April 17, 2017 • 41 mins
In part one of a two-part series examining rape and sexual assault, Cristen and Caroline look at the legal evolution of the crime of rape and how civil rights and women's rights reformers fought to eradicate longstanding patterns of victim-blaming.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and this episode kicks off a
two part series that we are going to do looking
at rape and sexual assault focused in the United States.
(00:27):
And so first of all, we just want to offer
a trigger warning that yes, we will be talking about
these issues. We're not going to go into graphic detail
at any point, but for people who would be sensitive
to those topics, we just want to let you know
that that's where we're going to be going in this conversation.
And this is something that we've gotten a number of
(00:49):
requests from listeners for years now. Every now and then
we hear people asking us to talk about rape, to
talk about sexual assault, to talk about these horrible things
that are happening in places like Steubenville, Ohio, or more
recently with the scandal of the quote unquote Roastbusters in
(01:10):
New Zealand of teen boys who were making a sport
out of sexually assaulting young women. And what we want
to do with these two episodes is not so much
talk about the horrifying details of what happened in places
like Steubenville, Ohio, Maryville, Missouri, Athens, Ohio. But rather take
(01:31):
a step back, as we're gonna do in this particular episode,
and look more at the history of rape and sexual
assault and how it evolved legally, and also how it
evolved in terms of women's rights and also civil rights
for women of color as well. That's right, as Kristen
(01:54):
and I were talking about before um this podcast. You know,
rape culture is to gussed as a modern invention, something
that we are just now turning our attention to and
fighting back against. But the truth is, when you dig
into the history of first legislation and actual laws against
(02:16):
sexual assault and rape, and then going back into why
those laws were passed, you realize that there is quite
a deep, intricate history of rape and sexual assault kind
of ingrained in our culture. And I don't even mean
that in terms of American culture or modern culture. I
mean that when you go back and look at the
(02:38):
origins of rape law, it almost makes it more clear
what we're up against today, exactly because so often when
things like the sexual assault, the gang rape that happened
in Steubenville, Ohio, when those issues take place, a lot
of times the conversation that immediately came is up around
(03:00):
it involved three things, which are social media, the hookup culture,
and alcohol use. And we're not going to talk about
that today because, like you said, Caroline, this isn't an
issue of twenty one century factors. What's going on today
is a manifestation of centuries millennial worth of history, starting
(03:22):
all the way back in sevent eight b c. If
you look at Hammarabi's code in Babylonia, if a betrothed
virgin was raped, she was considered blameless and her attacker
was slain. But if a married woman was raped, both
she and her attacker were thrown in the river to drown.
(03:42):
And why is that? Why do we have this distinction
between a betrothed virgin, who might be seen as more honorable,
and a married woman. Well, this goes back to this
fundamental issue of women being perceived as property relative to men,
and a betrothed virgin has of high value to her father,
(04:05):
and so if a guy comes along and assaults her,
then that is a crime upon more upon her father
in a way than upon the girl. Whereas if a
woman has had sex before she is married, then her
value is probably lower and it was just assumed that
she would have been crying wolf and she was probably
just having an affair or something with this guy. Right,
(04:27):
And another issue um that people talk about today in
rape cases is the issue of basically consent protesting. You know,
did the woman is she making it up? So looking
back at the Mosaic law of Israel, unmarried women who
were raped within the city walls would end up being
(04:49):
stoned to death because if she hadn't consented, then surely
people around her would have heard her screaming yeah. Whereas
if she were raped outside of city walls. So even
if in this case she had been protesting, people wouldn't
have been able to hear her. But still the rapist
under this law would simply have to pay the father
(05:11):
a bride price and then he had to marry her,
because again, women as property, marriage is an economic tool
at this point, right, absolutely, And so again we have
basically the burden of proof from a from the get
go being on the victim of rape. And looking back
at as Syria, they had a statute that allowed fathers
of rape victims to rape the wife of the rapist.
(05:35):
It's like a tip for a tat an eye for
an eye exactly. And those are just a few of
the horrifying rape laws that we have as our sort
of historical foundations for this issue. And we're going to
move forward and and also for listeners, were obviously not
going to be able to give a comprehensive, granular, step
(05:56):
by step look at all of the different rape and
sexual assault laws, um. But but we want to offer
as much of a relevant snapshot as we can. So
now we're going to focus more just on the West.
And first we're gonna look at England because I went
through an evolution in its rape law wherein prior to
(06:18):
ten sixty six, it was a crime punishable by dismemberment.
Right Basically you would get drawn and quartered um. In
the twelfth century under Henry the Second you do eventually
get a trial by jury, and you need corroboration um.
And and what that means in that old law is
(06:39):
that the woman should have made a hue and cry
after the incident. She needed to have run through the
streets screaming and crying, basically showing that she was injured,
showing that her clothes were torn to offer proof. And
that's that just echoes that mosaic law of Israel, and
then in the thirteenth century under Edward the Second we
(07:01):
see some important advances, both positive and negative for victims. Um.
First of all, we have the crown being involved in
all rape cases, not just in instances with virgins, and
that whole issue of the virginity construct, whether or not
a woman is believed to have had vagual intercourse before
(07:23):
that so often in still today, often is the line
between how much we are going to believe her if
she says that she has in fact been assaulted. Um.
But still, if you look at British law text Flata
from twelve ninety, it maintains that women simply cannot get
(07:44):
pregnant via rape. Just f y I. And doesn't that
sound familiar, Caroline? That does because it was Representative Todd Aiken,
who was a nominee for U. S. Senate and Missouri.
He claimed that abortion in cases of rape was unnecessary
because quote, if it's a legitimate rape, the female body
has ways to shut that whole thing down. And that's
(08:06):
actually not true, because if Senator Aiken knew his science
at all or new his statistics at all, about five
percent of sexual assaults actually result in pregnancy. So guess what,
We don't have some kind of magical shutdown system in
our body. But what is more mind boggling than that
is that that same old, unscientific anti rape doctrine is
(08:30):
still being recycled in our nightly news headlines. And it's
around this time also that statutory rape is recognized by
law for the first time, and the rule basically stated
that the King prohibits that none do ravish any maiden
within age. And two positives that emerged during this time
(08:54):
were um the fact that statutory rape was recognized by law,
so girl of a certain age were protected, and it
the distinction and punishments for rape of virgins and non
versions was also eliminated. But there was also the statute
of limitations that was established, which maintained that if a
woman failed to institute a private suit within forty days,
(09:17):
and the right to prosecute automatically passed to the crown,
which meant that rape was no longer a family misfortune
but an issue of public safety and state concern. However,
almost every time we see laws enacted like this that
actually support victims rights, there's a little bit of punishment
that gets chipped away at For instance, simultaneously, the penalty
(09:41):
for rape was reduced to two years imprisonment. So if
we move to the US and talk about our specific
legal history, it is very, very tied up with issue
issues of race and class in addition to as we'll
get into women's rights. And one of our main sources
(10:02):
looking at this was a Stelle Freeman's Redefining Rape Sexual
Violence in the Era of Suffrage and segregation. She talks
about how until the late nineteenth century, white tramps and
strangers dominated much of the discourse on sexual assault. And
if we look back at the eighteenth century, there was
this idea of the libertine or the rake, who was
(10:25):
this elite white man basically who presumes sexual privilege but
wasn't considered a criminal. And I think, I mean that
sounds pretty familiar. Also, we in fact did a video
talking about what constitutes something that's creepy, right yeah, creepy
versus flattering, And right there you have this issue of class.
