Blog Post 21: How to change the Kairos of rape?

Today, the class talked about the factors that highlights rape culture throughout the semester. This includes best possible moments for rape to occur (Kairos). The class talked about routine Kairos, the Kairos that is created based on American culture such as drinking, partying and late night walking. Instructor point out that it’s important to disassemble the routine rape by education or bystander training. School girls could be trained to intervene the Kairos of rape such as calling the police or help victim escape. The instructor said it is possible for rape culture to change if there is a good timing for it to change. He gave example of interracial marriage, same sex marriage, and universal health care. These events all change at a moment, but no one did anything about them before. This shows that the right timing for change is necessary to alter the issue of rape.

Instructor suggests that people are starting to create kairotic moments that will help women turn the table around while addressing sexual assault. He suggests that people should change other social issues first in order to change the Kairos of rape, social issues like wage gap between men and women, and gender inequality. The instructor showed an example of an ad that shows about gender inequality and wage gap. The ad shows that a man getting money from a woman, she gave him 7.7 cent and he said it’s too little, she said it’s “women’s money.” This is an ad making fun of the social issue and gender inequality in the working place. This reminds me of the coke ad from 70s; the ad actually showed that the coke is only for men but not for women. Nowadays, the issue of gender inequality is less strong; people sort of being aware of the problem, but they just don’t have any strategies to solve it. In the working place too, women started to report when they get sexual assault. But back to 60s, no one really realized there is a problem with women because very few victims reported. The instructor said changing the Kairos of rape requires time; as the issue of gender inequality shrink, the issue of sexual assault may shrink too. In my view, rape rate may go down as a country acquires more gender equality, but as my previous paper talked about, growing gender equality actually can cause more sexual assault, because male dominated society doesn’t like it when women acquire equal power as men. This is why issue of rape is more severe in developed country because developed country has greater gender equality. But this is just one theory of the issue of sexual assault, it does not apply to all countries in the world; it certainly doesn’t have to apply to America, because America has other cultural factors that triggers rape.

The instructor then moved on to talk about how people might change the Kairos of rape. One way is to reduce people’s denial by training them to talk more about this issue. As the class mentioned before, American culture never really talk about rape. In order to change the Kairos of rape, American should overcome that silence they hold towards this topic. The more they talk about this issue the more feminist response they get and the more people are aware of this issue.

Another way is to change media content. This reminds me that media usually portray women being attacked in the dark, this make people think that women are not supposed to walk alone in the dark instead they should stay at home, while in fact being at home and throwing parties put women in more danger. So if media could change the way it portray sexual assault and ties it with reality, people may change the way they perceive sexual assault and put more efforts in preventing party rape.

Blog Post 20: Memory and Consent

Today the class talked about how memory affects people’s decision in rape. The class focused on a case that’s between a 35-year-old couple; the state cannot prove there is a intercourse or sexual assault between the couple because the wife is unable to remember whether she gave consent. The wife couldn’t even remember her own daughter’s name. The instructor suggests that if the elder woman has no memory of her daughter, she couldn’t possibly give consent. The class also said if the couple has had sex life before, it’s possible that the husband has forced the wife into sexual intercourse, but the state has found no trace of coercion or physical injury on the wife. In my opinion, it’s difficult to determine whether the consent is given because both the husband and the wife are old people, their inability to remember has blurred the matter whether consent is given.

The class has also talked about institutional memory and how institutional memory is always the same. This creates problem in the jury. When court decides whether the perpetrator is guilty, they always rely on the same set of policies or the same legal system, but not all cases can be estimated by the same judgment or legal standards. There are some cases that legal system cannot address or provide with fair judgments. The class also said the court system is problematic because of its rigidity. Court usually gets less information about people and take a long time to investigate because people are afraid to be recorded; they don’t want to be proven a liar so they don’t accept records. In order to change this problematic situation, the class suggests to reverse the system of the law, and to prove people innocent instead of guilty. The court should not only prove one defendant guilty but it should also prove that the other defendant innocent before making its final decision.

