Take This Quiz To Find Out About Rape Culture In Pakistan

The term rape culture was first introduced by an American feminist, Noreen Connell. She and her fellow, Cassandra Wilson, a New York Feminist, wrote the book Rape: A first sourcebook for women in 1974.

Rape culture is defined as rape and other sexual violence that are normalized and viewed as inevitable by society and by the media in the country.

Rape culture in any society is perpetuated by the objectification of women’s bodies, the use of misogynistic language, and the glamorization of violence against women. This automatically translates into no respect and will to implement women’s rights. What happens as a result is that women live in fear of rape and limit their own behavior as a result, which then creates supremacy of one gender over another.

Some of the examples of rape culture are blaming the victim, cracking sexist and explicit jokes, being okay with sexual harassment, perpetuating the “boys will be boys” thought process, defining manhood and womanhood which then limits a person, assuming only promiscuous women get raped or that only weaker men get raped, teaching women how to avoid rape rather than schooling rapists and lastly, not taking rape allegations seriously. All these behaviors perpetuate rape culture.

For Pakistan, it is an alarming problem as not many cases of rape are reported.

According to the survey conducted by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in 2017, 229 cases were reported for sexual assault which is just the tip of the iceberg. Many people do not report rape cases.

Due to the #metoo movement and Aurat march, reporting has improved. Women have broken out of their shells and are challenging the mentality of society at large. This is a huge step considering that victim shaming is quite prevalent in Pakistan.