(10:48):
I mean, if you have someone like for instance, today
we there was a lot of controversy over Robin Fix
Summer Hit blurred lines, because you're talking about these these
so called blurred lines between consent and not where where Actually,
guess what Robin think, The lines are not blurred at all. Uh,
consent is very black and white. But he is a handsome,
wealthy white guy who would be considered in those eighteenth
(11:13):
century terms perhaps more of a libertine or rape who
you know, because he's charming and so he's given these
kinds of privileges over women's bodies. Whereas by you know,
on the flip side of that, if you happen to
be a man of lesser means, and still at this time,
a white man of lesser means, then you are a threat.
(11:36):
And also that ties into how rape at this time
was seen very much as a crime of dishonor, because
rape at the time too was something that really happened
specifically in society's eyes too white women of means, because
(11:58):
that idea of female chastity was so much more important
than any type of female actual having sovereignty over her
own body or her own self. Yeah, because you see
that there's this long held construct of rape as more
of a crime of dishonor you're dishonoring, Yes, a woman's
perhaps virginity. And I say that in quotes we've talked
(12:20):
about the trouble with the word virginity because it's very
specific in terms of just vaginal penetration, um. But and
also it's more extensive to uh dishonor of an entire
family at the time, rather than being seen as a
physical assault, which is what it is. And Freeman writes
(12:41):
that quote an ideal of female chastity that was more
significant as a measure of family or national honor and
as a form of female sexual sovereignty was really how
rape was perceived at that time, right. But it was
in the nineteenth century in the US that we have
these suffragists and other reformers pushing for major changes because
(13:06):
during this time we're living in an environment where the
prosecution of rape was nearly impossible unless the woman was white, virginal,
unmarried to the rapist, in middle class. If you were
of a lower class, of a lower social standing, you
just were not going to have the same rights afforded
to you, right. And so what some of these nineteenth
(13:27):
century reformers were lobbying for were things like raising the
age of consent above the common law statute which was
carried over from England of ten years old, so ten
in other words, used to be the age of consent
in the United States, right, And this was occurring in
the context of the new meaning of childhood in industrial
(13:48):
America UM and the rise in women's politicizations. So you
have these suffragists who are pushing for more women's rights.
They are also put, in addition to many other things
on their list, push for this rise in the age
of consent. They wanted to protect children, but it was
more than just protecting children's innocence and kind of insulating
(14:09):
their actual childhood. UM. They were also worried about venereal diseases.
Raising the age of consent would make it possible to
as freeman rights, to not only prosecute the men who
recruited young girls. You know that there are all there's
all these stories about young girls coming to the big
cities like Chicago and being recruited into basically uh, sex trafficking.
(14:34):
So not only would it you know, enable the prosecution
of those men, but it would protect young girls from
sexual ruined quote unquote and deter the spread of disease.
And so it was around this time that the legal
age for marriage we're not talking about consent, but for
marriage moved from twelve for girls and fourteen for boys
(14:55):
to sixteen and eighteen, respectively, So there was that protected
period that starts coming about during this time. Well. And
speaking of marriage, one way that that men would often
pressure younger women into having sex with them was by
promising that they would get married, because if you got
(15:15):
married then would be fine. So if you're already engaged
and yeah, you can go ahead and do something. And
so these reformers also sought criminal penalties to discourage what
they called the quote unquote licentious man who would coerce, persuade,
pressure a young woman to have sex under the false
pretenses of marriage. But at the same time, while all
(15:36):
this is going on, yet again, as we see centuries
before in England, whenever you have movements on behalf of
victims rights, for protecting women, for actually giving women more
agency and more sovereignty over their bodies, you usually see
the flip side of that of some chipping away of
(15:59):
women's adibility. So this is also when the concept of
sexual delinquency, particularly targeted towards girls, was established, or as
I like to call it, yield slut shaming, because this
was really the the idea that there were bad girls.
They were you know, if a girl expressed any kind
of sexual interest, then she was most certainly a delinquent.
(16:23):
And so you had moral reformers who would create homes
for delinquent and wayward girls. We hear about homes for
wayward girls a lot of times, and this is what
they're talking about, right and in nine so right there,
at the turn of the twentieth century, the l a
Times reported on charges brought against a twenty year old
man by a fourteen year old victim. But and how
(16:44):
familiar does this sound to modern day media? They said
that this this girl was the victim of sexual assault
by this twenty year old man, but they made sure
to report that the victim ran with a fast crowd
who brought her two saloons and and all of this
a mo role, So they made sure to insert that like, well,
(17:04):
she might have been assaulted, but was she asking for it? Yeah?
Are we really going to trust her? And that's the
same kind of narrative I believe that was in the
New York Times when the Stupenville case came back up again,
Because at first it was brushed under the rug, and
then the New York Times wrote this piece about this
(17:26):
bizarre case but it describes the victim in terms of
what she tended to wear and what she tended to
do on the weekends. And people were thankfully and rightfully
outraged at that kind of posturing. Um. But Caroline, back
to that case that was reported on in the l
(17:47):
A Times, between that fourteen year old girl and the
twenty year old man. She was sent to one of
those homes for wayward girls. And ostensibly the point is
to per checked them from any kind of sexual predation,
but really the the bent of these kinds of homes
(18:08):
was to change the behavior of the girls who ended
up in them, to make them virtuous, pure, respectable women.
What you know, what kind of reform school the guy
had to go to? Probably none, because that, again is
something that we still see today where the question often
circles back to not how can we change our thinking societally,
(18:29):
not how can we raise up boys and men to
consider women differently? But what can we do to change
women in such a way so that they won't attract it?