Lastly, the class talked about cultural memories and how cultural memory is as rigid as the institutional one. People tend to retrieve information based on their culture. The way culture is imprinted in their mind could be bias. For instance, people learned from culture that sexual assault is usually done by stranger. This conception is biased but is culturally constructed and passed through generation. Movie has repeatedly show a woman walking in the dark and gets stranger attack. Media has reinforced the way people normally think about sexual assault, but it does not always tell the truth. Nowadays people don’t think about acquaintance when they think about rape because their cultural memory tells them rape is done by a stranger. This idea could lead to victimization because women tend to avoid strangers but not their acquaintance, and perpetrators usually are acquaintance.

The instructor said technology replaced memory, now it’s very hard for people to remember anything today. To me this make it harder for people to solve cases of sexual assault because if victims can’t remember whether they are consensual, it’s hard for the justice system to decide whether the perpetrator is guilty, and police has to put into more investigation. Not just technology, sometimes the situation involves alcohol and drug using, these factors decrease people’s memory about the truth and make it difficult for people to remember what happened.

I think that if memory is such a big deal to determine rape, especially for cases between elderly people. It’s even more important for bystanders or family members to pay attention to what happened. If neighbors heard about anything, they should help remember what actually happened and if it really is not consensual then they should help report the case. Because if the sexual assault happened with victims of memory disability, it’s impossible for the victim to report the case or provide reliable testimony because they don’t have the ability to remember what happened.

Paper 3: Cultural Study on Sexual Assault

Anjie Zhao

Paper 3

April 20 2015

Cultural Study on Sexual Asssault：Comparison between US and other countries

The issue of rape is more serious in the United States comparing to non-Western or developing countries. Through comparing the US with different culture, researchers can find unique social traits that only exist in the United States. There are several cultural differences that explain why rape is rather serious in the US and not in Japan, including socialization (partying), media, and gender equality.

According to statistics, Japan has far less rape rate in comparison with the US; though both are developed country, US rape rate is 27 times more than Japan’s (Nationmaster, 2015). Research shows country like Japan remains unmotivated towards sex and intimate relationship. This is quite the opposite to the US, because sexuality is such a hot topic in the United States. Japanese people’s disinterest in sex may lead to the ultimate low number of rape, while US’s interest in sexuality can explain its high rape rate.

Rape in the US contains unique traits such as drug using, drinking and partying. These cultural do not exist in Japan because Japanese people do not party or use drugs. And it could be this lack of socialization lead to the Japanese "celibacy syndrome," which is a syndrome happened to Japanese young people; Japanese men and women stopped having sex because they are disinterested; they find there is no point in having sex, being in a relationship or starting a family (Haworth, 2013). A survey in 2011 found that over half of Japanese men and half of women at age of 18 to 34 aren’t in any kind of romantic relationship (Haworth, 2013). Another survey found out that one third the Japanese under 30 haven’t had any dating experience (Haworth, 2013). The “celibacy syndrome” has made Japanese men less masculine and less ambitious in career, instead it made women more independent and career-driven. A women interviewed said she found many Japanese men flinch when a woman is trying to touch them; this phenomenon also increases in women too (Haworth, 2013). Many Japanese women referred that they would not marry or have children because they don’t want to be the caretaker for both the baby and the husband (Haworth, 2013). Lack of socialization could be one factor that directs the “celibacy syndrome” and driven the unmotivated attitude towards sex, which lead to less sexual assault incidents as a result.

Party provides ground for American people to interact with each other. This motivates sex. Elizabeth Armstrong said, “sexual assault is a predictable outcome of a synergistic intersection of processes operating at individual, organizational, and interactional levels” (Armstrong, 2006). In other words, if there aren’t any organizational or interactional groups like party that brings in people to interact, there wouldn’t be any chances for sexual intercourse or party rape. It is socialization that brings people closer to each other and makes them want to have intimate act. Girls meet boys in a party and gets drunk and things happen. Japanese don’t have this kind of interaction between their kids. Their youth are raised in isolation; they shut themselves indoors and never thought about moving out from their family home until they reached 30 (Haworth, 2013). This is how Japanese boys and girls don’t know how to interact with each other, and they don’t feel necessary to interact because interaction is never part of their lives. In contrast, American youth are taught to hang out or hook around since they were little, so they feel the urge to create interaction and attend socializing events. And interaction requires drinking, dancing, drug using that could lead to potential sexual assault.

