Society has created a mentality that rape is not as big of an issue as it once was. This is rape culture.

A society where rape is not as big of an issue or no one views it as an important issue. Rape Culture is any joke, image, law, and actions that happen everyday that validates rape in any way shape or form.

Rape Culture has become a bigger issue over the recent years. Things like victim blaming, slut shaming, jokes and sexism are just some of the causes that create rape culture.

The problem is that some have a mindset that it does not occur, or when it does rape is not a big deal.

We’re told rape is illegal and that bad people commit rape, but that isn’t enough to stop us. Our society breeds the idea that sexual assault is ok. Maybe not that it is “ok,” but that it is at least excusable.

1 out 4 women will be sexually assaulted before they graduate college, and only 3 out of 100 accused rapists will ever see jail time (out of the 40 out of 100 rape accounts that will ever even be reported to police).

Those statistics are scary, but they are true. Rape Culture causes victims to believe that it was their fault, that they dressed too provocatively, that the way they were acting was asking for sex, that they drank too much, that they weren’t being careful.

That is what rape culture is.

It is the fact that victims become afraid to admit that they have been assaulted because they are afraid of the ridicule, the blame, and the social stigma that will come if they admit it.

Rape Culture blames the victim, male or female, for what happens, when instead we should be better educating the public to realize what rape and sexual assault are and why they shouldn’t do it.

This is only furthered by sexism and the misogynistic jokes and actions that society has fostered. We are trained by the media and society to see a woman dressed in a certain way as an invitation to sex, or a man who seems overly flirtatious as a sign of sexual attraction.

These “hints” are taken as a justification for our actions and thus turn the blame on the victim once again. We need to train society to realize that just because a girl is wearing a short skirt and a low-cut top that she isn’t asking for sex.

This is how we stop rape culture.

We stop making sexual assault the punchline for jokes, we start discussing how it effects everyone, we stop victim blaming.

One individual is not going to put a stop to this, it is going to take society as a whole to stop rape culture.