Right exactly? I mean as self Freeman rights that often
you know, the rapist would get maybe maybe two years
(18:52):
in prison, but the victim who was sent to these
homes you know, if she might be fourteen, like this
one girl we talked about, and if she had to
spend the rest of her childhood before she was an adult,
illegal adult in these homes. I mean, she could spend
seven years in this home. So she's incarcerated technically for
longer than the rapist is well. And imagine too, she
(19:13):
comes back to her hometown after leaving one of those
homes for wayward girls, and she's probably marked for the
rest of her life in a way, is being one
of those girls you know. Um, but we're talking at
that point about mostly about white girls. The situation for
African American women was much worse, and it's still worse,
(19:36):
uh statistically today. Um. But if we look in the
nineteenth century, there were African American activists who were doing
a lot of work simply to change the legal standing
to accept the fact that black women could be victims
of rape. That wasn't even a concept at the time, right,
(19:57):
And this goes all the way back to slavery, when
oftentimes African American women were purchased for the sole purpose
of being basically sex slaves for white men. And so
it was very common at the time to perceive both
black women and men as being hyper sexual. So just
like you said, I mean, like, how can you be
(20:19):
raped if, I mean, that's just what you want exactly. Yeah,
And and that's for for black women, the racist assumption
is that they are always ready and willing. And for
black men, the racist assumption was that they would always
be sexual predators, specifically toward white women. I mean, and
(20:41):
if you look, for instance, just at the South and
the United States during post Civil War, Jim crow Era
and like up in through the civil rights movement in
the nineteen sixties. And we should probably devote entire podcast tour,
but this is where the work of journalists i'd be
Wells is so important. She was one of the most
(21:01):
influential crusaders on behalf of those rights for black women
and changing that conversation, not necessarily among white society at
the time, but first starting and sparking that conversation among
black communities as well. Right. Inspired by Wells writing, members
(21:23):
of the Northern Black Women's Clubs insisted that quote, virtue
knows no color line and implored white men to treat
them respectfully because there's that whole issue of virtue. And
they were saying, well, if women are so precious, why
are black women any less precious? Why are you treating
us as subhuman? And so taking on that mantle, the
(21:47):
African American press itself publicized white men's sexual impunity. Yeah,
so you have papers like the Chicago Defender in nineteen
eleven headlining an article white gentleman commits rape, which would
have been revolutionary at the time because not only do
you have, you know, the very fact of a black
(22:11):
victim being given credibility, but you also have a white perpetrator,
right exactly. And the subhead to that article was that's
all right. It was on a colored girl, permitted by
the United States government and the Confederacy. So this was
definitely activist press trying. It's hardest to just bring attention
(22:33):
to the fact that African American women should not there's
no reason that they should have to suffer when middle
class white women can take their perpetrators to court. And
so when we move in into the nineteen twenties, there's
this attitude shift from the more patronizing and paternalistic wanting to,
(22:54):
you know, send women away to these wayward homes and
you know, protect take them under lock and key from
these licentious men to shifting though to blame and culpability
of the victims, because yet again we see the cycle
where the whenever there's the tidal wave of women's rights
(23:16):
that swells, you always have the reverse happening if people
wanting to undercut that progress. Right, And so the American
Journal of Urology and Sexology in nineteen eighteen and nineteen
nineteen ran articles plural warning lawyers to the great danger
that men are often in from false accusations by female
(23:37):
children and women. So watch out, guys. This is and
also this is this is in nineteen eighteen. I mean
going going back to what we were saying at the
top of the podcast in terms of hearing about rape
culture today as though it is some sort of new thing,
and people react very strongly to hearing that. But no, no,
(24:01):
this is going on. This is the same kind of
stuff that we're hearing today that was published in nineteen eighteen,
nineteen nineteen. But in nineteen twenty nine we do have
more of a formalizing of the definition of rape by
the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program to include quote the
cardinal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.
(24:22):
But note though that that old definition only speaks to
a female victim, and that's going to remain in place
until two thousand twelve. But we will circle back to
that later. Well, we mentioned earlier that you know, sexual
assault and rape was you know, specifically seen as being
(24:46):
perpetrated by strangers, by tramps, transient white trash tramps who
are coming through town and attacking people. But as we
move forward into the nineteen seventies and eighties and the
rise of second wave feminism, we have the term date
rape coin to describe unwanted sex with an acquaintance. And
(25:09):
it was around this time too, that uh, sexual abuse
within the family was targeted. These these things that had
been basically hidden away behind closed doors for so many
years were finally being brought out into the light. Yeah,
and because of these efforts in the nineteen eighties, in
the nineteen eighties, just remember that states began to outlaw
(25:30):
marital rape. Actually in nineteen seventies six, we should say
Nebraska became the first state to abolish the marital rape exception,
because that's right, there was an exception to these rape
laws saying, oh, actually, if you are married to somebody,
he can pretty much do what he wants with you whenever,
(25:51):
and he it might not be with impunity, but it
would be categorized as something entirely different and not it
wouldn't carry as strict of punishments if you were somebody's
husband as opposed to someone unrelated and Caroline, I remember
watching a documentary from PBSS Maker series about Second Way feminism,
(26:14):
and they talked about how uh Miss magazine did a
huge spread on marital rape and talk to women who
would eventually like ended up leaving their husbands because of
these kinds of issues of sexual abuse within the home,
and how revolutionary it was because not so long ago
(26:34):
that idea that that could even happen was so new,
and it was so empowering for women to talk to
other women and say, oh my god, this is happening
to me too, this is happening to you, This isn't right.
And I'm not saying that it was happening in in
every home in America, but it was still happening enough
that it was galvanizing for a lot of women. And
(26:58):
it's really not until around this time also that states
start to revisit the whole idea of corroboration and the
use of utmost forced to prove resistance. Basically, states finally
lift these requirements that, um, you have to prove somehow
that you were incredibly injured during the assault. And we
(27:22):
also need to mention that in nineteen Susan Brown Miller
published Against Our Will, which was this groundbreaking book about
rape and and really it was hailed as one of,
if not the first book in the twentieth century to
really talk about these kinds of issues, and it ended
(27:43):
up becoming a bestseller and has become kind of a
seminal feminist text because it helped to fuel these kinds
of reforms that were happening. Although I mean, we we
have to say though, that those nineteenth century reforms we
were talking about, or turn the century reforms that we
mentioned to in terms of um changing laws to acknowledge
(28:06):
that black women can also be victims of rape. At
that time too, during Civil rights they were still fighting
for that. They weren't there. You know, there's still so
so much progress that needs to be made. It's like
white feminists were finally getting around to the issue of
marital rape, and finally, with civil rights, black women were
finally getting more recognition of them actually being able to,
(28:28):
you know, be recognized as as victims in these situations. Right. Well,
but you also have that entire I mean talk about
things that we could dedicate an entire podcast. You I mean,
you also have that cultural divide in terms of African
the African American community and rape and the whole issue
of not wanting to report a black woman, not wanting
(28:50):
to report being raped by a black man because of
the white man, the system being run by the white man,
and wanting to protect your own well protect your own
and also to finally move away from that racist idea
of the black man as being the sexual predator out
(29:10):
to get white women specifically. So some scholars have talked
about how that created a bit of a catch twenty
two where yes, they you know, within these African American communities,
they wanted to push for more progress in terms of
awareness of rape and sexual assault and being able to
talk about it, but not wanting to undercut any progress
(29:32):
that had been made moving forward away from, uh, that
idea of the demonized hyper sexual black man too. Um,
but as part of the consciousness raising that was a
hallmark of second way feminism during the nineteen seventies and eighties,
we have the rape crisis centers that we see so
(29:54):
often today that are a direct outgrowth of this women's
movement becau us. You know, feminists essentially got together and said, hey,
we need to help each other. We need to set
up some kind of uh resource center where people can go. Yeah,
and courts declared during this time that a woman's sexual
history was irrelevant in a rape trial. But I mean,
(30:16):
I'm I'm shaking my head because in the court of
public opinion that is obviously still a huge problem. Absolutely. Um.
And then in the nine nineties there is increasing awareness
going on of the problem of date rape, and marital
rape by the es became a crime in all fifty states.
And again I realized with this episode where just leap
(30:40):
frogging through time, but even just in the snippets that
were offering, there isn't there There hasn't been a radical
change in terms of how we think about women's bodies
all that much. Yes, we have more agency, Yes there
is more organizing that was happening, you know, among women
to help other women, And yes, laws were slowly catching
(31:03):
up to it. But we're talking about the nineties Caroline.