It is possible that Japanese unmotivated attitude in sex is tied with exposure to non-sexualized portrayals in the media. America and Japan uses different media contents (America with greater depiction on sexuality and Japan with less) to motivate society, this way creates greater distinction on sexuality between these two countries. People in US are motivated in sex because they are exposed to more sex-related contents in media, while Japanese people are de-activated in sex because Japanese media do not show a lot of sex-related contents; man and women were portrayed rather old-fashioned and less open and with more clothes on.

Research shows media has a big impact in shaping people’s perception towards rape in both countries. US media has the tradition of portraying human sexuality on screen; if you compare Japanese and American TV shows, American TV shows depict more fully naked women and men. Think about shows like Sex and the City (1998-2004), Veronica Mars (2004-2007), Vampire Diaries (2009), Game of Thrones (2011-15), and Masters of Sex (2013-15). These shows all have female characters showing their naked bodies more than one times. Think about shows that contains sex-oriented jokes, such as How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) and Gossip Girl (2007-2012). Japanese never show naked women having sex in a day-time drama; fully naked is rare for a night-time Japanese drama. Japanese wouldn’t joke about sex in TV shows because sex is not part of their media culture; they often talked about ordinary subjects such as school, workforce, parenthood, and romantic relationship. Romantic depiction doesn’t contain much sexuality or sex-related portrayals; TV couples are shown barely kissing, or instead of showing sex, sex is either metaphorically said or hidden on the screen (Akita, 2005). For instance, Japanese romantic dramas like First Kiss (2007), Love Shuffle (2009), Nagareboshi (2010), Moon lovers (2010), and Love Neet (2012) barely shows characters kissing in the episodes and there are no signs for them taking off cloths or having sex. TV shows like Mou Ichido Kimi ni Propose (2012), Perfect Divorce (2013), MEOTOZENZAI (2013), Dososei (2014), though is about romantic relationship, is more focused on companionship and marriage relationship rather than sex. Similarly, shows like Mei-chan no Shitsuji (2009), kimi nitodoke (2010), Q10 (2010), Asuko March!(2011), and Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou (2012) are focused on relationship but doesn’t show signs of blatant sex, rather male and female characters are shown hiding their feelings for each other. Characters are depicted shy for expressing their feelings; these shows also are more focused on schooling and friendship rather than relationship or sexuality.

Social cognitive theory suggests that is young people are frequently exposed to behaviors on TV, they are more likely to imitate that behavior in real life (Fisher, 2009). This suggests that both American and Japanese teens could develop similar behavioral traits as their TV programs depicted. If so, American youth are likely to imitate sex-related behaviors because sex on American TV programs is more frequently shown. Differently, Japanese teenagers are not likely to adopt sex-related behaviors because they are not frequently exposed to sex and sexuality on TV, because their TV programs do not contain sex-related contents. Rather, Japanese teens (both girls and boys) would behave in a timid or less expressive way when it comes to commitment in a relationship, because this trait of youth holding back their feelings for others has been broadcast on TV over past decades. They would not have open sex in order to show their feelings for their spouses because they have never been taught by social media to do so. If Japanese people are become less expressive when it comes to relationship and interaction, they have less probability to engage in an intimate act and less likely to commit rape and sexual assault, until they get old. Oppositely, American youth are motivated by US media to interact and experience sufficient sex life, thus they are more likely to commit sex crimes at early age.

According to Fisher’s article, a national survey tested about media’s impact on teenage viewers shows 70% of teens (age from 15 to 17) said they have learned “a lot” or “some” knowledge about sexuality and romantic relationship (Fisher, 2009). This survey shows many teenage TV viewers tend to learn about sexuality from media characters. US media portray man and woman as sexually attractive. Again, this portrayal shapes American people’s perception towards reality. Both boy and girl would like to become more sexually attractive in real life. This explains why American adolescent girls would want to put on make ups, and dress provocatively and being thin, because through heavy exposure to TV they have learned that look appealing could attract a man’s attention. Similarly, boys would want to look more masculine and charming in order to get a girl’s attention. TV provides cultural construction that guarantees the Kairos for rape. In other words, if American man and women don’t look so sexually attractive, they wouldn’t fit into each other’s standards, because TV has taught them that to look attractive is to ask for sex. This socially constructed idea may result in high probability of rape among young people in the US.

