The Church must care about, and repent for its participation in, rape culture because rape culture harms the human beings that God loves and sent his Son to save.
First, what is rape culture? Rape culture is the normalization of sexual violence. It is the creation of a culture in which victims are not believed and perpetrators face few consequences. It is the toleration of actions that make women fear sexual violence if they step outside a prescribed path. It is blaming victims for their assault. It is the classification of sexual violence as somehow less real or less important than other kinds of violence. It is the casual sharing of jokes that minimize rape. It is the acceptance of prison rape as something prisoners deserve. It is the glorification and fandom of convicted rapists who happen to also be celebrities. We could go on.
Even if the Church, as an institution, were completely innocent of participating in this culture, we still should care that it goes on. Rape culture harms us all, the beloved people of God. Women change their behavior to avoid being raped, or being judged as worthy of being raped. They hold their keys in their hand as they walk to their car at night. They set up code texts with friends on first dates. They look out for each other's drinks at parties. They keep quiet when men make jokes about rape, lest they be labeled a “humorless feminist”. They respond to survivors of sexual assault by saying that *obviously* it could never happen to them because they wear the right things / drink the right drinks / date the right guys / don’t break the rules / blah de blah de blah. And men? Men avoid showing weakness, lest they be labeled a “pussy” [editor’s note: why is the body part straight men desire most also the one they most seek to avoid being labeled?]. Men who are victims of sexual assault fear reporting it, because experiencing sexual assault is the ultimate weakness (see above). Men learn to avoid treating their sisters as human beings who deserve the right to live their lives free of fear regardless of whether they fit into society’s boxes for proper ladyhood or not. A pervasive culture that dehumanizes women and teaches men to do everything they can to avoid being like them is a sinful culture, and the job of the Church is to be to the world a sign of victory over sin (™ James Lopresti). Being a sign of victory over sin means not continuing it or saying it’s ok.
And the fact is that the Church is not innocent of participating in rape culture. Christians have spent the last several centuries simply obsessing about sex as sin numero uno. The prime directive, if you were to ask many Christians, is to avoid having the wrong sex with the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong way. Not to love God and our neighbors. Not to seek and serve Christ in all persons. Not to know Christ and make Him known. This ridiculous mis-ordering of priorities contributes to rape culture in a number of ways. 1) It creates a purity culture that teaches women that their #1 priority is to preserve their virginity for their wedding night. If a woman is raped, she feels dirty, used, worthless. 2) It teaches women & men that avoiding bad sex is 100% a woman’s responsibility. If a woman is raped, she must’ve brought it on herself somehow. If she consensually has “bad” sex, the sin is all hers, the man had no sin of his own happening there. 3) It teaches men that women’s value lies not in their humanity, in their shared being in the image of God, but in their sexual purity. Women do not have value in themselves, but only in what they provide sexually to men. This is sinfully wrongheaded.
To sum up: God loves human beings. All of them. And rape culture devalues women and warps the minds and relationships of both women and men. The Church, rather than combating this sinful worldview, has perpetuated it by wrongly focusing on sexual sin as the primary sin one can commit, and laying at women’s feet the responsibility for avoiding this sin. The Church must repent for our past actions and actively work to support survivors & hold perpetrators accountable if we seek to participate in the kingdom of God.
In one of the papers I wrote for seminary, I did a fair amount of research into Greek culture and sexual mores of the time. What I found that disturbed me the most was the idea that the "one being poked" was seen as less than, and the "one who poked" seen as normative. This was in different gendered sexual activities as well as same gendered sexual activities. It truly made me sick to my stomach knowing that the attitude had persisted for centuries.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. It still persists. Thank you, Amy, for your comment.
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