Blog Post 7: Kairos of Rape

In class we discussed about Kairos for rape. Kairos is defined as the best opportunity of time. We talked about what creates the best opportunity of time for rape to happen; this includes miscommunication, alcohol, power dynamic of gender roles, hypermasculinity, and lack of awareness to the situation. We discussed how we can change these elements in order to create a better Kairos that will avoid rape culture. Students suggest that we can do more research on areas outside the college, have more knowledge about the history of rape, and change cultural connotation and social expectation.

What I think most interesting about Kairos in chapter 2 is that Kairos explains different intentions or motivations behind different people. For example, victims of rape claims that they are raped because they felt being force to commit unwilling sexual intercourse with a guy. But the rapist believes he is not guilty of rape because the interaction between him and the victims is consensual. Sex is one of the motivation behind rape; rapists want sexual pleasure, this is why they careless about feminine thoughts and force themselves on the victims. Sexual pleasure can be tied with lack of education and rigid power dynamics. Because women are stereotypically considered weaker and less powerful than man, man believes that they are able to suppress them. Rape culture is also perceived not a big deal by teenagers who have no awareness about their actions or knowledge about sex and abortion.

Somehow, cultural norm or social norm has helped building up man’s sexual desires and their motive to commit sexual assault. In class the professor said man and woman are raised differently by their parents; woman are given dolls and pretty dresses, but man are given toy guns and more masculine toys. In other words, woman maybe taught by society to be subordinate and girl-like. Similar idea applies to man; men are taught to be aggressive and forceful. So social construction has provided a disadvantage for women because of the way woman and man are taught to be. The instructor suggested that one way to change this motivation of sexual pleasure is to change the cultural construction. If men were not taught to be masculine, aggressive and self-centered, instead they are taught to be understanding and considerate, they may establish the self-control which can help prevent rape incidents occurring in the future. Also, if women are taught to be more masculine instead of feminine, they maybe can learn to defend themselves and strive to be dominant in the situation of rape. But to me, to alter the way societies are is very difficult because when every man behaves the same way (and every woman behaves the same way), it’s going to take a lot of effort and a long time. School institutions may need to change the way they teach boys and girls in order to change their personalities, and parents may disagree with this change because they expect their children to fill into gender roles. It is only everybody in the society agrees to change, the masculinity and femininity will change, but to me it’s highly unlikely.

In chapter2, the author also talked about the web of factors, which means all the factors that contributed to rape together being interrelated. If alcohol, the right timing, miscommunication, gender roles and all the factors together build up a rape incident, then it is possible to take each factor out and de-construct this rape incident, in other words, to avoid the rape incident. If woman knows that alcohol is bad at late night while rape happens, they don’t drink because it keeps their awareness up. If they know that hanging out with a guy may lead to miscommunication, they shall be cautious about what they say because they know their behavior may suggest wrong message to guys. This is how we protect ourselves.