 Differently, Japanese media shows very few sexually attractive portrayals since 2005, rather they portray both men and women as fully dressed, women as strong and independent women more often in TV shows and movies. For instance, Japanese directors realize that many of their audience are women, in order to attract more women to watch the show, they started using female protagonists since 1920s (Iwamura, 1994). Qualities in these Japanese female heroes are toughness, strength and ability to handle problem (Iwamura, 1994). These empowered female characters are found in shows like the Discarnates (1988), Erai Tokoro ni Totsuide Shimatta (2007), Atsuhime (2008), Seigi no Mikata (2008), and Boss (2009). According to social cognition, female empowerment on TV could alter Japanese women’s perception of reality and make them more ambitious and less interested in sex and relationship. Because Japanese women are frequently exposed to powerful female figures on TV, they hold more endurance to this idea that women are strong and independent. This way media can aggravate the “celibacy syndrome” (disinterest in sex and relationship) because it encourage women to choose career and independence over marriage and sex. As Japanese women don’t get to interact with men, it decreases the possibility for sexual assault and victimization. Media explains why Americans are having issue of rape while Japanese are having celibacy syndrome.

Lastly, gender equality, and financial status could play a role that distinguishes rape that happened in the US and in Japan. Russell’s blacklash hypothesis (1975) suggests that when men’s authority is threatened by a women’s empowerment, they tend to regain their dominance by use of violence (Don, 2013). It is found that Latin America has greater sexual violence due to its male dominated society structure (Don, 2013). The United States also has a male dominated culture; this explains why American men dislike it when they see women were empowered and succeed them. Differently, Japan maybe less male dominated than the US. As mentioned earlier, due to celibacy syndrome, Japanese men have become less career-driven, less dominant and more in door; instead women become more independent, ambitious and outdoor. This trait results in women don’t want to be in a relationship and depend on men, and men don’t care about that either. This trait is the opposite to a male-dominated society. If Japanese society becomes more female dominant, people in the society become used to this trait. Japanese men will hold more endurance towards this social system so they wouldn’t break social taboo and go after a woman.

It is found that developed country has higher rate of sexual violence than developing country (Don, 2013). This is because developed countries have more gender equality between men and women, as said earlier men don’t want women to surpass them and become the dominator so they go after women who are middle class or higher class, more gender equality means more men are unhappy about women succeeding their supremacy.  Thus more men in developed countries try to sexually assault women with good financial status, this creates more sexual assault. Differently, developing country has less gender equality and men and women take separate roles (with women being the nurturer and men being the dominator), very few women would break their gender role and try to surpass men, thus it gives less motivation for men to suppress women by using force. Thus creates less sexual violence in the country. If the US is more developed than Japan by comparing their GDP per capita, it is possible US society has more gender equality than Japan, thus has more sexual violence than Japan. And this is consistent with the statistics; US rape rate is way higher than Japan’s.

In conclusion, different cultural traits could explain why rape is a big issue for the US but not as nearly serious in Japan.

Citation

Haworth, A. (2013). Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? Theguardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex

Country vs country: Japan and United States compared: Crime stats. (2003-2015). Nationmaster. Retrieved from http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Japan/United-States/Crime

Don, S. C. (2013). Test of Impacts of Gender Equality and Economic Development on Sexual Violence. Journal of Family Violence, 28, 603-610. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=8e24af04-42d9-48b0-999c-6b0459e33796%40sessionmgr112&vid=5&hid=128

Armstrong, E. A. (2006). Sexual Assault on Campus: A Multilevel, Integrative Approach to Party Rape. JSTOR, 53(4), 484-499. Retrieved from http://www-personal.umich.edu/~elarmstr/publications/Armstrong%20Hamilton%20and%20Sweeney%202006.pdf

Fisher, D. A. (2009). Televised Sexual Content and Parental Mediation: Influences on Adolescent Sexuality. Media Psychology, 12(2), 121-147. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=19&sid=de5c54c7-af16-49e3-8c95-3ad649cd2d77%40sessionmgr4005&hid=4114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=ufh&AN=39880476

Akita, K. (2005). Cuteness: The Sexual Commodification of Women in the Japanese Media. In Carilli, T., & Campbell, J. (Eds.), Women and the Media: Diverse Perspectives (pp. 44-46).University Press of America.

