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.
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