Rape culture sets behavioral prescriptions and if one does not adhere to them, they deserve violence or, at the very least, are somehow responsible for it. Rape culture prices and prioritizes human dignity, as if it’s something to earn and not inherent. It’s highly adaptive, cunning clever in its ability to morph into whatever context it is placed. Insidious, it hangs in the air, getting into everything, staining and deteriorating whatever it touches. Perhaps what makes it so difficult to pinpoint is its powerful yet amorphous nature.
But there isn’t much on how to transform it. From the cloying, maternal columns suggesting we teach our sons to “be kind” to fiery debates on how we need to “teach men not to rape” to victim blaming, to learning “enthusiastic consent” before engaging in sexual activity, to boycotting CNN for their rape apologist reporting, there is no shortage of opinion on rape culture. It means rape culture is alive and well.Īs the abhorrent details of how two male teenage football players were found guilty of raping and disseminating nude photos of a 16 year old girl made headlines, writers and bloggers have asserted advice and coverage based upon their own ad hoc subcultures of parenting, activism, sports, and politics. So, what do the events of Steubenville, Ohio mean for our country? It means what happened in Steubenville not only could happen anywhere. Meaning, what happens within our state lines can be an indication of what the rest of the nation is doing. We are the political battle state that rests with the burden of revealing the civic psyche of the most powerful nation in the free world. Our breath is often staked as the wind in which the direction of the nation will go. In other words: what makes us special is our perfect average-ness. There’s support for and against gay marriage, reproductive rights, and every social issue you can battle. Our medium sized cities are connected by the rural roads lay flat for both the Amish buggy and eighteen wheel semi-trucks transporting goods in every direction. We boast an almost even distribution among liberal, conservative, and swing opinion. Ohio, famous for being the mirror of the United States, reflects the healthy tension of the American populous.
In presidential election years, the inner grin shows its teeth when I hear the famous phrase, “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.” Over the past several months however, as a writer living in the Buckeye state, I have found this saying applicable as we continue to survey the damage in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape case.
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