Rape Culture: A Research Proposal



Rape Culture: A Research ProposalCallie HodgeVirginia Commonwealth UniversityInquiry & of Craft Argument University 200Professor HallSeptember 26, 2016Rape Culture: A Research ProposalSection 1: Core ConcernsMy topic is the pressing issue of rape culture and how it is influenced and ignored in today’s society. My three core contexts are Social, Judicial, and Cultural. I decided to pursue this topic because I feel very passionate towards the subject matter and how it is often viewed skeptically in today’s culture. It is also a bit of a personal matter for me, I like investigating women’s issues, even if it is a difficult topic to cover I am eager to research more on it. Following the recent court case about Brock Turner and his rape sentence, I feel that it is an issue that has become more relevant now than it ever has. Rape is prevalent all around us, and the way it is handled can be very unsettling. The controversy surrounding this issue sparks up continuous debates about how to put an end to it, yet there is so much prejudice and little has been done in order to fully understand the origins of this present problem. I decided to choose my three contexts as social, cultural, and judicial. I chose these topics because I believe that they are the most important. Rape culture is usually defined as a society that often blames its victims and normalizes male aggression and violence. It is a societal issue, and feminist groups speculate that it is achieved through a social conditioning on a day to day basis. Society does not totally promote rape culture, but it does involve cultural practices that exempt and allow rape to occur without much justice being done, hence, the cultural viewpoint. Gender roles and masculinity play into cultural practices and people are naturally driven to conform to “normal” behavior. The Judicial system itself plays a major role in rape culture. Rape cases are repeatedly mishandled and are failed upon to be managed as serious offenses. Rape victims rarely speak out about their cases due to how often they are discredited based on their appearance, actions, and behavior prior to the rape. On that account, victim blaming has occurred. What I have gathered from this topic is evidence that is advocating that this is indeed an issue that has yet to be resolved. It is an issue that has many different views and standpoints. Rape culture does not just involve one core issue but includes many issues all integrated as one common problem. I researched mostly off of Virginia Commonwealth’s Database although it is somewhat difficult to find recent information on the subject. I still want to further my research on gender roles and how this influences rape culture along with male violence and aggression, although this is very difficult to determine due to its inability to be measured accurately. I want to delve deeper into this issue not just with the justice system, but also the psychology behind these crimes.Section 2: Other VoicesMy first source is statistics on the Criminal Justice System and the vast majority of perpetrators who will not go to jail or prison. It records how many rapes are reported to police, how many reports lead to an arrest, how many cases get referred to prosecutors, the number of cases that will lead to a felony conviction, and finally, how many rapists will be incarcerated after this process. “Out of every 1,000 rapes, 994 perpetrators will walk free” (“Department of Justice”1). A majority of this content is just statistical information regarding the year of 2015 of rapes. This information also includes statistics on reasons victims choose to report their cases and victim who choose not too. I believe that this a great start for my research basis since it is always important to include evidence with your claims. A majority of this source fits a majority of the STAR criteria I need for my paper. It provides sufficiency in rape cases as well as sexual assault (it also defines what was recorded as sexual assault). It does not, however, provide you with the race or orientation of it’s rapists, so it does not necessarily provide you with Typicality. However, it still provides accurate up to date information and is relevant towards the claim I am going to make in my paper. I would rate this source as a (4). It does not provide much text but it still includes very important statistics towards the issue.My second source discusses rape conviction rates, as well as how clients are often treated in rape prosecutions. Larcombe discusses the legal systems faults and failures and argues that “the current legal impunity for rape cannot be condoned, increasing conviction rates is not in itself a valid objective for law reform.” Larcombe presents three major issues that need to be tackled with reform. The first one is to bring the legal definition of rape and sexual assault into line with women’s experiences, so overall improving the legal story of rape. The second is to ensure that requirements of participation in a criminal prosecution do not exacerbate the rape victim/survivors trauma (again) by compromising her autonomy and dignity. The third is to reform institutional attitudes and practices, particularly within the police, so that all sexual offenses reports are treated with respect rather than disbelief. This source does contain statistical research on police behavior/treatment when presented with rape reports that back Larcombe’s basis of reasoning and explanation on falling conviction rates. She provides us with a strong view that “feminist” strategies make it harder to increase conviction rates and often go “too far” in some cases. There are so many research studies included in this piece that help Larcombe’s three claims on the matter. The evidence is somewhat up to date in mid-2000’s, not entirely up to present but is still fairly recent. I want to use this source to further my research of victim blaming and how it affects the legal system’s actual conviction rates. I would rate this source as a (5). It provides a stable claim and sufficient evidence to back the claim I am going to make about my topic.My third source is called the selective use of rape- victim stereotypes to protect culturally similar perpetrators. This article discusses how there are specific stereotypes that exist and dominate how female rape victims should act. For example, victims are expected to physically resist their attacker and immediately report their assault. In reality however some victims are too shocked to physically