Some writers, academics and groups have disputed the existence or prevalence of rape culture or described the concept as harmful. Others believe that rape culture exists, but disagree with certain interpretations or analyses of it.
The
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), an anti-sexual violence organization, in a report detailing recommendations to the White House on combating rape on college campuses, identified problems with an overemphasis on the concept of rape culture as a means of preventing rape and as a cause for rape, saying, "In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming 'rape culture' for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime."
[129] In the report, RAINN cites a study by David Lisak, which estimated that 3% of college men were responsible for 90% of campus rapes,
[130] though it is stipulated that RAINN does not have reliable numbers for female perpetrators. RAINN argues that rape is the product of individuals who have decided to disregard the overwhelming cultural message that rape is wrong. The report argues that the trend towards focusing on cultural factors that supposedly condone rape "has the paradoxical effect of making it harder to stop sexual violence, since it removes the focus from the individual at fault, and seemingly mitigates personal responsibility for his or her own actions".
[131]
Professor
Camille Paglia[132] has described concerns about rape culture as "ridiculous" and "
neurotic", an artifact of
bourgeois liberal ideologies that people are essentially good and that all social problems can be remedied with education. This rape culture concept is much to the detriment of young college-educated women she says. Paglia argues that said individuals are ill-prepared to anticipate or cope with the small minority of deeply
evil people in the world, who simply don't care about following laws or obeying
social convention. Moreover, Paglia says, feminist proponents of rape culture tend to completely ignore male victims of sexual assault.
Caroline Kitchens, in a 2014 article in
Time Magazine titled "It's Time to End 'Rape Culture' Hysteria" suggested that "Though rape is certainly a serious problem, there's no evidence that it's considered a cultural norm. ...On college campuses, obsession with eliminating 'rape culture' has led to censorship and hysteria."
[133] According to Joyce E. Williams, "the major criticism of rape culture and the feminist theory from which it emanates is the monolithic implication that ultimately all women are victimized by all men".
[134]
Christina Hoff Sommers has disputed the existence of rape culture, arguing that the common "one in four women will be raped in her lifetime" claim is based on a flawed study, but frequently cited because it leads to campus anti-rape groups receiving public funding. Sommers has also examined and criticized many other rape studies[
which?] for their methodology, and states, "There are many researchers who study rape victimization, but their relatively low figures generate no headlines."
[5]
Sommers and others
[135] have specifically questioned Mary Koss's oft-cited 1984 study that claimed 1 in 4 college women have been victims of rape, charging it overstated rape of women and downplayed the incidence of men being the victims of unwanted sex. According to Sommers, as many as 73% of the subjects of Koss's study disagreed with her characterization that they had been raped,
[136] while others have pointed out that Koss's study focused on the victimization of women, downplaying the significance of sexual victimization of men,
[135] even though its own data indicated one in seven college men had been victims of unwanted sex.
[137] Sommers points out that Koss had deliberately narrowed the definition of unwanted sexual encounters for men to instances where men were penetrated.
[138]
Other writers, such as
bell hooks, have criticized the rape culture paradigm on the grounds that it is too narrowly focused; in 1984, she wrote that it ignores rape's place in an overarching "culture of violence".
[139] In 1993 she contributed a chapter to a book on rape culture, focusing on rape culture in the context of patriarchy in black culture.
[140]
Barbara Kay, a Canadian journalist, has been critical of feminist Mary Koss's discussion of rape culture, describing the notion that "rape represents an extreme behavior but one that is on a continuum with normal male behavior within the culture" as "remarkably
misandric".
[141]
Jadaliyya, an academic initiative by the Arab Studies Institute, published a report critiquing of the concept of the concept of rape culture, stating that
orientalists have appropriated the term to promote
racist stereotypes of South Asian men (as well as
Arabs and Muslims) as being prone to rape in
Western media and academia. The report came in response to the
2012 Delhi gang rape, in which many Western media outlets reporting on the incident depicted Indian men as "culturally lacking and barbaric". The report claimed Western orientalists have reduced "India's rape crisis to a cultural problem".
[142]
The UN conducted its 'Multi-country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific' in 2008 in six countries across Asia. Its conclusions, published in 2013, seemed to indicate a substantial number of men in Asian countries admit to committing some form of rape.
[143] The study's general conclusion about high levels of rape have been recognized as reliable; however, questions about its accuracy perpetuate the debate about how societies perceive rape and social norms. A closer look at the study's methodology reveals questions about cultural definitions of rape, the study's sample size, survey design, and linguistic accuracy, all of which highlights ongoing challenges in trying to quantify the prevalence of rape.
[144]