I mean, if you think about how much time that is,
one would think that the changes in culture, in attitude,
in law would be much more radical, for for for
for how many years, eight hundred, nine hundred a thousand years,
to to not have more significant changes in the way
(31:27):
that women are viewed from from being okay, so you know,
from being mad that a woman is right because she's
your property, to being mad that a woman is raped
because she's a young girl and now she's defiled and
it's her fault, so we need to go pack her
off to a home for wayward girls, and she's dishonored
your family, right, And so we really in terms of
(31:49):
the ingrained ideas about women and about their bodies and
their sexuality, we really have not come very far. And
even still rape is seen as having so many gray areas,
which is patently false because rape is rape. And yet
that is a surprisingly new concept to us because the
(32:14):
legal definition has been in flux for so long. And
so I mentioned that FBI Uniform Crime Reporting change in
the definition of rape in and so only in two
thousand and twelve did the FBI change its definition to
include a form of for sexual penetration of men, women, children,
(32:35):
and I believe also trans people as well as and
this is very important, non forcible rape. And so all
this entire discussion has been leading us up to talking
about the modern term of rape culture. What is it?
How did it get here all of a sudden, you know?
And the fact is, like I said at the top
(32:56):
of the podcast, this is something that has existed, and
you could question. A lot of people say, we don't,
we don't live in a rape culture anymore than we
live in a murder culture. But to those people, I
say that it is so ingrained and insidious that maybe, yeah,
maybe some people don't even realize it. Well, And that's
(33:17):
that's the part of the very definition of rape culture,
where it is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language,
the objectification of women's bodies, the glamorization of sexual violence,
that creates a society that disregards women's rights and safety,
where it is an assumption that at some point, if
(33:39):
you are a woman, you are going to probably face
sexual assault if you you know, if you're not watching
what you're wearing, if you're not watching where you're going,
if you're not watching who you're hanging around, with it.
It will constantly be a threat in your life. And
it's so commonplace that it's cool to make jokes about it,
that the rape jokes can be hilarious us and funny
(34:00):
and and and not at all, you know, incredibly insensitive
and wrong towards the people, the many people that it
happens to. Because that's the thing. We've been focusing all
this conversation on females as victims, but it's not just
women that this happens to either, And just to tea
up for our next conversation, we're gonna look at where
(34:22):
we are today in terms of rape statistics and perpetrators
and victims and at risk populations. UM. A lot of
times the conversations that we have around rape today focus
on hookup culture, alcohol, and social media, and looking at
those three things as the variables that we need to change.
(34:45):
People need to stop hooking up, kids need to drink less,
girls specifically should drink less, and we need to get
rid of smartphones for kids. But eliminating all of that,
you take away all three of those factors and you're
perfect utopian. Guess what, you still have this legacy, You
still have this history, You still have these societal foundations
(35:08):
teaching women basically that it is our job day in
and day out, to avoid being raped. It is on us.
It's the onus is on us to not be raped,
and we end up limiting our behavior because of that,
and that is rape culture, limiting our behavior because of
this idea that we live with every day, that we
(35:28):
are afraid of getting raped. It's not something that most
men have to live with. And speaking of men, I
want to underscore that we are not trying to portray
men as rapists. We don't feel like men. We're not
trying to preach that men are are inherently terrible and
(35:49):
and it's all bad. It's it's a product. Though. We
have to pay attention to the product of this history
and of this almost self perpetua waiting cycle of sexism
and racism and classism and all of those things that
get tied up with it. But before we sep boxed anymore,
(36:10):
it's time now to wrap up part one of this
two part series that we are doing on rape and
sexual assault. And UH, we would love to hear from you. UM,
we want to know how this issue resonates with you.
So let's start a discussion. You can email us mom
Stuff at Discovery dot com, you can tweet us at
(36:32):
mom Stuff Podcast, and you can find us on Facebook
as well. Because this is an important topic, it's not
easy to talk about, it's probably not easy to listen to,
but it is crucial for us and for the generations
of people who will come after us, for us to
talk about this and not just women. Guys. We want
to hear from you two trans people. We want to
(36:54):
hear from you three. We want to hear from everybody.
So let us know your thoughts and we will share
a couple of letters with you when we come right
back from a quick break. And now back to our letters.
So we've got a couple of letters to share in
regard to our Women in Stem series. Because Carolina, I
(37:15):
don't know about you, but I never tire of hearing
about women and science. Uh So, Steven actually wanted to
write in about our engineering episode in which we talked
about how industrial engineering, which has the greatest proportion of
women among all the engineering fields. I wanted to talk
about why engineering sometimes gets made fun of an engineering school,
(37:39):
he writes, While it is very true that industrial engineering
gets called imaginary engineering, I don't think this is because
of how many women are or are not in the field.
In school, the majors we made fun of were always
the eyes and the civil engineers. This is because of
the lower amount of math and hard science required compared
(38:00):
to other engineering disciplines. Mechanical engineers take thermodynamics, electrical engineers
take semiconductor physics, aeronautical engineers take fluid dynamics, and computer
engineers take processor design. Meanwhile, industrial engineers are laying out
factory workflows and civil engineers are deciding how much to
bank the highway on ramp. If these stereotypes related to
(38:20):
the genders of the disciplines, I doubt they would center
on the most and least female populated fields. Now, being
out of college, I realized that the most important engineering
skill is a methodical and scientific approach to solving real
world problems, and that is something all engineers have in common,
even if they didn't all have to take calculus for
(38:41):
so thanks Stephen for that engineering insight. I have a
letter here from Katie. She says, as a female nuclear engineer,
having just graduated from college in may have been working
at a nuclear power plant for about six months. I
haven't encountered any negative attitudes towards the very few women
engineers who worked there. No one doubts the intelligence and
(39:01):
capability of women to perform just as well as men,
but the working environment is not women friendly. Some of
it is just practical issues. Having been a male dominated field.
It's sometimes difficult to get your hands on things like
protective clothing to the right size for a woman, but
other things are more subtle. An entry level engineer can
expect to work sixty plus hours a week and be
on called seven three sixty five, and at certain times
(39:24):
of the year be required to work shift work. As
you move up in the ranks, the time demand becomes
greater and greater for supervisors and managers. Right now, as
a single young woman, I can do it, although, to
be honest, the lack of a work life balance even
now as an issue, but I'm not sure I'll be
able to if when I get a family. While in
college studying nuclear engineering, I was passionate about getting more
(39:45):
women interested in math and science and engineering. Now that
I'm actually out in the workplace, I'm not sure i'd
be able to recommend it. It's a very difficult, demanding field.
And it doesn't lend itself to a good work life balance.
A final point, I got into engineering because I loved
math and science, problem solving and the theory behind it all. Engineering,
at least where I work, is a very hands on
(40:06):
type of field that I wasn't expecting. You actually go
out into the field and get your hands dirty dealing
with massive mechanical equipment. It's a shock to go from
the classroom theory into the field in the workplace. So
thank you for sharing your story, Katie, and thanks to
everybody who's written to us. Mom Stuff at discovery dot
com is where you can send us your letters. You
can also follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast,
(40:29):
find us on Facebook and like us while you're at it.
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we're on Tumbler as well as Stuff Mom Never Told
You dot tumbler dot com and as always, we are
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out the many many videos that we have to offer there.
(40:49):
It's YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told You,
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Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and this episode kicks off a
two part series that we are going to do looking
at rape and sexual assault focused in the United States.
(00:27):
And so first of all, we just want to offer
a trigger warning that yes, we will be talking about
these issues. We're not going to go into graphic detail
at any point, but for people who would be sensitive
to those topics, we just want to let you know
that that's where we're going to be going in this conversation.
And this is something that we've gotten a number of
(00:49):
requests from listeners for years now. Every now and then
we hear people asking us to talk about rape, to
talk about sexual assault, to talk about these horrible things
that are happening in places like Steubenville, Ohio, or more
recently with the scandal of the quote unquote Roastbusters in
(01:10):
New Zealand of teen boys who were making a sport
out of sexually assaulting young women. And what we want
to do with these two episodes is not so much
talk about the horrifying details of what happened in places
like Steubenville, Ohio, Maryville, Missouri, Athens, Ohio. But rather take
(01:31):
a step back, as we're gonna do in this particular episode,
and look more at the history of rape and sexual
assault and how it evolved legally, and also how it
evolved in terms of women's rights and also civil rights
for women of color as well. That's right, as Kristen
(01:54):
and I were talking about before um this podcast. You know,
rape culture is to gussed as a modern invention, something
that we are just now turning our attention to and
fighting back against. But the truth is, when you dig
into the history of first legislation and actual laws against
(02:16):
sexual assault and rape, and then going back into why
those laws were passed, you realize that there is quite
a deep, intricate history of rape and sexual assault kind
of ingrained in our culture. And I don't even mean
that in terms of American culture or modern culture. I
mean that when you go back and look at the
(02:38):
origins of rape law, it almost makes it more clear
what we're up against today, exactly because so often when
things like the sexual assault, the gang rape that happened
in Steubenville, Ohio, when those issues take place, a lot
of times the conversation that immediately came is up around
(03:00):
it involved three things, which are social media, the hookup culture,
and alcohol use. And we're not going to talk about
that today because, like you said, Caroline, this isn't an
issue of twenty one century factors. What's going on today
is a manifestation of centuries millennial worth of history, starting
(03:22):
all the way back in sevent eight b c. If
you look at Hammarabi's code in Babylonia, if a betrothed
virgin was raped, she was considered blameless and her attacker
was slain. But if a married woman was raped, both
she and her attacker were thrown in the river to drown.
(03:42):
And why is that? Why do we have this distinction
between a betrothed virgin, who might be seen as more honorable,
and a married woman. Well, this goes back to this
fundamental issue of women being perceived as property relative to men,
and a betrothed virgin has of high value to her father,
(04:05):
and so if a guy comes along and assaults her,
then that is a crime upon more upon her father
in a way than upon the girl. Whereas if a
woman has had sex before she is married, then her
value is probably lower and it was just assumed that
she would have been crying wolf and she was probably
just having an affair or something with this guy. Right,
(04:27):
And another issue um that people talk about today in
rape cases is the issue of basically consent protesting. You know,
did the woman is she making it up? So looking
back at the Mosaic law of Israel, unmarried women who
were raped within the city walls would end up being
(04:49):
stoned to death because if she hadn't consented, then surely
people around her would have heard her screaming yeah. Whereas
if she were raped outside of city walls. So even
if in this case she had been protesting, people wouldn't
have been able to hear her. But still the rapist
under this law would simply have to pay the father
(05:11):
a bride price and then he had to marry her,
because again, women as property, marriage is an economic tool
at this point, right, absolutely, And so again we have
basically the burden of proof from a from the get
go being on the victim of rape. And looking back
at as Syria, they had a statute that allowed fathers
of rape victims to rape the wife of the rapist.
(05:35):
It's like a tip for a tat an eye for
an eye exactly. And those are just a few of
the horrifying rape laws that we have as our sort
of historical foundations for this issue. And we're going to
move forward and and also for listeners, were obviously not
going to be able to give a comprehensive, granular, step
(05:56):
by step look at all of the different rape and
sexual assault laws, um. But but we want to offer
as much of a relevant snapshot as we can. So
now we're going to focus more just on the West.
And first we're gonna look at England because I went
through an evolution in its rape law wherein prior to
(06:18):
ten sixty six, it was a crime punishable by dismemberment.
Right Basically you would get drawn and quartered um. In
the twelfth century under Henry the Second you do eventually
get a trial by jury, and you need corroboration um.
And and what that means in that old law is
(06:39):
that the woman should have made a hue and cry
after the incident. She needed to have run through the
streets screaming and crying, basically showing that she was injured,
showing that her clothes were torn to offer proof. And
that's that just echoes that mosaic law of Israel, and
then in the thirteenth century under Edward the Second we
(07:01):
see some important advances, both positive and negative for victims. Um.
First of all, we have the crown being involved in
all rape cases, not just in instances with virgins, and
that whole issue of the virginity construct, whether or not
a woman is believed to have had vagual intercourse before
(07:23):
that so often in still today, often is the line
between how much we are going to believe her if
she says that she has in fact been assaulted. Um.
But still, if you look at British law text Flata
from twelve ninety, it maintains that women simply cannot get
(07:44):
pregnant via rape. Just f y I. And doesn't that
sound familiar, Caroline? That does because it was Representative Todd Aiken,
who was a nominee for U. S. Senate and Missouri.
He claimed that abortion in cases of rape was unnecessary
because quote, if it's a legitimate rape, the female body
has ways to shut that whole thing down. And that's
(08:06):
actually not true, because if Senator Aiken knew his science
at all or new his statistics at all, about five
percent of sexual assaults actually result in pregnancy. So guess what,
We don't have some kind of magical shutdown system in
our body. But what is more mind boggling than that
is that that same old, unscientific anti rape doctrine is
(08:30):
still being recycled in our nightly news headlines. And it's
around this time also that statutory rape is recognized by
law for the first time, and the rule basically stated
that the King prohibits that none do ravish any maiden
within age. And two positives that emerged during this time
(08:54):
were um the fact that statutory rape was recognized by law,
so girl of a certain age were protected, and it
the distinction and punishments for rape of virgins and non
versions was also eliminated. But there was also the statute
of limitations that was established, which maintained that if a
woman failed to institute a private suit within forty days,
(09:17):
and the right to prosecute automatically passed to the crown,
which meant that rape was no longer a family misfortune
but an issue of public safety and state concern. However,
almost every time we see laws enacted like this that
actually support victims rights, there's a little bit of punishment
that gets chipped away at For instance, simultaneously, the penalty
(09:41):
for rape was reduced to two years imprisonment. So if
we move to the US and talk about our specific
legal history, it is very, very tied up with issue
issues of race and class in addition to as we'll
get into women's rights. And one of our main sources
(10:02):
looking at this was a Stelle Freeman's Redefining Rape Sexual
Violence in the Era of Suffrage and segregation. She talks
about how until the late nineteenth century, white tramps and
strangers dominated much of the discourse on sexual assault. And
if we look back at the eighteenth century, there was
this idea of the libertine or the rake, who was
(10:25):
this elite white man basically who presumes sexual privilege but
wasn't considered a criminal. And I think, I mean that
sounds pretty familiar. Also, we in fact did a video
talking about what constitutes something that's creepy, right yeah, creepy
versus flattering, And right there you have this issue of class.
(10:48):
I mean, if you have someone like for instance, today
we there was a lot of controversy over Robin Fix
Summer Hit blurred lines, because you're talking about these these
so called blurred lines between consent and not where where Actually,
guess what Robin think, The lines are not blurred at all. Uh,
consent is very black and white. But he is a handsome,
wealthy white guy who would be considered in those eighteenth
(11:13):
century terms perhaps more of a libertine or rape who
you know, because he's charming and so he's given these
kinds of privileges over women's bodies. Whereas by you know,
on the flip side of that, if you happen to
be a man of lesser means, and still at this time,
a white man of lesser means, then you are a threat.
(11:36):
And also that ties into how rape at this time
was seen very much as a crime of dishonor, because
rape at the time too was something that really happened
specifically in society's eyes too white women of means, because
(11:58):
that idea of female chastity was so much more important
than any type of female actual having sovereignty over her
own body or her own self. Yeah, because you see
that there's this long held construct of rape as more
of a crime of dishonor you're dishonoring, Yes, a woman's
perhaps virginity. And I say that in quotes we've talked
(12:20):
about the trouble with the word virginity because it's very
specific in terms of just vaginal penetration, um. But and
also it's more extensive to uh dishonor of an entire
family at the time, rather than being seen as a
physical assault, which is what it is. And Freeman writes
(12:41):
that quote an ideal of female chastity that was more
significant as a measure of family or national honor and
as a form of female sexual sovereignty was really how
rape was perceived at that time, right. But it was
in the nineteenth century in the US that we have
these suffragists and other reformers pushing for major changes because
(13:06):
during this time we're living in an environment where the
prosecution of rape was nearly impossible unless the woman was white, virginal,
unmarried to the rapist, in middle class. If you were
of a lower class, of a lower social standing, you
just were not going to have the same rights afforded
to you, right. And so what some of these nineteenth
(13:27):
century reformers were lobbying for were things like raising the
age of consent above the common law statute which was
carried over from England of ten years old, so ten
in other words, used to be the age of consent
in the United States, right, And this was occurring in
the context of the new meaning of childhood in industrial
(13:48):
America UM and the rise in women's politicizations. So you
have these suffragists who are pushing for more women's rights.
They are also put, in addition to many other things
on their list, push for this rise in the age
of consent. They wanted to protect children, but it was
more than just protecting children's innocence and kind of insulating
(14:09):
their actual childhood. UM. They were also worried about venereal diseases.
Raising the age of consent would make it possible to
as freeman rights, to not only prosecute the men who
recruited young girls. You know that there are all there's
all these stories about young girls coming to the big
cities like Chicago and being recruited into basically uh, sex trafficking.
(14:34):
So not only would it you know, enable the prosecution
of those men, but it would protect young girls from
sexual ruined quote unquote and deter the spread of disease.
And so it was around this time that the legal
age for marriage we're not talking about consent, but for
marriage moved from twelve for girls and fourteen for boys
(14:55):
to sixteen and eighteen, respectively, So there was that protected
period that starts coming about during this time. Well. And
speaking of marriage, one way that that men would often
pressure younger women into having sex with them was by
promising that they would get married, because if you got
(15:15):
married then would be fine. So if you're already engaged
and yeah, you can go ahead and do something. And
so these reformers also sought criminal penalties to discourage what
they called the quote unquote licentious man who would coerce, persuade,
pressure a young woman to have sex under the false
pretenses of marriage. But at the same time, while all
(15:36):
this is going on, yet again, as we see centuries
before in England, whenever you have movements on behalf of
victims rights, for protecting women, for actually giving women more
agency and more sovereignty over their bodies, you usually see
the flip side of that of some chipping away of
(15:59):
women's adibility. So this is also when the concept of
sexual delinquency, particularly targeted towards girls, was established, or as
I like to call it, yield slut shaming, because this
was really the the idea that there were bad girls.
They were you know, if a girl expressed any kind
of sexual interest, then she was most certainly a delinquent.
(16:23):
And so you had moral reformers who would create homes
for delinquent and wayward girls. We hear about homes for
wayward girls a lot of times, and this is what
they're talking about, right and in nine so right there,
at the turn of the twentieth century, the l a
Times reported on charges brought against a twenty year old
man by a fourteen year old victim. But and how
(16:44):
familiar does this sound to modern day media? They said
that this this girl was the victim of sexual assault
by this twenty year old man, but they made sure
to report that the victim ran with a fast crowd
who brought her two saloons and and all of this
a mo role, So they made sure to insert that like, well,
(17:04):
she might have been assaulted, but was she asking for it? Yeah?
Are we really going to trust her? And that's the
same kind of narrative I believe that was in the
New York Times when the Stupenville case came back up again,
Because at first it was brushed under the rug, and
then the New York Times wrote this piece about this
(17:26):
bizarre case but it describes the victim in terms of
what she tended to wear and what she tended to
do on the weekends. And people were thankfully and rightfully
outraged at that kind of posturing. Um. But Caroline, back
to that case that was reported on in the l
(17:47):
A Times, between that fourteen year old girl and the
twenty year old man. She was sent to one of
those homes for wayward girls. And ostensibly the point is
to per checked them from any kind of sexual predation,
but really the the bent of these kinds of homes
(18:08):
was to change the behavior of the girls who ended
up in them, to make them virtuous, pure, respectable women.
What you know, what kind of reform school the guy
had to go to? Probably none, because that, again is
something that we still see today where the question often
circles back to not how can we change our thinking societally,
(18:29):
not how can we raise up boys and men to
consider women differently? But what can we do to change
women in such a way so that they won't attract it?
Right exactly? I mean as self Freeman rights that often
you know, the rapist would get maybe maybe two years
(18:52):
in prison, but the victim who was sent to these
homes you know, if she might be fourteen, like this
one girl we talked about, and if she had to
spend the rest of her childhood before she was an adult,
illegal adult in these homes. I mean, she could spend
seven years in this home. So she's incarcerated technically for
longer than the rapist is well. And imagine too, she
(19:13):
comes back to her hometown after leaving one of those
homes for wayward girls, and she's probably marked for the
rest of her life in a way, is being one
of those girls you know. Um, but we're talking at
that point about mostly about white girls. The situation for
African American women was much worse, and it's still worse,
(19:36):
uh statistically today. Um. But if we look in the
nineteenth century, there were African American activists who were doing
a lot of work simply to change the legal standing
to accept the fact that black women could be victims
of rape. That wasn't even a concept at the time, right,
(19:57):
And this goes all the way back to slavery, when
oftentimes African American women were purchased for the sole purpose
of being basically sex slaves for white men. And so
it was very common at the time to perceive both
black women and men as being hyper sexual. So just
like you said, I mean, like, how can you be
(20:19):
raped if, I mean, that's just what you want exactly. Yeah,
And and that's for for black women, the racist assumption
is that they are always ready and willing. And for
black men, the racist assumption was that they would always
be sexual predators, specifically toward white women. I mean, and
(20:41):
if you look, for instance, just at the South and
the United States during post Civil War, Jim crow Era
and like up in through the civil rights movement in
the nineteen sixties. And we should probably devote entire podcast tour,
but this is where the work of journalists i'd be
Wells is so important. She was one of the most
(21:01):
influential crusaders on behalf of those rights for black women
and changing that conversation, not necessarily among white society at
the time, but first starting and sparking that conversation among
black communities as well. Right. Inspired by Wells writing, members
(21:23):
of the Northern Black Women's Clubs insisted that quote, virtue
knows no color line and implored white men to treat
them respectfully because there's that whole issue of virtue. And
they were saying, well, if women are so precious, why
are black women any less precious? Why are you treating
us as subhuman? And so taking on that mantle, the
(21:47):
African American press itself publicized white men's sexual impunity. Yeah,
so you have papers like the Chicago Defender in nineteen
eleven headlining an article white gentleman commits rape, which would
have been revolutionary at the time because not only do
you have, you know, the very fact of a black
(22:11):
victim being given credibility, but you also have a white perpetrator,
right exactly. And the subhead to that article was that's
all right. It was on a colored girl, permitted by
the United States government and the Confederacy. So this was
definitely activist press trying. It's hardest to just bring attention
(22:33):
to the fact that African American women should not there's
no reason that they should have to suffer when middle
class white women can take their perpetrators to court. And
so when we move in into the nineteen twenties, there's
this attitude shift from the more patronizing and paternalistic wanting to,
(22:54):
you know, send women away to these wayward homes and
you know, protect take them under lock and key from
these licentious men to shifting though to blame and culpability
of the victims, because yet again we see the cycle
where the whenever there's the tidal wave of women's rights
(23:16):
that swells, you always have the reverse happening if people
wanting to undercut that progress. Right, And so the American
Journal of Urology and Sexology in nineteen eighteen and nineteen
nineteen ran articles plural warning lawyers to the great danger
that men are often in from false accusations by female
(23:37):
children and women. So watch out, guys. This is and
also this is this is in nineteen eighteen. I mean
going going back to what we were saying at the
top of the podcast in terms of hearing about rape
culture today as though it is some sort of new thing,
and people react very strongly to hearing that. But no, no,
(24:01):
this is going on. This is the same kind of
stuff that we're hearing today that was published in nineteen eighteen,
nineteen nineteen. But in nineteen twenty nine we do have
more of a formalizing of the definition of rape by
the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program to include quote the
cardinal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.
(24:22):
But note though that that old definition only speaks to
a female victim, and that's going to remain in place
until two thousand twelve. But we will circle back to
that later. Well, we mentioned earlier that you know, sexual
assault and rape was you know, specifically seen as being
(24:46):
perpetrated by strangers, by tramps, transient white trash tramps who
are coming through town and attacking people. But as we
move forward into the nineteen seventies and eighties and the
rise of second wave feminism, we have the term date
rape coin to describe unwanted sex with an acquaintance. And
(25:09):
it was around this time too, that uh, sexual abuse
within the family was targeted. These these things that had
been basically hidden away behind closed doors for so many
years were finally being brought out into the light. Yeah,
and because of these efforts in the nineteen eighties, in
the nineteen eighties, just remember that states began to outlaw
(25:30):
marital rape. Actually in nineteen seventies six, we should say
Nebraska became the first state to abolish the marital rape exception,
because that's right, there was an exception to these rape
laws saying, oh, actually, if you are married to somebody,
he can pretty much do what he wants with you whenever,
(25:51):
and he it might not be with impunity, but it
would be categorized as something entirely different and not it
wouldn't carry as strict of punishments if you were somebody's
husband as opposed to someone unrelated and Caroline, I remember
watching a documentary from PBSS Maker series about Second Way feminism,
(26:14):
and they talked about how uh Miss magazine did a
huge spread on marital rape and talk to women who
would eventually like ended up leaving their husbands because of
these kinds of issues of sexual abuse within the home,
and how revolutionary it was because not so long ago
(26:34):
that idea that that could even happen was so new,
and it was so empowering for women to talk to
other women and say, oh my god, this is happening
to me too, this is happening to you, This isn't right.
And I'm not saying that it was happening in in
every home in America, but it was still happening enough
that it was galvanizing for a lot of women. And
(26:58):
it's really not until around this time also that states
start to revisit the whole idea of corroboration and the
use of utmost forced to prove resistance. Basically, states finally
lift these requirements that, um, you have to prove somehow
that you were incredibly injured during the assault. And we
(27:22):
also need to mention that in nineteen Susan Brown Miller
published Against Our Will, which was this groundbreaking book about
rape and and really it was hailed as one of,
if not the first book in the twentieth century to
really talk about these kinds of issues, and it ended
(27:43):
up becoming a bestseller and has become kind of a
seminal feminist text because it helped to fuel these kinds
of reforms that were happening. Although I mean, we we
have to say though, that those nineteenth century reforms we
were talking about, or turn the century reforms that we
mentioned to in terms of um changing laws to acknowledge
(28:06):
that black women can also be victims of rape. At
that time too, during Civil rights they were still fighting
for that. They weren't there. You know, there's still so
so much progress that needs to be made. It's like
white feminists were finally getting around to the issue of
marital rape, and finally, with civil rights, black women were
finally getting more recognition of them actually being able to,
(28:28):
you know, be recognized as as victims in these situations. Right. Well,
but you also have that entire I mean talk about
things that we could dedicate an entire podcast. You I mean,
you also have that cultural divide in terms of African
the African American community and rape and the whole issue
of not wanting to report a black woman, not wanting
(28:50):
to report being raped by a black man because of
the white man, the system being run by the white man,
and wanting to protect your own well protect your own
and also to finally move away from that racist idea
of the black man as being the sexual predator out
(29:10):
to get white women specifically. So some scholars have talked
about how that created a bit of a catch twenty
two where yes, they you know, within these African American communities,
they wanted to push for more progress in terms of
awareness of rape and sexual assault and being able to
talk about it, but not wanting to undercut any progress
(29:32):
that had been made moving forward away from, uh, that
idea of the demonized hyper sexual black man too. Um,
but as part of the consciousness raising that was a
hallmark of second way feminism during the nineteen seventies and eighties,
we have the rape crisis centers that we see so
(29:54):
often today that are a direct outgrowth of this women's
movement becau us. You know, feminists essentially got together and said, hey,
we need to help each other. We need to set
up some kind of uh resource center where people can go. Yeah,
and courts declared during this time that a woman's sexual
history was irrelevant in a rape trial. But I mean,
(30:16):
I'm I'm shaking my head because in the court of
public opinion that is obviously still a huge problem. Absolutely. Um.
And then in the nine nineties there is increasing awareness
going on of the problem of date rape, and marital
rape by the es became a crime in all fifty states.
And again I realized with this episode where just leap
(30:40):
frogging through time, but even just in the snippets that
were offering, there isn't there There hasn't been a radical
change in terms of how we think about women's bodies
all that much. Yes, we have more agency, Yes there
is more organizing that was happening, you know, among women
to help other women, And yes, laws were slowly catching
(31:03):
up to it. But we're talking about the nineties Caroline.
