Open AccessThis is Rape Culture, Ladies and Gentlemen
Author(s) -
Victoria Kuttainen
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
etropic
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.184
H-Index - 3
ISSN - 1448-2940
DOI - 10.25120/etropic.16.2.2017.3612
Subject(s) - conversation , sociology , everyday life , affordance , hegemony , relation (database) , aesthetics , gender studies , media studies , epistemology , art , psychology , politics , communication , law , philosophy , political science , database , computer science , cognitive psychology
“This is Rape Culture, Ladies and Gentlemen” uses the affordances offeredby multi-perspectival short fiction and thick description to re-centre attention on first-personexperience and the “taken-for-granted” complexities of everyday life that are at the heart of rape culture. It attempts to highlight the “everydayness” of rape culture which makes rape almost invisible within a normalised milieu of predatory sexual behaviour. In this, it draws on sociological theories of the practices of everyday life (Lefebvre, 1947/1991; de Certeau, 1974/1984; Felski, 1999), in which commonplace situations, mundane routines, and normal behaviours — that are usually taken for granted — are focalised. My story takes place on a college campus in North America, and involves a pivotal conversation between a homosexual man and a heterosexual woman that draws attention to the different ways in which rape is visible or invisible depending on characters’ (and readers’) positioning in relation to hegemonic social norms.