Iwamura, R. (1994).Letter from Japan: From girls who dress up like boys to trussed‐up porn stars ‐ Some of the contemporary heroines on the Japanese screen. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 7(2), 109-130.

Blog Post 19: Commonplace for Kairos of Rape

Today the class talked about how commonplace influence the Kairos of rape. The class defines commonplaces as connections with any argument or connections with audience in the moment. Commonplaces could influence how we perceive the situation. For instance, in the situation of rape people tend to blame women for being victimized because they perceive women as vulnerable, thus they expect women to protect themselves. Self-empowerment and vulnerability are commonplaces. They create connections to the argument that victims are to blame. If people don’t usually think about commonplaces they wouldn’t have arrived at the conclusion of victim-blame. The reading indicates multiple commonplaces that people needs to pay close attention to, including the thought of women are passive, women’s self-determination, women’s denial of fear about body threat, people’s believe in gender equality, and denial of incident in public space.

According to the article, women tend to think that rape usually happen between strangers, but in fact most of the sexual assault happened with people they know. This belief creates danger for women because they choose to stay at home instead of walking on street, while actually most rapes happen at home. Similarly, denial also causes danger. If women deny their fear about rape, they wouldn’t care to look at this problem and focus on protection. This leaves them vulnerable and easy for attack. Again if they deny that their male friends are going to rape them, it creates danger and increase the possibility for rape. Sometimes, women, especially teenage girls are naïve, they think that their male friends look kind so they must be kind person; these teen girls haven’t truly know what kind of friends they are seeing before jumping into relationship. This leaves them no protection and easy to be deceived by perpetrators.

Students suggest that in order to alter people’s perception about commonplaces, they should pay close attention or be aware of their surroundings. For instance, if a woman is in a party with male friend, she needs to be aware the behavior of their behaviors; if they are inviting her upstairs she should not rush to accept. If some guy friends try to touch her she should see what their intentions are, instead of denying the harassment. Victims should never decide that they are the one to blame even though they are women and they appear to be vulnerable. Instead, they should blame the perpetrator because it’s the perpetrator who assaulted them.

The class suggests that information is a weapon against sexual assault. Women need information about the situation that constructs rape. If women know that most of the day rape happened at public place or at home, they would try to avoid confronting a guy in these situations, or at least avoid sexual intercourse in these situations. People also need to look beyond some cultural notions (commonplaces) such as women are vulnerable, women dress attractively, and can’t drink to really see the nature of sexual assault. They should be aware that some commonplaces are social stereotypes that work to support victim-blames and persecute women.

In my view, to change people’s beliefs about Kairos is an applicable way to resolve the issue of rape. But I feel like commonplaces are culturally constructed, thus is hard to change its dimension. I know that some country holds different perceptions about rape. Asian countries actually pay more pity to the victims because they don’t believe a woman is to blame when she is raped. But I feel like sometimes Many American teens are culturally resistant, they don’t want to learn from other countries and just hold on to their own culture. For instance, American people value less femininity than Asian countries because they value masculinity more; in addition, they value competition over cooperation. This trends leave the minority groups (like women) little place in the society. This is habit to be deeply attached to their own culture sometimes keep American people away from different alternatives. They don’t see the better way to resolve the situation because they never know there is a better way.

Blog Post 18: How Culture Influence Rape/ Different Countries Comparison

On Thursday we talked about culture. The reading mainly shows that people shouldn’t blame culture for rape, instead they should blame the perpetrator. But the class discussed how culture does play a part in rape because culture gives permission to the rapist to commit sexual assault. The class also watched a short Youtube video about sexual harassment in Miami. The video shows that in Miami, guys harass women all the time on the street. This video can show that guys from Miami are culturally constructed beings; they harass women on the street because American culture has taught them to behave this way. As an internationals student, I realize that rape could be a unique phenomenon for America. Though many other poor countries also have similar issue, it’s more like due to poverty and illiteracy rather than culture. For instance, rape is also a issue in India because India is a developing country; government is more focused on economy rather than social crisis (including rape) (Bhowmick, 2013). But India actually has high conviction rate because many people report things when they see it, unlike America. Again, America is culturally constructed to be insensitive about rape; they never speak about rape because they never speak about sex. Differently, Indian people hate how rape has brought a bad reputation to their country thus they try to talk about this issue in order to solve it. In addition, the statistics show that rapes a mostly conducted by strangers in India, but in America most rapes are conducted by people they know.

