Why rape culture hurts us so much (It doesn’t have to be this way)
Note: This blog post is an adaptation of the podcast episode How to Create a Culture of Consent in our Families
When my daughter was three, her doctor prescribed antibiotics for an infection. She said she didn’t like the flavor and refused to take them, and I forced the dropper into her mouth. I knew the medicine would help her feel better, we were both hangry after a long morning at the doctor and pharmacy, and I didn’t see another way to get the medicine into her – even though I knew I didn’t want to force her. But if she didn’t want to take it, what other options did I have?
That afternoon, as I worried about how I was going to get her to take the next dose, it was clear that this was about way more than just the medicine. I knew I didn’t want to be the kind of parent who forces their kid to do something. I wanted her to have a say over her own body, but how could I do that when she was resisting something that would help her?
We Live in a Rape Culture
Rape culture doesn’t mean that every person gets raped; it’s a blend of beliefs and actions that make sexual assault and rape seem acceptable. We blame the person who was raped and discourage official reporting, with authorities sometimes counseling the victim not to ruin the perpetrator’s life over a “misunderstanding.”
These (and other reasons) are why only 31% of sexual assaults are ever reported.
Rape culture is everywhere, influencing how we understand and navigate consent, especially within our close relationships.
When I was in my early twenties, I was in a relationship with someone I’ll call Arizona Guy. I lived in Berkeley and he lived in Yuma, so we would get together every three weeks – and the first thing he always wanted to do was have sex. One time when I said I didn’t want to he stopped, held me, empathized and comforted me…and then said “So we’re going to finish now, right?”. I had just paid for flights; we were supposed to have a nice weekend together, and did I really want to ruin that?
So I laid on my back and I can still recall the itchiness of the tears as they pooled in my ears, and then I showered and we went out.
This doesn’t fit the legal definition of rape, but I have a hard time imagining that Arizona Guy believed that I was fully consenting. Because I didn’t say “no” the second time, he chose to ignore my non-verbal cues. He knew I didn’t want to have sex, but rape culture made it acceptable for him to override my lack of consent, and taught me that disappointing him was a worse outcome than doing what felt wrong to me in that moment.
How Rape Culture is Transmitted
Rape culture influences our everyday interactions. Even when no laws are broken, rape culture affects us all. It is perpetuated in children’s books and movies, in songs explicitly about rape as well as those that appear on mainstream radio stations. It’s in the old classics like Sting’s I’ll Be Watching You, really old classics like Baby It’s Cold Outside, and new ‘classics’ too: Justin Bieber’s video for the song What Do You Mean? shows him having sex with a woman even as he wonders in the lyrics what she means when she gives conflicting messages about consent.
These cultural messages teach boys and men to always want and be ready for penetrative sex, to be grateful for whatever sex they can get, and to never be on the submissive or receiving end. Girls and women are to be the gatekeeper, saying ‘no’ at first but eventually being persuadable to a ‘yes.’ A ‘no’ is seen as being ambiguous and untrustworthy, and boys and men can ignore multiple ‘no’s to keep pushing and violating boundaries until they achieve penetration. Girls and women aren’t supposed to be sexual beings who actually want sex, and sex is only to consist of penetration of a vagina by a penis. There is no discussion of intimacy, or pleasure, or ways to create enjoyment that don’t involve penetration.
All of these ideas exist within rape culture – and when we let these cultural messages stand, and don’t teach children about consent, and even force them to do things like taking medicine against their will, we are perpetuating the cycle.
Parents’ predominant approach to teaching about consent is to put the fear of God into boys not to get in trouble, tell girls not to be alone with a boy, and tell all children to avoid sex during college. This conveys to young people that:
- Consent is only about sex;
- The ‘natural’ state for boys is to want sex and for girls to resist it;
- That the only way to stay out of trouble is to not have sex.
And that’s in the relatively rare cases when any kind of conversation is happening at all: one nationally representative survey of over 2,000 teens found that 69% of teens said their mothers NEVER talked with them about consent, and 81% said their father’s didn’t. When a conversation did happen then it usually only happened once: one single conversation on a topic that pervades our culture.
Consent isn’t about checking a box to make sure you don’t get reported for rape. It isn’t even just about sex. Consent is about fostering respect for the dignity, personhood, and well-being of every individual. When we have another person’s consent to interact with them in any way, we treat them with the kind of empathy and respect with which we would hope to be treated ourselves.
