Topic > Rape culture: victim blaming and gender stereotypes

The example will be a Dolce and Gabbana advertisement released in 2007 and brought to light in 2015 by Kelly Cutrone. It has created a lot of spark because of its provocative images and sick performances. The Dolce and Gabbana advert was supposed to showcase their summer campaign, however the advert showed a woman held on the floor in a bathing suit surrounded by shirtless men. The placement in the ad conveys the image of women as objects. Medium's Walam author described the ad as "having the woman literally under the man is to assert that she is inferior to him, but more importantly, he is about to rape her and it is obvious that these other men do not they intend to stop him" (Walam). The problem is that they were promoting a misogynistic and sexist ad without even considering the backlash they might receive. Leitner, author of his own blog, defines it simply as follows: "Women themselves and their bodies are dehumanized, objectified and their rights seem to be ignored." So the idea that a company would feel more comfortable and okay with promoting sexual violence is mystifying. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Rape culture has affected our society in so many ways. One of these is “victim blaming”, probably one of the biggest consequences to emerge from the riot. Victim blaming occurs when blame is placed on the victim primarily in cases of sexual assault, but it also applies to many other cases. Victim blaming branches into subsets such as specific phrases and questions asked, an example would be “she asked for this.” Phrases like this give the impression that if a woman does something outside the scope of modesty, she is simply "asking to be sexually assaulted." On top of this they will be asked questions such as "what they were wearing" and what they did to "encourage the behaviour". In November of this year, a University of Illinois undergraduate student named Ruth George was murdered after being called a "cat." Assistant State's Attorney James stated that the killer was "angry" at being ignored, so in retaliation he had followed her into the garage and proceeded to strangle her until she died and then raped her (Hauck). She was blaming the victim for having to kill her because of her own insecurities. This was seen first in 2016, when Janese Talton-Jackson was murdered for refusing a date (Young). Not to mention 2014, when Mary Spears was killed for not giving a man her phone number (Abbey-Lambertz). All three men have the same thing in common as they tried to place blame on the victims. This takes victim blaming to the extreme. In an article by David B. Feldman he told readers that we as people want to believe that we live in a perfect, positive world and stated, “When bad things happen to someone who looks a lot like us, it threatens our belief that the world be a just place. If that person could fall victim to rape, assault, robbery, or attack, perhaps we could too. So, to comfort ourselves in the face of this troubling realization and maintain our rosy worldview, we psychologically separate ourselves from the victim. ” (Feldman) From this we understand the desire to live in a peaceful world. That if the peace is broken, the blame will fall on the main person involved and we will have to distance ourselves. This results in people coming forward less and victimization getting worse, believing it's just one.