In autumn of 2011, a young woman named Elizabeth Seeberg told the University of Notre Dame police that a member of the football team had assaulted her. Nine days later, she committed suicide. Notre Dame allowed the player to remain on the football team, and he was later cleared of any charges.

This summer, in the small town of Steubenville, Ohio, members of the high school football team tweeted and Instagrammed the sexual assault of a high school girl. Local authorities have been accused of giving the players special treatment. Both these cases have received media attention, but they are far from being  unique.

In a national study done by The New York Times, one in five women reported being a victim of attempted or successful sexual assault. Among college women, that number goes up to one in four. Nine percent of rape victims are male. Ninety nine percent of rapists are male. And that is only looking at those people who were brave enough to report attacks. Conservative estimates by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network state that around half of all rapes go unreported.

According to the FBI website, only about a quarter of alleged rapists are ever convicted, and less than five percent of convicted rapists serve time in jail. Conviction rates are partially so low because victims do not always go to the police, due to the stigma of sexual assault. Even when victims do go to the police and receive a rape kit, the rape kit is not tested for years, if ever. Even worse, some states make the victim pay for a rape kit, which can cost up to $1,500.

We have a culture in the United States that normalizes rape and has a blame-the-victim attitude. Comedians joke about rape. In the media, coverage often focuses on what the victim was wearing or how they were behaving, rather than on the attackers. Victims are often questioned or, in extreme cases, accused of lying. How else are there statistics like the 35 percent of male students in a University of Illinois at Chicago study who said they would rape a woman if they could get away with it? Or that politicians running for national office say rape is a gift from God, as Richard Mourdock infamously said this election cycle, "or some girls just rape easy," according to former Wisconsin assemblyman Roger Rivard?  

Rape is not just a woman's issue, as the rape culture of our country is not one that only women live in. Men should be insulted by the idea that just because a girl is dressed in a provocative manner, there is the assumption that they can't control themselves and must have sex with her, consensual or not.

Men should be disgusted by the fact that 35 percent of their college-aged peers would rape someone if they could get away with it, or disgusted with themselves for even contemplating the idea. Rape victims aren't sluts, they aren't easy, they aren't stupid and they aren't asking for it. It doesn't matter what they were wearing, or how drunk they were or if they originally consented but then changed their mind. After all, in the University of Illinois at Chicago study, 43 percent of male respondents said they had coerced or forced a girl into having sex, even if they had said no.

Those who have experienced sexual assault are indeed victims. Rape victims are women. They are mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, girlfriends. They could be any woman in your life. It is shameful that we have this culture in the United States. It is shameful that when an eleven-year-old girl in Texas was gang-raped by her peers, most of the media attention revolved around what she was wearing rather than the attack itself. Rape can no longer be the butt of Daniel Tosh's jokes. Instead, it should be covered like any other serious crime, with respect for the victim and not judgment. Perhaps if there were more stories about the victims, instead of just attacks, rape culture would be at least partially solved.

There is not one right answer for how we can end rape culture. Part of it does rest on women, to be aware of their surroundings and know their limits. But it also rests on men, to respect their partners, understand that no means no, and that just because a girl is friendly to them does not mean they automatically can have sex. We need to hold the media to a higher standard, and make sure rape isn't just a storyline in a Law and Order episode, but rather an issue that gets the attention it deserves. If one in four women were robbed, wouldn't that make the news?

Stop blaming the victim of a violent crime for what she is wearing or how friendly and flirty she is. Stop making excuses or apologies for the attackers. Demand that our police and courts test rape kits and treat the victims with dignity. Ending rape culture is a good way to start dealing with the rape problem in the United States.
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