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The phrase “rape culture” is a relative newcomer to feminist analysis and seems to have arisen out of feminist scholarly and activist literatures in the mid-1970s. In the mid-1990s, use of the term expanded and eventually migrated to the mainstream where, in the 2010s, Google searches for “rape culture” in the United States increased exponentially (Phillips 2017, 15; Google Trends search of “rape culture” on January 28, 2021). But while “rape culture” has been widely invoked in mainstream US discourse in recent years, “rape culture”—if it is theorized at all—is typically defined as a milieu that normalizes aggressive heterosexual male violence toward women [see Buchwald, Fletcher, and Roth 1993, 1; Friedman and Valenti 2008, 6; Gay 2018, xi; Harding (citing Buchwald, Fletcher, and Roth 1993) 2015, 2; Murphy 2016; Ridgway 2014; Taub 2014; Gavey 2005; and Wikipedia (accessed January 28, 2021)]. 1,2
In the 1970s, the new phrase “rape culture” reflected an important shift in radical feminist analysis about rape itself, which had moved from conceiving rape as an individual behavioral problem to recognizing it as an exercise of domination within the broader structure of male domination of women (Brownmiller 1975; Griffin 1977). It followed from this analysis that if rape were a feature of the landscape of heteropatriarchal control, then it must be nurtured by a culture that simultaneously normalizes and valorizes sexual violence as a masculine ideal (Griffin 1977, 29; see also Marcus 1992, passim, who argues that in a rape culture, women are “scripted” as weak, defenseless, fearful, and therefore inherently rapeable). This culture fosters discourses and practices beyond rape itself (such as street harassment, romanticization of manipulation and violence, and normalization of “appropriate” styles of dress) that reinforce the ubiquitous threat of rape and regulate the behavior of women. When the concept flowed into the mainstream, it, too, focused on the male domination of women.
The radical feminist insight that rape is a political act 3 has been crucial, both for antirape activism and for scholarly explanations of the ubiquity of sexual violence. Because rape is a political act, the concept of rape culture must extend beyond the horizon of male dominance to include other horizons of political domination as well, such as white supremacy, heteronormativity, xenophobia,...