Blog post 15: Rape Joke and Male Gender Roles

On Tuesday, the class discussion focused on how hyper masculinity is constructed. The students talked about how boys are taught to be man and not cry. The instructor suggests that rape could be one way for men to prove their manhood. The class also talked about how parents and society shaped people’s personality. The students said parents never address the issue of rape to their children; that gives children the freedom to commit sexual misconduct. Or when parents do address the issue of sexual assault, they barely give the good reason to their kids why they shouldn’t commit rape because parents find it hard to talk about rape or sex in front of their children.

In my opinion, the wrong way of educating a child could disturb the child’s growth or distort their personality once they grow up. If parents don’t inform their kids why it’s bad to rape or force a woman into sexual misconduct, children will not be persuaded enough to listen or control their own behavior. In addition, if parents force their boys to not cry, it is also a form of distortion to the kids’ personality. The suppression to boys’ emotion may lead to disobedience and aggression, and this effect could last through their adulthood. A boy who suffered emotional suppression may attain the mind of a sociopath once he grows up. This is because his pressure to attain all the emotion within and not to unleash is great enough to alter his personality. Nowadays, people usually find woman pay more compassion towards things in their lives than men. Women are more emotional and humane maybe because they have more emotional freedom since they are little girls. Similarly, men are more cold and indifferent when facing human cruelty because they are trained to be unemotional since they are young. So if men intended to rape a woman, it is not only due to lack of self-constrain, but also because they are raised to behave manly (to be indifferent and unemotional).

The class also talked about the Kairos when a man offers a woman a drink. Students said it’s hard for woman to refuse a man in this situation because they would have got the drink before even getting a chance to say “No.” I think woman are also responsible for controlling this situation because they are never taught how to refuse a invite, rather they are taught to accept a invite. Students said if a man said he wants to talk to the girl instead of offering a drink, the girl would think that he is crappy because this is not how communication works; if he is interested in her he must have offered a drink. The way that girls expect man to offer a drink to them and then accept the drink is a socially constructed expectation. If girls' way of thinking are not so rooted within the culture, they would not assume the guy is crappy if he is trying to talk to them. Likewise, a guy would think the girl is weird if she doesn’t accept the drink, because again this is how people communicate in the society. So in order to disturb the Kairos of rape, men and women both need to change their communicative behaviors to begin with.

The class also talked about how society often make sex and rape a joke, and how this worsens the issue of sexual assault. One students in class said “the more we make it a joke, the more we think it’s ok.” And I feel like it’s true that people hold more endurance to the issue of rape even if it happens all the time, but they don’t consciously aware that they are making the issue of rape worse by keep joking on it. Especially in the media, people see a lot of example of TV shows joking about sex and rape. For instance, I remember in one episode of How I Met Your Mother, Barney said “all girls are a pinas.” In another episode, he and Marshall actually bet on touching Lily’s boobs. And almost every episode Barney is chasing after some random female targets. These behaviors or comments may seem funny on TV, but they contain sexual oriented offence to women. Yet it’s hard for audience to think about offence or sexual harassment during the moment of the entertainment. It’s important for people to reduce sexually oriented jokes on media and raise awareness of the seriousness of rape in order to alleviate the issue. But to me, this is hard to do because many people love entertainment; they wouldn’t want producers to take out sexually oriented jokes because they are funny.