(Trigger warning for the following post. If you don’t know what that means, you probably need to read it)

In my experience, there are two requirements to being a feminist. The first, and most obvious, is that in order to be a feminist, you must believe that men and women should be treated equally. This is an area that most people agree on, though there are many who don’t (hint: if you think, “men and women are equal, but…” you really think men and women are unequal).

The second requirement is that men and women are currently not treated equally. This is actually a much more contentious subject, and I can understand why. Sure, there are plenty more men in places of power than women, but the women’s rights movements have been incredibly successful, and women are becoming more prominent and more active in areas formerly dominated by men than ever before. So even though sexism still might be a problem, it is a problem that is actively being fixed and will soon be eradicated, right?

Well, sexism goes beyond laws and ratios and is actually a deeply pervasive force in culture, and that is what I want to talk about in this blog post.

I am about to use a term that gets thrown around a lot in feminist circles but not many other places. I am a bit ambivalent about this term for I feel that it sounds reactionary and emotional, something used to rile feelings instead of promoting discourse and rational action. On the other hand, the term is also completely justified.

Modern America (and many other places) is currently living with a “rape culture,” one that is deeply damaging to many people in it.

What does rape culture mean? It means that the current culture is one that trivializes rape in indirect ways (by pushing damaging social stereotypes onto people) and direct ways (by encouraging women to keep quiet on this issue and blaming them for instigating it). I feel like this is one of the biggest problems in American culture today and one that is hardly ever touched upon.

I was first opened to how bad this culture is when I heard about Steubenville. For those that did not hear, in Steubenville, Ohio, two football players got a girl drunk and proceeded to violate her. They filmed it and spread it around on YouTube and Twitter, where their friends proceeded to watch it and harass her for it.

Now what should have happened at this point was that the local authorities should have seen the large amount of evidence, convicted the boys, and done everything they could to help the 16-year old victim move on with her life. That is not what happened. Instead, there was a cover up presumably by the football coach, which would have prevented legal action to the boys had Anonymous not stepped in and unearthed the incriminating evidence, or so the story goes (that is the popular narrative on the internet, understandably so because the internet is the hero in that story, but even if it is not completely true, it is certainly believable considering that only 3% of rapists actually serve time).

But this story gets worse. When the news media were reporting the case, they showed how strong rape culture actually is by extending their sympathy not toward the victim for being raped, but toward the rapists.

To clarify: these journalists looked at a case where a young woman was raped by two boys who proceeded to embarrass her and defame her and nearly got away with it, and their take on it was, “Those poor boys.”

And it gets worse.

This case obviously got to national press, which prompted the football program of the small town of Steubenville, Ohio to implement some policies to prevent this from happening again. So they began to teach their kids not to use social media irresponsibly.

Instead of pushing their players to be more responsible and decent people, this school decided that what the kids actually did wrong was sharing their sexual exploits, not the sexual exploits themselves.

And throughout this, the victim was getting a ton of abuse as well, because of course she was.

And here’s the kicker, here’s why this is a problem and why we need feminism to highlight these problems so we can try to fix them:

Steubenville was not exceptional. Not by a long shot. There are many cases where rapes happen, victims are blamed, and evidence is covered up. For instance, Googling “next Steubenville” will net you five†other similar cases on the front page, one of which also happened in Steubenville.†Searching a bit more will find more†results. And there are plenty of other examples of harassment toward rape victims, some of it through social media and some of it through institutionalized systems.

I personally know a wonderful person who was the victim of sexual abuse, and at one point people tried to charge her with statutory rape because the people who sexually abused her were under 18, which is completely ridiculous for many reasons, one of which is because she’s not even interested in men.

And considering that at least 1 in 6 women were at one point sexually abused (and 1 in 33 men), chances are you know someone who was a victim of sexual assault as well. And considering that rape victims live with that horror forever (hence the trigger warning), this should feel like a very personal issue for you.

What happened in Steubenville is happening all over the country. It is happening to young women who have their whole lives ahead of them. And no matter what anyone on Twitter, on social media, or in politics say, their greatest mistake was not drinking, not partying, not disobeying their parents, but expecting the men around them to act like decent people.

So this is why I get incredibly frustrated when people agree that men and women are equal but don’t understand why that is not the case. This is why feminism is necessary. Feminism is about recognizing these problems and saying, “We need to fix this.” Rape culture is a result of a patriarchal culture, one that says women who don’t have sex are prudes and women who do have sex are sluts: a culture that treats having sex as a commodity and consent as a bonus. This is a culture that determines value and respect for women based on whether or not they have had sex, regardless if it was consensual or not.

I want to end this post with a quote from a post that everyone talking about rape should have to read (it’s long, but worth it). Film Crit HULK, when talking about his work as a volunteer at a rape crisis center, writes:

FOR STARTERS, THEY COME ALONE.

NOT LITERALLY ALONE, PER SE, AS OFTEN THEY HAVE BEEN DRIVEN TO THE CENTER BY A CONCERNED FRIEND. USUALLY FEMALE. USUALLY A ROOMMATE. EVERY ONCE AND A WHILE THERE’S A BOYFRIEND. AND THE THING IS THE PERSON WHO COMES IS†RARELY†AT THEIR FRIEND’S SIDE WHEN IT’S TIME TO ACTUALLY TELL THE STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED. IT’S AS IF THE VICTIM THINKS THE STORY HAS TO BE TOLD ALONE…

HULK THINKS ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME TO THIS VERY DAY. THE STORIES. THEY STAY WITH YOU. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT WAS ONE PHRASE THAT HULK KEPT HEARING FROM THESE YOUNG WOMEN AGAIN AND AGAIN? THE ONE PHRASE THAT JUST KEPT POPPING UP?

“My dad is going to kill me.”

IT’S PROBABLY THE SADDEST THING YOU CAN THINK OF. IMAGINE SOMEONE SAYING IT AT A TIME LIKE THAT. AND IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. AND IT’S NOT ALWAYS THE SAME WORDS YOU HEAR BUT THE EXACT SENTIMENT. AND IT PAINTS THE UGLIEST PICTURE IN THE WORLD. IT IS THE THINKING THAT THEY DID SOMETHING WRONG ACTUALIZED INTO HORRIFYING DETAIL. IT IS THE THOUGHT THAT IN ALL THIS, IN COMPARISON TO THE ACT ITSELF, OR EVEN HAVING TO RELIVE IT ALL IN A STATEMENT TO A POLICE OFFICER LATER, THE MOST FEARFUL THOUGHT GOING THROUGH THEIR MIND IS THAT†THEY HAVE TO TELL THEIR FATHERS. THAT SOMEHOW THEY HAVE DISAPPOINTED THEM. THAT THEY DID SOMETHING WRONG. THAT THEY HAD THE GUMPTION TO BE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED. EVEN IN THE MOST RANDOM OF ATTACKS, YOU CAN SEE THIS FAULT AND FEAR MANIFEST IN THEM. IT IS THE FEELING THAT THEY ARE NOW “LESS-THAN” IN THEIR FATHER’S EYES. THAT THEY ARE NO LONGER THEIR FATHER’S DAUGHTERS. AND FOR THEM? THIS IS THE MOST TRAUMATIC THING OF ALL OF IT. ONE GIRL LOOKED US IN THE EYES AND SAID SHE WOULD HAVE RATHER HAVE DIED THAN TELL HER FATHER… AND ALL THESE YEARS LATER, HULK KEEPS HEARING THOSE SAME WORDS…

“My dad is going to kill me.”

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to try and find some glimmer of hope for humanity. I will let you know if I find it.

Read more from Devin White at his blog or on Twitter @D_A_White.