The teenage years are already too late
By waiting until our children are teenagers to have this kind of conversation, we’ve already missed the boat. We’ve already spent years transmitting very different messages about consent, when we’ve forced children to do things against their will, like:
- Take medicine
- Brush their teeth
- Pee before they leave the house whether or not they need to
- Take a bath
- Stay in bed when they aren’t tired
- Eat food when they aren’t hungry, or that they don’t like
- Give hugs to relatives when they don’t want to
- Teach boys to ‘man up’ and not be scared
- Teach girls to keep everyone else happy and be pretty and not too assertive
- Share
- Apologize
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with our child doing any of these things willingly. It’s when we force them, like I forced my daughter to take her medicine, that we get into trouble. That’s where we give children the messages that:
- Children don’t know what’s best for their own bodies;
- Children don’t have the right to decide what happens to their bodies;
- Parents can and should force children to do what the parents think is right.
I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t provide children with medical care if they say ‘no.’ Most children are going to choose to avoid the pain of a needle over the nebulous and far-off benefit of a vaccine. In that situation, there are many things we can do to make the needle more comfortable: giving painkillers in advance; distracting with a toy or digital device; waiting for the alcohol to dry before the poke.
For most parents, the number of these truly life-or-death decisions we face are relatively few. The majority of these decisions are things we’ve been culturally conditioned to do.
Our children must give hugs to elderly relatives, because that’s what good grandchildren do, and our competence as parents would be questioned if they didn’t.
Our children must share toys, because otherwise they will grow up to be sociopaths who can’t get along with others (and also we’ll have to act as referee in every squabble).
Our children must sit at the table and finish their meal because can’t they just do one single thing we ask that doesn’t seem unreasonable?
Rape culture hurt us as children, and hurts us again as parents
When we were children, we wanted to have autonomy over our own bodies. We wanted to be able to decide for ourselves whether we hugged elderly relatives, shared toys, and finished our dinner.
And instead, we were told: “Do what I tell you.” “Don’t argue.” “Because I said so.”
Our parents violated our autonomy – not because they didn’t love us, but because they thought it would help us to be successful in life. But the vast majority of parents I work with carry deep hurts inside them stemming from these violations. They wanted to be seen and known and understood for who they really were, and instead they were told (verbally or non-verbally): “Do what I say, and then I will show you that I love you.”
In those moments when we forget all the Instagram memes and our minds go blank, the easiest thing to do is just to repeat what was modeled for us when we were children: “Do what I tell you.” “Don’t argue.” “Because I said so.”
And then we remember that this is not how we want to parent, and we feel so much guilt and shame because the gulf between the parent we want to be and the parent we actually are in those difficult moments seems impossibly wide.
Moving Towards a Culture of Consent
We aren’t doomed to perpetuating this cycle of trauma. When we create a culture of consent we’re fundamentally changing how we interact with our children. We move away from saying: “I know what’s best for you so you’re going to do what I say,” to “Let’s work together to meet both of our needs.”
This does not mean that we stop asking our children to do anything. It does mean we might make fewer demands on them, and find ways to make the non-negotiable ones acceptable to them.
There was never a question of whether my daughter was going to take the antibiotics. But after dinner that evening, my husband sat with her in the bathroom for an hour. He made it clear that the medicine was going to make her better so we wanted her to take it, but we were absolutely flexible on how she did that. We offered orange juice and chocolate to take away the flavor. We would sit with her and rub her back.
Eventually she decided to alternate sips of medicine with sips of water, and she took the whole dose willingly. Ten days later, when we were finished with the whole course, she expressed some disappointment that she wasn’t going to be able to take it anymore, because she actually liked it. Her refusal wasn’t really about the medicine. It was about her need for autonomy; to make decisions about her own body that felt meaningful to her, and to which she consented.
Now she knows we respect her consent, it no longer takes an hour to do each of these negotiations. Often, she’s the one who comes up with an idea that works for both of us. When she doesn’t resist every request I make, that makes my life easier, and helps me to be the parent I want to be.
Taming Your Triggers
We know unresolved consent issues can lead to parenting triggers and we’re here to help. Sign up for the Taming Your Triggers waitlist and be notified when doors reopen in October.
Let’s uncover why you have a big reaction to your child’s age-appropriate behavior, heal old wounds, and feel triggered way less often. Enrollment open September 29-October 9, 2024. Click the banner to learn more!
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About the author, Jen
Jen Lumanlan (M.S., M.Ed.) hosts the Your Parenting Mojo podcast (www.YourParentingMojo.com), which examines scientific research related to child development through the lens of respectful parenting.