Rape Culture and Spiritual Violence


Book Description

Rape Culture and Spiritual Violence examines sexual violence against women, how religion and society contribute to a rape culture, and the extreme suffering endured by rape victims as a result. Using the testimony of women who have experienced both rape and the consequences of rape culture—from a range of religious, cultural, ethnic, and social contexts—the book explores both the suffering and healing of rape victims from World War II to today. Among the issues considered are victim invisibility, the inability to express pain, and the tendency to assume shame and self-blame. The study examines the role of society in shaping and reinforcing these responses, contributing to traumas that can lead to spiritual death. The book also explores possibilities for multiple spiritual resurrections within the practice of daily life, encouraging both individual healing and social change.




Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion


Book Description

This volume explores the multiple intersections between rape culture, gender violence, and religion. Each chapter considers the ways that religious texts, theologies, and traditions engage with contemporary cultural discourses of gender, sexuality, gender violence, and rape culture. Particularly, they interrogate the multifaceted roles that religious texts and teachings can have in challenging, confirming, querying, or redefining socio-cultural understandings of rape culture and gender violence. Unique to this volume, authors explore the topic from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, theology, biblical studies, gender and queer studies, politics, modern history, art history, linguistics, religious studies, and English literature. Together, these interdisciplinary approaches resist the tendency to oversimplify the complexity of the connections between religion, gender violence, and rape culture; rather, the volume offers readers a multi-vocal and multi-perspectival view of this crucial subject, inviting readers to think deeply about it in light of the global crisis of gender violence.




Rape Culture, Purity Culture, and Coercive Control in Teen Girl Bibles


Book Description

In this fascinating book, Caroline Blyth takes a close look at Bibles marketed to teen girls and asks how these might perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes that lie at the heart of rape culture. The author considers the devotionals, commentaries, and advice sections placed throughout these Bibles, which offer teen girl readers life advice on topics such as friendships, body image, and how to navigate romantic relationships. Within these discussions, there is a strong emphasis on modesty, purity, and sexual passivity as markers of young women’s ‘godliness’. Yet, as the author argues, these gendered ideals are prescribed to readers using rape-supportive discourses and the tactics of coercive control. Moreover, the placement of these various editorial inserts within the pages of sacred scripture gives them considerable power to reinforce deeply harmful ideologies about gender, sexuality, and sexual violence. Given the seeming popularity of these Bibles among Christian teen girls, the need to dismantle their damaging rhetoric is especially urgent. This book will be of particular interest to those studying the Bible, religion, gender, and theology, as well as the general reader.




Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence


Book Description

Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide is a collection of essays from survivors, scholars, activists, spiritual leaders, and social justice practitioners that offers numerous intersectional and culturally competent options for women, men, and non-binary conforming adults to create their own safe healing conditions and establish pathways for recovery. These chapters provide a wide range of survival stories that raise awareness of the issues involved in healing after sexual assault and also provide inspiration for reforming negative societal issues and patterns. In a classroom setting, these chapters deliver both the culturally grounded knowledge and the skillsets necessary for recovery. This is a vital guide for students and practitioners in counseling, social work, theology, and gender studies.




Rape Culture and Religious Studies


Book Description

Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements stages a critical engagement between religious texts and the problem of sexual violence. Rape and other forms of sexual violence are widespread on college and university campuses; they also occur in sacred texts and religious traditions. The volume addresses these difficult intersections as they play out in texts, traditions, and university contexts. The volumegathers contributions from religious studies scholars to engage these questions from a variety of institutional contexts and to offer a constructive assessment of religious texts and traditions.




Turn This World Inside Out


Book Description

“Violence is nurturance turned backwards,” writes Nora Samaran. In Turn This World Inside Out, she presents Nurturance Culture as the opposite of rape culture and suggests how alternative models of care and accountability—different from “call-outs,” which are often rooted in the politics of shame and guilt—can move toward inverting cultures of dominance and systems of oppression. When communities are able to recognize and speak up about systemic violence, center the needs of those harmed, and hold a circle of belonging that humanizes everyone, they create a revolutionary foundation of nurturance that can begin to repair the harms inflicted by patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Emerging out of insights in Gender Studies, Race Theory, and Psychology, and influenced by contemporary social movements, Turn This World Inside Out speaks to some of the most pressing issues of our time.




Transforming a Rape Culture


Book Description

This volume presents a diverse group of opinions that lay the foundation for change in basic attitudes about power, gender, race, and sexuality -- for a future without sexual violence. The contributors to this sourcebook share the conviction that rape is epidemic because our society encourages male aggression and tacitly or overtly supports violence against women. Cumulatively, these 34 essays by such figures as Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Ntozake Shange, Michael Kimmel and Louise Erdrich situate rape on a continuum extending from sexist language to pornography, sexual harassment in schools and the workplace, wife battering and date and marital rape. Highlights include a proposal to make rape a presidential election issue, an analysis of the churches' ambivalent response to societal violence, guidelines for raising boys to view themselves as nurturing, nonviolent fathers and inspirational visions of personal or institutional change.




