The concept of rape is, and has been, defined by society and the ideas of normative sexual behaviors. This is also determined by the concept, misunderstanding of, rape myths and how these are formed and informed by patriarchal society and hegemonic masculinity. This paper examines how the society and the media entrenches rape culture by promoting sexism and misogyny through the sexual objectification women, and how they hamper victim reporting by embracing rape myths which affect how rape victims and perpetrators are viewed by the society and the justice system.
One of the major roles that the media has played leading to the harassment and rape of women is the sexual objectification of women. Sexual objectification is defined as the reduction of one’s body by putting it into fragments of body parts and functions. It also entails evaluating someone for their physical appearance and considering them as a sexual object from which someone else can draw pleasure. In this situation, a person’s abilities, individuality, and personality are devalued. Since the society is male dominated, women are always targeted for sexual objectification by the media.
In some of the content analyses carried out in Europe and the US, in about fifty percent of advertisements and commercials involving women, certain interesting patterns were noticed. For example, the women involved are defined, primarily, by their physical appearances and they are shown in a piecemeal way where body parts instead of the entire figure are represented. Also, in those commercials, the women dress suggestively, posing in submissive and sexually exploitative postures, the images increasingly appearing porn like. In another analysis involving a hundred top-fictional films of 2018 showed that the women characters were three times more likely than their male counterparts to be presented in attires which were sexually reveal, fully or partially naked (Smith et al. 2019). Additionally, are more likely to be the target of comments about their appearance than men.
Even in the television screen, there is not much progress that is seen with the portrayal of women. Compared to men, women in television appear less as leaders and in taking up professional role, talk less. Specifically, during game shows, women are more likely to be utilized as accessories to decorate the moments, dressing in nothing more than underwear and a bra. The male hosts, on the other hand, are normally properly and fully dressed (Lauzen, 2017). Sadly, children who watch television encounter a world where women and girls are portrayed as sexual objects.
McDade-Montex et al (2017) analyzed the American programs loved by children and found out that the each of the thirty-two episodes had 770 instances of sexual objectification with the women being sexually objectified through suggestive postures and clothing in 72% of the cases. Another way in which the media has objectified women is through music videos. In the videos, women are depicted in sexually objectifying stances more often than men. In such videos, the producers heavily emphasize on body shape, physical appearance, and attractiveness. Such portrayals promote the idea that a woman’s primary concern should be to attract and satisfy men sexually.
When some 147 music videos were analyzed, for instance, women were often assigned the decorative roles, mostly appearing in the background, and eliciting sexual arousal by wearing provocative and revealing clothing, dancing seductively, or thrusting their pelvic (Galdi & Guizzo, 2020). In a similar study, Lynch et al. (2016) investigated the images of women in at least five hundred video games in a span of more than 20 years. Even though the objectification of sexual characters decreased after 2006, the analysis showed that in certain video gaming categories like fighting games whose major market comprise the male consumers, women were still sexually objectified. Specifically, they were portrayed with narrow waists, and enlarged hips and breasts and shown in provocative and revealing clothing.
Even though sexual harassment and rape entails different factors, the culture of a society has a very important role to play in perpetuating it. Media theorists agree that media is very influential in shaping a society’s culture. The images and narratives in the media not only reflect and maintain but also supply the resources, myths and symbols that mold the society’s worldview, including their values and norms. Therefore, by sexually objectifying women, the media has become a vital factor, providing the materials contributing to the creation of a culture that not only sexually objectifies women but also reduces them to mere sexual objects.
In such societal context, sexual harassment and rape become normative and normal. People look at women as sexual objects which increases the likelihood of perpetrators to put their thoughts into action. It also induces a sense of tolerance of sexual harassment in the victims and discourages bystanders from realizing that sexual harassment is taking place, thus failing to promptly intervene in a manner that favors the victim of rape or sexual harassment.
