primarily men, are celebrated when they take advantage of a woman, through social media or an in-person act of sexual assault. The power social media holds can significantly

Social media has celebrated double standards, even though both men and women are sexualized. This invokes drastically different responses to photos, where “male abs are viewed as … strong, dominant, and desirable. Female breasts, on the other hand, are viewed as … objectified and shameful” (Davis Paragraph 7). There is no clear explanation as to how this came to be. But, social media platforms are open to the public, so a simple photo of someone expressing their femininity or masculinity can be twisted inappropriately. This is a direct effect of the “duality of freedom and oppression offered by social media” (Davis Paragraph 12). Davis continues to write about the impact that this duality may have on the reactions of people when they hear a person has been raped. Many have expressed their feelings about rape on social media with no understanding of the situation at hand. Kristine Solomon writes about a woman who used Facebook to describe to the public that “if you walk into a lion’s cage and get attacked it’s not the lion’s fault” (Solomon Paragraph 2). The woman directly attacks those who have been raped, expressing that some people are asking for rape. The same woman thoroughly explained these emotions on Facebook, and multiple times. Other comments such as this help support the idea that although some photos shared on social media are not meant

An effect of this is apparent when viewing rape cases that take place in bars and clubs. In a place where people wear fewer clothes than usual and are “moving their bodies in arguably suggestive ways, no one’s going to call it sexual assault if you” are urged to inappropriately grab someone else’s body (Harding 16). This is something that is normalized by society. When a person goes out somewhere such as a bar, they are now subject to others who feel the need to do something offensive. This is overshadowed by the fact that people who go to bars have had alcoholic drinks, resulting in actions that may not be remembered by either party. In addition to this, now there is no way to condemn the attacker. Now, an aggressor is attacking someone drunk and “fully intending to sleep it off alone, [but] those circumstances are too inherently sexualized to really fault a man who spontaneously puts his hands on her” (Harding 17). Harding writes about how depending on the situation, a man may feel more empowered to assault or rape someone. She continues by stating that the larger culture does little to discourage this behavior, especially in places like clubs. Furthermore, Harding points out that if dancing is too sexual for a clear line to be drawn between assault and an indiscretion, imagine the controversy over