The issue of rape is found different in different countries. According to Wikipedia, the report of world rape for 2008 shows rape rate for different countries: 2.0 per 100,000 in India, 1.2 per 100,000 in Japan, 3.6 per 100,000 in Morocco, 4.6 rapes per 100,000 in Bahrain, 12.3 per 100,000 in Mexico, 24.1 per 100,000 in United Kingdom, 28.6 per 100,000 in United States, 66.5 per 100,000 in Sweden, and world's highest rate of 114.9 rapes per 100,000 in South Africa. This statistic shows that though America has a high rape rate compares to other countries, it doesn’t have the highest rape rate. The highest is South Africa, and the second highest is Sweden. I feel like rape in different countries is caused by different Kairos and different rape culture. South Africa has the highest rape rate because of poverty and disease. Unlike Americans, South African people are under pressure, they want to solve the problem but they don’t have the power and money to do so. Differently, American people lived better life yet are careless about rape; they have the power to avoid it but their party culture and culture of sexuality allows them to rape. I could say the situation of rape in Africa is a lot worse than situation in the United States. So I guess every country has different Kairos that construct the issue of rape, thus rape in America can be a unique cultural construction. Rape culture in America is mainly triggered by American’s unique way of living such as drinking, partying, night life and drug using, not poverty.

Different country also requires different solutions for rape. For instance, Africa’s rape is originated from poverty thus it’s harder to solve than culturally-oriented rape. This is because the country has to take a long time for it to be fully developed into a country with strong medical and legal system. On the contrary, American’s rape is culturally constructed, it also takes a longer time to change the rape culture, but it must be shorter in time than to change African’s rape problem. Because changing a culture takes years while changing a country takes centuries.

Source:

http://world.time.com/2013/11/08/why-rape-seems-worse-in-india-than-everywhere-else-but-actually-isnt/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1906000,00.html

Blog Post 17：Feminine Politics and Rape Prevention

On Tuesday, the class still talked about how to prevent rape by language, theory and feminist politics. Students suggest some aspects of language where rape is shown. For instance, people tend to convince themselves that rape is ok. The instructor suggests that in order to change the rape culture, people need to change their language. Students said human language is historical based because it exists in old religious texts like Bible. This sort of caught my interest because I know that bible depicts only one God and he is a man. All other female goddesses are less powerful than him. Yet this context didn’t say why God can’t be woman, or why female Goddesses are less powerful than male. To me, the Christian religion might enforce sexism, a concept that fundamentally relates our modern rape culture. People learned that man is the dominator throughout generations. If people want to change the way rape culture is designed, they should alter the context of how women are depicted in history. This part is extremely difficult because it may alter people’s tradition and a lot of people don’t like it. Like for instance, in Christian religion, they should be able to say that God is a woman because woman can be as powerful as man, but Christian religion is not just a doctrine but also a tradition, Christians worship their God and are used to the idea God is a guy. To change their religion would be to disrupt their lives and everything they believed in. Loyal Christians might treat change as an anti-religious movement.