Another way by which the media contributes to rape and sexual harassment is by perpetuating rape myths, stereotypes, and victim blaming. Rape myths are defined as false beliefs about rape, rapists, and their victims. They include notions like rape occurs because of sexual arousal, it is not possible to rape a man, all rapists are men, one cannot sexually assault a prostitute, or that the victim was not careful enough to prevent the sexual assault or harassment.
The major consequence of rape myths is that they shift the blame from the perpetrator to the victim, making it difficult for people to believe that they are victims of rape. When someone believes that a woman asked for rape or should have anticipated an attack due to their sexual history, consumption of alcohol, dressing style, it becomes difficult for them to see the issue in its true light. A major rationale in victim blaming is that people believe that the world is fair and just, and victimization is not only predictable but also avoidable. The perfect world belief is used to reinforce the notion that what must go wrong will go wrong, and bad things occur to bad people. However, this idea reinforces the belief that a rape or sexual harassment victim deserved the assault.
When a society accepts rape myths, it may have very serious impact on the criminal justice system, especially on reporting rape perpetrators. According to Layman (2020), those who perpetuate sexual violence have the least chances of being incarcerated compared to other types of criminal offenders. When a journalist repeatedly christens perpetrators as somehow peculiar or distinguishable from the normal person by using words like monstrous, one can develop the false conviction that it is easy to identify a perpetrator. For that reason, a jury could be skeptical in sentencing a person accused of sexual assault if they do not seem to fit that stereotype.
Another important thing about rape myths is that they can determine the likelihood of jurors in believing victims who report rape and can impact their decision-making process during trial. According to Layman (2020), out of 1000 rape cases, only nine are referred to a jury, and only five perpetrators are convicted. This scenario is especially true if the assault victim does not fit the description of an ideal victim. The notion of ideal victim is based on the belief that the only victim that deserves support or empathy is the defenseless pure virgin, while any victim that does not fit this description must have led to their own assault.
Sexual violence is very complex, involving a wide range of circumstance, perpetrators, and victims. However, if the media intentionally focuses on the ‘uncommon’ rape cases, they distort the frequency at which sexual violence occurs and mars the identity of those who may be at risk. Such an action can divert the society’s conversation from sexual assaults which do not fit the dichotomy provided by the media coverage. For instance, 80% of rapes are committed by perpetrators who are known to the victim (Layman, 2020). However, if news majorly focuses on rape committed by aliens, they can give the impression that acquaintance rape is less common than stranger rape, which is inaccurate.
To sum it, sexual objectification of women is commonplace in different media formats, portraying women for sexual appeal while diminishing their other traits like intelligence or industry. Another commonplace practice is the promotion of rape myths where the media distorts the identity of perpetrators by creating an ideal dichotomy or by exaggerating their appearance. These two factors are among the many that have made it difficult to report sexual assault or rape, while entrenching a culture of rape in the society.
References
Galdi, S., & Guizzo, F. (2020). Media-induced sexual harassment: The routes from sexually objectifying media to sexual harassment. Sex Roles, 84(11-12), 645–669. Web.
Lauzen, M. (2017). Women on screen and behind the scenes in television. Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, San Diego State University. Web.
Layman, K. (2020). The representation of rape and sexual assault within news media. University Honors Theses, 1–27. Web.
Lynch, T., Tompkins, J. E., van Driel, I. I., & Fritz, N. (2016). Sexy, strong, and secondary: A content analysis of female characters in video games across 31 years. Journal of Communication, 66, 564–584. Web.
McDade-Montez, E., Wallander, J., & Cameron, L. (2017). Sexualization in US Latina and white girls’ preferred children’s television programs. Sex Roles, 77, 1–15. Web.
Smith, S. L., Choueiti, M., Pieper, K., Yao, K., Case, A., & Choi, A. (2019). Inequality in 1,200 popular films: Examining portrayals of gender, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ & disability from 2007 to 2018. USC Annenberg inclusion initiative. Web.