The Blaming and Shaming of Defenseless Victims in America's Rape Culture


Book Description

Every sixty-eight seconds an American is sexually assaulted. Lisa Smith writes in light of this startling statistic and against the backdrop of the blaming and shaming of countless victims to ask one important question: why does America’s rape culture continue to exist? The Blaming and Shaming of Defenseless Victims in America's Rape Culture explores the ways collective memory, religion, and sexist beliefs are used to silence survivors and protect the powerful. The author delves into how justice is denied in sexual assault cases—rape kits untested by law enforcement agencies, information suppression through non-disclosure agreements, and denial and inaction by organizations, universities, corporations, and people all contribute to undetected rapists in our society. Despite these discouraging happenings, the #MeToo movement proved that legions of survivors of sexual violence can use their voice to fight back. Oral and historical narratives are included to encourage others to share their stories and promote social accountability. Through insightful research and analysis, the author offers a much-needed viewpoint on a vital and timely issue—why and how American society is perpetuating and protecting a dangerous culture of sexual violence, and even more importantly, how to fight back.




Rape Culture Hysteria


Book Description

Rape Culture Hysteria: Fixing the Damage Done to Men and Women offers a comprehensive overview and debunking of the "rape culture" myth that has devastated campuses and is spilling into Main Street America. An ideological madness is grotesquely distorting North America's view of sexuality. The book applies sanity to the claims that men are natural rapists and our culture encourages sexual violence. Written by a libertarian feminist and rape survivor, Rape Culture Hysteria opens with a highly personal appeal to depoliticize rape and treat it instead as a crime. Victims need to heal. Politicizing their pain and rage is a callous political maneuver that harms victims, women and men. Chapter One: The Fiction of the Rape Culture defines the "rape culture" and explains why it does not exist in North America. It glances back at how the fiction became embedded into society, especially in academia. Then it looks forward to an emerging rape culture trend that will deeply impact daily life: microaggressions. Chapter Two: Intellectual Framework and Myth History of Rape Culture. The myth did not arise in an intellectual vacuum. In a straight-forward manner, Chapter Two explains the theories upon which the rape culture is based, including social construction, gender, patriarchy, post-Marxism, and social justice. It rejects three of the rape culture's founding beliefs: rape is facilitated by society; men have created a mass psychology of rape; and, rape is a part of normal life. Chapter Three: Dynamics of the Hysteria and Psychology of Rape Culture True Believers. The dynamics of rape culture politics are exposed through the behavior of its social justice warriors. A recent travesty is used to showcase those dynamics. On November 19, 2014, Rolling Stone accused members of a University of Virginia fraternity of gang-raping a female student. The accusation was quickly revealed as untrue. The unraveling at U-Va. is a perfect vehicle to illustrate how rape culture dogma is maintained even when it is revealed to be untrue. The chapter discusses effective tactics with which to handle social justice warriors. Chapter Four: Data, False and True. The rape culture myth is based on untrue and unfounded "facts," which have been repeatedly refuted. Yet they lumber on as zombie stats, kept alive by those to whom the lies are useful and so are repeated like a mantra that drowns out contradicting evidence. This chapter examines of some of the more prevalent zombie stats such as "one in every 4 or 5 women will be raped in their lifetimes." Where did the faux "facts" originate? What evidence, if any, supports them? Which stats better reflect reality? Chapter Five: Comparative Studies and Surveys. This chapter compares and contrasts four of the most important, frequently cited studies and surveys on rape: National Crime Victimization Survey; National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey; Campus Sexual Assault Study; and, Uniform Crime Reporting Program. They are analyzed independently but also compared to each other, including major strengths and weaknesses. Lesser studies are also analyzed in passing. Chapter Six: Harms of the Rape Culture. The gender war must end. Chapter Six offers in-depth analysis of the extreme damage it inflicts on innocent people, with emphasis on the damage done to victims of rape. Victims are a focus because rape culture adherents claim to be their greatest champions; the opposite is true. Chapter Seven: Solutions to Rape Culture Hysteria. Moving Toward Sanity. We can fix this. This is the ultimate message of the book. Undoing the damage is not only possible but also within reach. The solutions offered range from radical suggestions, such as abolishing the Department of Education, to more modest ones, such as recognizing rape as a criminal matter to be handled by police. Defend yourself and your children against rape culture zealots. Demand sanity.




RAPE CULTURE 101: Programming Change


Book Description

Many people have been victims of rape, but we are all victims of what has been called a "rape culture." This topic deserves more attention towards education and prevention, and not just on the college campus. Rape culture is an idea that links rape and sexual violence to the culture of a society, and in which commonly-held beliefs, attitudes, and practices normalize, excuse, tolerate, and even condone rape. This edited collection examines rape culture in the context of the current programming-attitudes, education, and awareness. Contributors explore changing the programming in terms of educational processes, practices, and experiences associated with rape culture across diverse cultural, historical, and geographic locations. The complexity of rape culture is discussed from a variety of contexts and perspectives, as this volume contains interdisciplinary academic submissions from educators and students, as well as experiential accounts from members of various community settings who are doing work aimed at making a positive difference towards programming change.