The United States Blindspot: Rape Culture & the Race for the President

Part Two: The Background

The need for a “believe all women” movement is crucial; because women just simply are not believed. The statistics supporting that claim are ample. Women who report more than one sexual assault are less likely to be believed, however, a woman who has been sexually assaulted previously is more likely to be assaulted again. The number of false reports is wildly overestimated and factually about 98% of reports are true. The more time it takes for a woman to report an assault the less likely she is to be believed. All in all, there are a wide variety of things that impair a woman's likelihood of being believed. Being believed is not only a crucial part of a woman's recovery process but the way our society lacks to believe women represents how little is thought of a woman in the first place.

Rather than the Me Too and Times Up movements solely causing a surge in support of victims of sexual assault and harassment, the movement has also had some adverse effects. Victim shaming. The moment the Me Too movement started trending hundreds of men took to social media to talk about how they were terrified that false accusations would come out against them. These men have painted themselves as the victims. When, the victim in this situation, is the actual victim of the assault, plain and simple. Men get the benefit of the doubt, get their poor actions headed off with a pass. Victims of sexual assault finally had a moment in history to make a change because of what happened to them, but, men boiling over with toxic masculinity had to force victims into shame over what happened to them, and somehow twist the Me Too movement to be about them. They have had such a lack of oppression in their lives they go out and find things to get angry about. This is not the only time an issue like this has been prevalent, we see it right now amid COVID-19 protests. There is nothing to say about actions like this other than the fact that they are just really really toxic.