Maria Bevacqua, Assistant Professor for the Department of Women’s Studies at Minnesota State University, states in her definition of “rape culture,” that “images of rape and other forms of violence against women abound” in our culture, and that “images of sex and violence are intertwined.” Bevacqua argues that our culture in America is in many ways a “rape culture.” This is a serious problem and deserves our undivided attention, especially when we take into consideration the proliferation of pornography in mainstream media.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the definition of pornography is “sexually explicit pictures, writing or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.” There is hardly a debate for whether or not pornography runs rampant in pop culture and mainstream media. According to a column titled “Media Metrics – Porn, Stickier Than you Think,” from MediaPostPublications.com, “contrary to [porn’s] reputation for being clandestine fringe media, porn is a fairly mainstream source of media content, reaching more than two-fifths of American online users.”
This is just the online sources that they speak of, lest we forget to take into account the widespread usage of pornographic advertisements in our media. Take a look at a recent advertisement featured in Esquire magazine (shown above). I came across an ad for Dolce & Gabbana that pictured a woman lying down submissively while five men, standing over her, undress themselves. This scene insinuates violence and gang-rape. Boy, being gang-raped is definitely going to make me run right out and buy whatever it is they are selling. Does anyone else think this is outrageous?
If images of sex and violence are intertwined in mainstream media, then the assumed line between sex and violence becomes blurred. This is true for all of us, but especially true for the younger generations who are constantly exposed to mainstream media. This means that violence and sex are inevitably becoming confused for each other and perhaps even synonymous with one another. We are teaching ourselves and our children that sex and violence have a common denominator, which, as far as I am concerned, is simply not the case.
In fact, sexual violence is an outrageous problem in our culture, and techniques like ‘blaming the victim’ have only enabled heinous sexual violence like rape to become more and more acceptable in our culture. It sends the proverbial message to predators that, “yes, it is okay to rape people (especially women) because they are asking for it.”
Since pornography is designed to cause sexual arousal, and sex and violence are intertwined as Bevacqua says, then we are indeed setting ourselves up for culture in which violent images of sex will become what sexually arouses us. It is already starting to happen if we use the Dolce & Gabbana ad I mentioned as an example.
The most violent image of sex is rape. Can you imagine a culture in which rape is confused for sex? I think Bevacqua is really on to something when she uses the term “rape culture,” because if images of sex and violence are intertwined and sex is being used in such a widespread manner within mainstream media to promote anything and everything we might do, see or buy, our culture is following a trend towards the acceptance of rape as sex. Everyone knows ‘sex sells,’ and if sex keeps trending toward violence, or the line between the two keeps getting blurred, then eventually ‘rape’ will ‘sell’ too. It seems that the idea of rape is already being used to sell whatever it is Dolce & Gabbana is attempting to sell.
The proliferation of pornography in mainstream media is a very dangerous phenomenon. If pornography continues to develop widespread acceptance within pop culture, and sex and violence become confused for one another (as is beginning to happen before our very eyes), then what are we going to do when sexual violence skyrockets because people are under the impression that sex is violent?
There is no easy solution to this problem; we cannot simply turn our heads and look the other way. Mainstream media is how the majority of people in this country get their information, and there is no getting around that. We are bombarded constantly with pornographic images that feature sex and violence, and there is literally no escape from them. I have already stated my opinion of what will happen if we continue to allow pornography to run amok within mainstream media and continue to confuse sex and violence, but the real question is: are we going to sit back and watch that happen to us and our children? Or are we going to straighten out the difference between sex and violence and set some significant boundaries?