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.