L5 Entry 5: Sexist designs contribute into the rape culture?

Q1: Analyse in depth a design related issue that has courted major controversy in both professional and public domains. Evaluate if the negative accusations of the media artefact are merited.

In my last blog post, I talked about a controversial sexist advert and mentioned along the lines of how it can contribute into the rape culture. It may seem ridiculous I mean, it is just an ad with added humour to attract people so what’s the big deal?

If you search for ‘contribution of rape culture’ up in google, the one reason that has always been mentioned is the normalisation of sexist jokes. It’s everywhere, in movies, music, advertisements, even stand up comedians and celebrities do it, so how can the rape culture be a serious matter when everyone is making fun of it (AJ+, 2014)?

Two examples in a sea of sexist ads.

A rape joke posted by Basketmouth - a stand up comedian.

CeeLo Green’s tweet on rape, which was then deleted and 

apologised for being insensitive.

A lot of people would directly point out that sexist jokes lead to rape but that is not entirely true. It doesn't mean people who are exposed to sexist jokes will eventually go around raping people. But studies have shown that appreciation of sexist jokes or being exposed to sexist jokes will lead to:

• Increased blame attached to victims of rape
• Increased acceptance of desire to rape
• Decreased view of rape as a “serious” problem
• Decreased desire to punish rapists

which means all the rape jokes are promoting the rape culture (Sivaraman, 2013).

This is not just it though, there are many little different kinds of contributions in the rape culture such as controlling what a girl wears—educating and controlling women instead of men, victim blaming, objectifying women and many more (Irsyad, 2016). But I’m not going to go into detail on that because it has no relation to my topic.

The objective of this post is to prove the seriousness of sexist adverts, even if you might think that it’s a small matter and we all should just laugh it off, look at the bigger picture before you speak.

References: 

AJ+ (2014) ‘Rape Culture USA’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT1_yP0w3jk (Accessed: 23rd June 2016).

Irsyad, A. (2016) ‘Rape Culture Is Pretty Much Rooted In Our Society. We Ask NGOs If Change Is Possible’. Available at: http://www.malaysiandigest.com/news/606492-rape-culture-is-pretty-much-rooted-in-our-society-we-ask-ngos-if-change-is-possible.html (Accessed: 25th June 2016).

Sivaraman, R. (2013) ‘A Scientific Case Against Rape Jokes’. Available at: https://rajsivaraman.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/a-scientific-case-against-rape-jokes/ (Accessed: 25th June 2016).