resist or too traumatized to go to the police (Bongiorno, et al. 398). This research makes the claim that counter stereotypic-victim behavior can undermine fair prosecution outcomes, especially for acquaintance rape victims. Rape occurs often very differently from one’s expectations, regarding scenario, behaviors, and whether they knew the perpetrator or not. “Men typically respond defensively to the suggestion that they could be rape perpetrators (qtd. In Scheel, Johnson, Schneider, and Smith 2001). When perceivers are similar to the perpetrators and are labeled as someone who seems “like me” the victim’s allegations often become undermined. There is also the case that victims should exhibit a certain set of behaviors, before, during, or after the assault. This can be used to increase victim blame and exonerate perpetrators, like blaming women for wearing revealing clothing, accepting a payment for dinner, consuming drugs/alcohol, or had prior engaged consensual sex with the perpetrator (Bongiorno, et al. 399). I believe that this source provides an accurate analysis of rape culture through victim blaming/stereotyping. There are evident research and statistical information found in this article that supports the authors claim and reasoning, as well as my claim that will be made later on. The information presented is clearly thought out and provides an excellent basis for beginning research. Overall, I rate this source as a (5).Section 3: What I may know, and what I need to knowWhat I know on this topic is that it has indeed become a more prominent issue than it ever has been. Following very recent court cases, I know there was a very big public uproar in the recent Brock Turner case, a former Stanford student who raped a girl and only received a 6-month sentence- and only had to serve 3 months of it. I know this information through the news and constant debate on the matter of rape sentences presented after this case. There were many inquiries on why rapists receive lesser sentences than those with convicted drug charges. As a person who frequently takes interests in women’s rights, I often like to research on core issues women face on a day to day basis, and rape culture is one of them. I looked up rape culture and found that it was originally a term coined by feminists in the 1970s. It was defined as a culture that predominantly accepts victim blaming and male violence. I used this definition of rape culture in order to form my three core contexts and three main questions I want to answer within my paper. Each of my contexts, social, cultural, and judicial all exist in my topic in many forms. They often coordinate with one another, and rape culture consists of many key issues that play a role and correspond to the information found within my three sources. Problems within the legal system, victim blaming, male aggression and stereotypes all play into rape culture predominantly. Rape culture, of course, has many other core issues, but I believe the one’s that I have chosen are the most important and clear.The questions I need to cover are mostly how male aggression and gender roles play into rape culture. I didn’t uncover much evidence and research within my sources that really discussed this question to the full extent, so I must locate other sources to prove that this indeed is an issue. I did find in my second source that male violence is often the typical picture of a rape case, and that it is often the case that is the most likely to be believed/convicted in a trial. My three research questions I want to answer and address on my topic are: In what ways as a society are we discouraging/criticizing rape victims for speaking out? How do gender roles/male aggression play into rape culture? In what ways is rape mistreated in the legal system? I believe these questions are the most important because they are the questions that are most addressed in my sources. Victimization was a topic that was addressed in all three of my sources, and each had very substantial evidence and reasons as to why this occurs so often in rape cases. Victimization is one of the many reasons victims fail to speak out, due to immediately being discredited or not taken seriously. Gender Roles/male aggression also appeared in one of my sources, it was taken to account how often victims are more likely to be believed when their attack turned violent/the force of threat was used and an injury was sustained (qtd. in Estrich 1987; Kelly et al. 2005, p.31). Rape in the legal system is also a key concept that is brought up in all of my sources. The legal system has evidently not been able to handle rape cases effectively due to the issue at hand: Rape culture. It goes to show in my first source how often perpetrators walk free without any charges whatsoever. “The vast majority of perpetrators will not go to jail or prison” (“Department of Justice”1). These questions will help expand my knowledge due to the fact that they all bring up other issues at hand, like law reform, stereotypes, ethnicity and how it all plays into rape culture. It goes against my own bias because I too always felt that rapists would have portrayed a certain set of actions/behaviors, and that it happens with strangers. But not all rapists are the same, just like those who have witnessed it firsthand. The psychology behind rape culture is very exhaustive and contains many different approaches to rape and society in general. Keeping these various approaches in mind, I will continue my research into rape culture and find new questions to answer. ReferencesDepartment of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2010-2014 (2015); ii. Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based Reporting System, 2012-2014 (2015); ?iii. Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based Reporting System, 2012-2014 (2015); iv. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 2009 (2013).?Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Rape and Sexual Victimization Among College-Aged Females, 1995-2013 (2014).Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010 (2013).Larcombe, W. (2011). Falling Rape Conviction Rates: (Some) Feminist Aims and Measures for Rape Law.?Feminist Legal Studies,?19(1), 27-45. doi:10.1007/s10691-011-9169-2Bongiorno, Renata, Blake M McKimmie, and Barbara M Masser. "The Selective Use of Rape-Victim Stereotypes to Protect Culturally Similar Perpetrators."?Psychology of Women Quarterly?40.3 (2016): 398-413. Web. ................
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