Christine Sneed's Transforming A Rape Culture

Every weekend around the world, young adults get together for a night promising good fun and plenty of booze at fraternity houses associated with colleges that they might attend, with the sole intent of becoming extremely intoxicated. For some, a night of fun turns into a nightmare and they find themselves with hazy memories of drunken sex that they would likely not have consented to had they been sober. Events such as these are even regularly depicted in television programs and movies. This refers to rape culture, defined by Emilie Buchwald, author of Transforming a Rape Culture, as “a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women.” It is the notion that sexual violence is just something that happens; that it is just the way that things are. This then leads to victim shaming and many young women believing that it was her own fault that she was raped. “Older Sister,” written by Christine Sneed, accurately illustrates the effects that rape culture has on young women and their college social life by giving insight to Alex’s struggle to cope with dim memories of a college party. Alex recollects attending a twenty-first …show more content…
In fact, Alex felt that “[reporting her rape to her RA and the college] was too overwhelming to contemplate” (219). It would have meant that what had happened to her that night and the rest of her freshman year activities would have been discussed in great detail across the entire college, ruining her reputation and even opening a chance of her parents discovering what she had been up to. It was too embarrassing for her and if other girls “had the same experience, many of them had probably remained silent about it, too” (219). These are the effects of rape culture. The fact that many other women who have or will read “Older Sister” would have or have done the same thing is rape