13 Reasons Why Addresses Rape Culture in America

The controversial Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why has people up in arms. Here's my opinion, while not popular... I liked it, because while it's true that if someone is suicidal nothing you say or do, or don’t say will not make any difference to them. If they kill themselves, it is because they lost a life-long battle with depression. However, I think this particular series was very good. WHY? Because it makes a strong statement about rape culture. YES, women and teens sometimes end their lives after a rape. Also whether you take your life after or not, you are dead, your life as you knew it ends there. Also, it pointed out the fear, humiliation and how we are told to say nothing, get over it, move past it, stay silent because the topic makes people uncomfortable. It draws those lines in bold. When will we wake up? Boys will be boys? Just having fun? Were you drinking? A million ways to blame the already broken victim, but none to shame the culprit. Ask me. I know. And probably most of the women and teens that you love know too.

70% of teens report that they have been sexually coerced before the first year of college. Think about how many teens there are... and they are not alone. Nearly one in 10 women has been raped by an intimate partner in her lifetime, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.

And though the statistics are so high that you’d feel that every rape victim has another rape victim to support them, to talk to. Rape victims are taught from the first second of terror to keep quiet, to never express their feelings of despondency, mostly because society hates stark, jagged truths.

If you are the type that is brave enough to report it to authorities prepare for an even more hellish experience when women are asked about the color of their underwear. Told that the outfit they wore was somehow transforming them into consenting pieces of meat. Being told that if they lost consciousness, they were willing prey. Being scolded, scorned, and destroyed for the simple fact that they are the ones with the vagina.

Don’t get me wrong men are raped as well. The problem is that society uses that as a crutch to the objectifying and reducing of women. You will hear and see it, in every form of media that exists. Even in casual conversations, you will hear, “Girls like that” and “She has a reputation” as if any prior sexual activity or even promiscuity is an invitation to destroy another human being, a reason to deprive a woman’s right to having the simple privacy of her own body.

Statements like “Just look what she was wearing” and “Asking for it,” gives predators permission to continue acting barbaric. And if you want to apply the word savage, yes you can apply it to the rapists and womanizers. However, it can readily be applied to society’s view of women and whether or not they have rights over their own bodies.

That’s my side of it,

Angel