Not just in religion, women are historically subordinate to men. Back to the history, women are treated as prostitutes and slaves. In 1970s, men hold the right to own properties but women don’t. Women also don’t have the right to vote. In post-modern eras, women don’t go to school or work; their traditional roles are housewives, wives, and mother. All they should think about is to find a husband and marry. Also, women are expected to stay home and be the caretaker. Women who play sports are considered non-traditional and manly. The reading suggests that maybe women should abandon feminine stereotypes and be more independent and strong. I think this idea is debatable. If women abandon their feminine traits like their traits of being a mom, they can choose work over children. This aspect actually is growing bigger in modern society. For instance, Many Japanese women today choose not to have children or even marry because they don’t want to be the caretaker. And the Japanese population is going down because women refused to have kids. If they become a mother, they have to play the role of caretaker, because there’s not way their husbands will be the caretaker. This can show that some feminine stereotypes still exists today and favored by society. Society doesn’t encourage men to be the caretaker so women have to take that role; this tradition empowers men while dissatisfies women, because women also wants to be ambitious and strong, but they can’t be when they have to take care of a child. Society still keeps teaching women to be feminine through commercialization. Media makes women think if they wear make ups and be sexually attractive, men will come and talk to them. American women started to learn how to dress up or how to do make-ups at an early age; this cultural aspect is very different from China. If you go to China, you will find that very few Chinese women do make-ups while in high school or even in college, because society doesn’t expect women to show their attractiveness in a sexy way. Instead of being overly feminine and sexy, Chinese society expects women to look natural. They don’t have to put on a party dress and heavy make-ups or go to a bar and get drunk; that’s not how Chinese people define “sexy.” If a Chinese girl get too drunk or wear a really short skirt and flirt with men all the time, her parents and friends will perceive it as unhealthy or unconstrained. So I guess, if American women want to abandon their feminine characters when diminishing rape culture, they should also change the way they look. But again American society doesn’t want women look natural; they expect women to look sexy and get a man and have babies in order to keep their civilization from extinction. 

Blog Post 16: Rape Prevention

On Thursday, the class talked about how to prevent rape. I find the ways posted by Elizabeth very interesting. According to her article, one of the preventions for rape is not to stop the rapist by using physical resistance, because physical resistance could anger the rapist more and increase the possibility for physical violence. Instead, a woman should use verbal language to distract the rapist and change his mind. I think this is actually a very clever way of resolving the situation of rape. As the article suggests, man rape for different reasons; they either have sexual fantasy about the woman or are angry with the woman. If the man is fantasizing about the woman and forcing himself on her, the woman could use conversation to show him she is not the idealistic woman for him, so it turns his desires off. If he does not fantasize her anymore, he wouldn’t want to have sex with her. I think it’s also interesting sometimes shouting for help can stop a rapist’s movement. I think shouting gives a temporary shock to the rapist because it makes him think someone might hear him and break in to help the victim; this gives the victim the opportunity to push him off and run away. To me, it may be more likely for the rapist to let go if he fears to be caught, unless he is sure nobody will hear them.

The article also shows that it’s important for women to sense the man’s sexual intent and escape early. But I feel like some men are very quiet and calm, and it’s difficult for woman to read their facial expression. Especially if a woman is interested in the man, she will let her guard down and open her heart to him, this puts her in a dangerous situation. If the rapist is clever, he might seduce her into sexual intercourse by manipulating her emotion. So I guess women also need to have good self-control on their mind and emotion in order to avoid being taken advantage. But if the incident took place at a bar, it will be unlikely a woman can stay clear after a few drinks with a guy, so it might also be important she doesn’t get herself too drunk to know what the guy is planning after her.

I think a woman should know herself enough to get in touch with a guy. This is because man and woman have different ways to communicate their thoughts, which could cause misunderstanding and conflict. For me, I feel like I always irritates a guy when I was talking to him, so I know I should probably avoid being in a private situation with a guy alone because I know I can’t handle that situation once he gets provoked. But I know for some women, they know how to handle a guy when he is angry, they are mature enough to sit in a bar and hanging out with a guy. But for girls like me, they should know they are not so experienced with a guy and back off.

Another article posted by Elizabeth is about the traits of serial rapists versus single victim rapists. The article shows that serial rapists don’t try to kiss their victims before raping them, instead they threat their victims by weapon. In addition, serial rapists make conscious decisions before rape while single person rapists often do not (because they are drunk). This article suggests that it’s harder to avoid serial rapists than one time rapists because serial rapists are way more complex. Most girls don’t believe that their male friends are serial killers until they found out that they are. If serial rapists are more likely to disguise themselves to be good people, then maybe it’s important for women to pay double attention to guy friends who they just met, and don’t trust a guy by his appearance. Women should know they could trust a guy before hanging out with him.