Rape culture

Let's talk about rape culture.
The nation is talking, God knows, and the Senate Judiciary Committee should be.
What does rape culture have to do with my body, my identity, or the bodies and identities of females of all ages?
Everything.
Rape culture is THE glass ceiling that prevents women from being all they can be and doing all they might want to do.
It's not just about women -- including two in Iowa, recently -- being murdered while trying to enjoy an activity without a male bodyguard to ward off predators.
Not only can't we go for a run or play a round of golf by ourselves without putting ourselves in danger -- we can't go to a bar some lonely night when we want some company, we can't go for a walk after dark, we can't even live alone unless we disguise our femaleness by putting just our surname, and maybe an initial for our first name, on our doorbells and mailboxes.
Why can't we have the freedom to do what we want, when we want, or even to declare who we are, unless there's a man around to protect us?
Because if we do get accosted or assaulted, then it's partly our fault. We shouldn't put ourselves in dangerous situation. After all, boys will be boys.
And if we dress a little bit more provocatively than, say, a cloistered nun or a missionary's wife -- or if we rebuff a man by saying, "Fuck off!" -- well, we can't blame men for misinterpreting anything we do, say or wear as a come-on, because after all, that's the way men are.
The burden is on women to protect ourselves. The burden is not on men to treat us as human beings, instead of objects to be used, or pieces of meat.
And should we be raped, the legal burden of proof is damn nigh impossible to meet, despite vital reforms in sexual assault laws.
That's rape culture.
There are corollaries aplenty to this core definition of rape culture, such as:

• Women like it when men whistle at them, cat-call, or otherwise act like jackasses.
• Being male is entirely about ownership of females. Women -- wives, daughters, granddaughters, mothers, strangers -- are the possessions of men, and a man is entitled to do anything he wants with "his" women, from kissing a toddler granddaughter who's trying to get away, to forcing a wife to engage in sexual intercourse when she doesn't want to.
• If a woman cries rape, she's just a prostitute who didn't get her money, or a pathetic clinger trying to get back at a man who rejected her. She's Potiphar's wife. She's a woman scorned. She's trying to work the system.
• In our species, males -- especially white males -- are the default. Women are a variation. And as such, males are the ones who truly matter. Everything women do, say and are must be viewed in relation to men.

Rape culture stems from assumptions and customs so close to the core of our human societies (yes, virtually all societies) that we're only just now starting to question it. Well, women  in the United States started questioning it during the women's liberation movement, which emerged in the 1970s, at about the time I was coming of age.
But nothing is going to change -- NOTHING! -- until men join women in challenging rape culture. A few have. But a privileged group rarely gives up its privilege easily.
As long as I'm alive, I'll do what I can to hold their feet to the fire.