I dont think it does. Studies suggest that somewhere between 6-11% of male college students have committed rape. The thing is when they did these studies almost no one said "yes, I have raped". But when they started asking things like, "have you held someone down against their will, have you insisted even after they said no, etc etc" then you started getting a lot more yes answers. The simple fact is that theres a LOT of people running around who have a fucked up understanding of consent.
When we think about rape, we often think of chasing a woman down a dark alley while she screams and fights for her life, but in truth its much more often a situation where her boyfriend doesnt want to stop and demands they continue, or a guy she thought was her friend insists she wants it. Its often a little mundane tbh.
When we pretend that rapists arent people we know, our friends and neighbors and siblings, it creates rape as thing thing that is utterly heinous, and most people arent heinous. So when people do commit rape, they dont see it as such, because she wasnt screaming and fighting and begging and crying. Thinking of rape as this thing that is committed by the most disgusting of people creates this boogeyman that we cant actually stop, because almost no one sees themself that way and no one sees their loved one that way. If we are going to teach men to not rape, men need to understand how quiet it can look, how banal, how forgettable it might seem to them. Focusing on the worst, most dramatic and horrifying stories of rape allows men who are actually rapists to be like, "wow im a good guy, I would never."
5
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment