The "Campus Rape Culture": Consequences of Meaningless Words

Abstract

College campuses in North America are claimed to have a rape culture. The term has made its way into common parlance and some have gone as far as to say that Western culture as a whole is a rape culture. The fact that one-in-four women will be raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime is now oft-repeated in political as well as common discourse. However, analysis of how this number was arrived at reveals the ideological underpinnings of these studies and to which the authors of these studies subscribe. The following paper is concerned with the ideological background of these studies as well as the political and psychological motivations of those who believe in a rape culture.