Editorial By: The CNM Chronicle Editorial Board
Rape culture needs to end and it must start with education.
Questioning what a victim wore or what the victim had to drink seems natural. Jokes about rape — such as the line sung by the men in “Summer Nights” from “Grease” — are so common in media that most people hardly notice.
Rape culture will not go away overnight. We need education on the subject, without judgment, spin or propaganda.
We need institutions like CNM to add rape culture to the list of cultural studies classes.
We need professionals to tell us how to handle situations where rape culture is happening. We need classes on preventing rape culture like the active shooter training mentioned in “Active shooter training offered on Montoya, Westside Campuses” on the front page of this issue.
We need this because victims should not be afraid to come forward after a rape. We need this because teenagers think it is ok to video tape a rape, but do nothing to stop it.
The problem with rape culture is that it blurs the line. It can make people forget that we live in a world where actions have consequences.
Major news outlets like CNN have made comment about the recent guilty decision in the Stubenville rape case that lament the loss of promising careers – of the rapists, and of their lifelong labels as sex offenders.
What the national news media failed to acknowledge is the struggle the victim will have.
Images and video of her rape are on the internet forever. Her memory loss of the night will leave her with lifelong questions about how things got so out of control.
This case, from start to finish, is the product of a culture that embraces rape as funny or the victims fault or a commonplace thing that happens all the time.
This is not ok.
Last spring, the CNM Chronicle wrote a special edition paper on sex and violence which included the story of a male rape victim.
He said his attackers were never brought to justice because the responding officers did not believe a man could be raped.
His story can be read at thecnmchronicle.wordpress.com/overcoming-stigma.
If the police can be taken in by rape culture, we must be educated in order to combat it.
So CNM, give us the option to learn.
There are so many instances where people tells us it is ok to think rape jokes are funny, that a person’s sexual history is relevant to a sexual assault and that a forceful or violent man is somehow sexy.
We need a place to that will help us examine the problem.