I don’t consider myself a feminist. I think I share opinions with quite a lot of feminists, but I don’t feel comfortable associating myself with some others. Different branches of the movement have different goals, and different methods of achieving goals. I’m certainly in favor of reducing the high number of sexual assaults and rapes that women are victim to, and finding more effective ways of apprehending the perpetrators. But I don’t think that smaller instances of sexism in our society are where the focus of the movement should be.
A few months ago some of my Facebook friends shared an article entitled “So you’re tired of hearing about ‘rape culture’?”, which explains what “rape culture” really entails, in response to a friend of the author’s complaint that (s)he was tired of hearing about it. The first part of this article makes an excellent point – in the Steubenville case (in which a teenage girl under the influence of alcohol was raped and sexually harassed by her peers over social media), far more attention was given to those who supported the perpetrators of the rape, even giving them a fair amount of sympathy, while the victim was criticized. Clearly this instance represents a problem in our society.
Then the article loses me, showing a series of ads, which range from extremely disturbing – a Duncan Quinn ad in which a man appears to be suffocating a lingerie-wearing woman with a tie – to just silly – a Domino’s pizza box proclaiming “no is the new yes.” The former is just creepy and crude, and I doubt that the vast majority of us would find it acceptable. So is it really a culture? The latter is just a ridiculous tagline; does a bad slogan on a pizza box really encourage rape? The whole article feels propagandic, and condescends quite a bit trying to explain what rape culture is. If I didn’t know much about feminists, this article wouldn’t convince me to become one, because it feels as if I’m being chastised for not already knowing what the author knows.
Honestly, I just don’t like the idea of rape culture because I think it’s not the biggest problem that feminists face. If all these ads and ill-advised media content were to vanish tomorrow, rapes wouldn’t stop. We’ll need effective measures to police and apprehend the people who commit these crimes regardless. The reason I can’t call myself a feminist is because a lot of the movement focuses on smaller, secondary issues, and doesn’t confront the foremost problems. Blame the prevalence of sexism and rape on culture all you’d like, but the state of things won’t change unless you take real action to change it.