I mean, if you think about how much time that is,
one would think that the changes in culture, in attitude,
in law would be much more radical, for for for
for how many years, eight hundred, nine hundred a thousand years,
to to not have more significant changes in the way
(31:27):
that women are viewed from from being okay, so you know,
from being mad that a woman is right because she's
your property, to being mad that a woman is raped
because she's a young girl and now she's defiled and
it's her fault, so we need to go pack her
off to a home for wayward girls, and she's dishonored
your family, right, And so we really in terms of
(31:49):
the ingrained ideas about women and about their bodies and
their sexuality, we really have not come very far. And
even still rape is seen as having so many gray areas,
which is patently false because rape is rape. And yet
that is a surprisingly new concept to us because the
(32:14):
legal definition has been in flux for so long. And
so I mentioned that FBI Uniform Crime Reporting change in
the definition of rape in and so only in two
thousand and twelve did the FBI change its definition to
include a form of for sexual penetration of men, women, children,
(32:35):
and I believe also trans people as well as and
this is very important, non forcible rape. And so all
this entire discussion has been leading us up to talking
about the modern term of rape culture. What is it?
How did it get here all of a sudden, you know?
And the fact is, like I said at the top
(32:56):
of the podcast, this is something that has existed, and
you could question. A lot of people say, we don't,
we don't live in a rape culture anymore than we
live in a murder culture. But to those people, I
say that it is so ingrained and insidious that maybe, yeah,
maybe some people don't even realize it. Well, And that's
(33:17):
that's the part of the very definition of rape culture,
where it is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language,
the objectification of women's bodies, the glamorization of sexual violence,
that creates a society that disregards women's rights and safety,
where it is an assumption that at some point, if
(33:39):
you are a woman, you are going to probably face
sexual assault if you you know, if you're not watching
what you're wearing, if you're not watching where you're going,
if you're not watching who you're hanging around, with it.
It will constantly be a threat in your life. And
it's so commonplace that it's cool to make jokes about it,
that the rape jokes can be hilarious us and funny
(34:00):
and and and not at all, you know, incredibly insensitive
and wrong towards the people, the many people that it
happens to. Because that's the thing. We've been focusing all
this conversation on females as victims, but it's not just
women that this happens to either, And just to tea
up for our next conversation, we're gonna look at where
(34:22):
we are today in terms of rape statistics and perpetrators
and victims and at risk populations. UM. A lot of
times the conversations that we have around rape today focus
on hookup culture, alcohol, and social media, and looking at
those three things as the variables that we need to change.
(34:45):
People need to stop hooking up, kids need to drink less,
girls specifically should drink less, and we need to get
rid of smartphones for kids. But eliminating all of that,
you take away all three of those factors and you're
perfect utopian. Guess what, you still have this legacy, You
still have this history, You still have these societal foundations
(35:08):
teaching women basically that it is our job day in
and day out, to avoid being raped. It is on us.
It's the onus is on us to not be raped,
and we end up limiting our behavior because of that,
and that is rape culture, limiting our behavior because of
this idea that we live with every day, that we
(35:28):
are afraid of getting raped. It's not something that most
men have to live with. And speaking of men, I
want to underscore that we are not trying to portray
men as rapists. We don't feel like men. We're not
trying to preach that men are are inherently terrible and
(35:49):
and it's all bad. It's it's a product. Though. We
have to pay attention to the product of this history
and of this almost self perpetua waiting cycle of sexism
and racism and classism and all of those things that
get tied up with it. But before we sep boxed anymore,
(36:10):
it's time now to wrap up part one of this
two part series that we are doing on rape and
sexual assault. And UH, we would love to hear from you. UM,
we want to know how this issue resonates with you.
So let's start a discussion. You can email us mom
Stuff at Discovery dot com, you can tweet us at
(36:32):
mom Stuff Podcast, and you can find us on Facebook
as well. Because this is an important topic, it's not
easy to talk about, it's probably not easy to listen to,
but it is crucial for us and for the generations
of people who will come after us, for us to
talk about this and not just women. Guys. We want
to hear from you two trans people. We want to
(36:54):
hear from you three. We want to hear from everybody.
So let us know your thoughts and we will share
a couple of letters with you when we come right
back from a quick break. And now back to our letters.
So we've got a couple of letters to share in
regard to our Women in Stem series. Because Carolina, I
(37:15):
don't know about you, but I never tire of hearing
about women and science. Uh So, Steven actually wanted to
write in about our engineering episode in which we talked
about how industrial engineering, which has the greatest proportion of
women among all the engineering fields. I wanted to talk
about why engineering sometimes gets made fun of an engineering school,
(37:39):
he writes, While it is very true that industrial engineering
gets called imaginary engineering, I don't think this is because
of how many women are or are not in the field.
In school, the majors we made fun of were always
the eyes and the civil engineers. This is because of
the lower amount of math and hard science required compared
(38:00):
to other engineering disciplines. Mechanical engineers take thermodynamics, electrical engineers
take semiconductor physics, aeronautical engineers take fluid dynamics, and computer
engineers take processor design. Meanwhile, industrial engineers are laying out
factory workflows and civil engineers are deciding how much to
bank the highway on ramp. If these stereotypes related to
(38:20):
the genders of the disciplines, I doubt they would center
on the most and least female populated fields. Now, being
out of college, I realized that the most important engineering
skill is a methodical and scientific approach to solving real
world problems, and that is something all engineers have in common,
even if they didn't all have to take calculus for
(38:41):
so thanks Stephen for that engineering insight. I have a
letter here from Katie. She says, as a female nuclear engineer,
having just graduated from college in may have been working
at a nuclear power plant for about six months. I
haven't encountered any negative attitudes towards the very few women
engineers who worked there. No one doubts the intelligence and
(39:01):
capability of women to perform just as well as men,
but the working environment is not women friendly. Some of
it is just practical issues. Having been a male dominated field.
It's sometimes difficult to get your hands on things like
protective clothing to the right size for a woman, but
other things are more subtle. An entry level engineer can
expect to work sixty plus hours a week and be
on called seven three sixty five, and at certain times
(39:24):
of the year be required to work shift work. As
you move up in the ranks, the time demand becomes
greater and greater for supervisors and managers. Right now, as
a single young woman, I can do it, although, to
be honest, the lack of a work life balance even
now as an issue, but I'm not sure I'll be
able to if when I get a family. While in
college studying nuclear engineering, I was passionate about getting more
(39:45):
women interested in math and science and engineering. Now that
I'm actually out in the workplace, I'm not sure i'd
be able to recommend it. It's a very difficult, demanding field.
And it doesn't lend itself to a good work life balance.
A final point, I got into engineering because I loved
math and science, problem solving and the theory behind it all. Engineering,
at least where I work, is a very hands on
(40:06):
type of field that I wasn't expecting. You actually go
out into the field and get your hands dirty dealing
with massive mechanical equipment. It's a shock to go from
the classroom theory into the field in the workplace. So
thank you for sharing your story, Katie, and thanks to
everybody who's written to us. Mom Stuff at discovery dot
com is where you can send us your letters. You
can also follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast,
(40:29):
find us on Facebook and like us while you're at it.
We're also on Instagram if you want to see photos
of us were at stuff Mom Never Told You, and
we're on Tumbler as well as Stuff Mom Never Told
You dot tumbler dot com and as always, we are
also on YouTube, so you should head over and check
out the many many videos that we have to offer there.
(40:49):
It's YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told You,
and don't forget to subscribe for more thousands. If you're
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