Can Rape Culture be Chaged by Women?

Recently Buzzfeed produced a powerful video on our culture of sexual assault and harassment. It was both powerful and sad how I could relate in small ways to the women in the video. So many faces I had seen often in Buzzfeed videos talked about demeaning things that had happened to them, and I did not doubt a word. It was just all so common, so normal, and that was what was the most horrifying to me. Some of these awful things are so much a part of the culture that I live in, that they almost felt normal. And if they were not the common occurrence, I could still relate and easily imagine them happening with no doubt in my mind.

But I am a woman, and of course I  could relate and feel and impact from this video. But it made me wonder, does it really matter if I can relate? I realized that probably any woman watching it could, but that could very well mean nothing in the long run because us women are not the ones sexually assaulting and harassing other women. Not to say that there isn't probably a rare case of that. What I needed to know was whether or not men would be able to empathize with this video. Because if they can't and us women not the ones committing sexual assault, than is there anything we can actually do to change this problem in our culture?

I'm not sure how we can know whether the men watching the video and seeing the hashtags, are able to  feel and identify with the women and thus change the behavior of the men around them.

After all how many men have felt the same fears and violations the women in this video have felt or want to even bother to put themselves in our shoes?

In all likelihood some men who really need to see the video might just skim over it. Or because they don't want to feel guilt or change their behavior, they just explain away the women's experiences and devalue them.

But maybe this video was made for the women to show support and raise awareness, and not to inspire change. In which case I think it could be successful. 

But it does beg the question, how are we supposed to change this part of our culture that teaches a large portion of men that they are entitled to women's bodies. That we are just sexual objects.

Some think #MeToo which has been running all over the twitter and other social medias in response to the airing out of Harvey Weinstein's multiple allegations of sexual assault.
According to Natalie Stechyson with Huffington Post Canada, apparently a similar trend to that of #MeToo occurred in 2014 with not much of a result.

“When journalists Antonia Zerbisias and Sue Montgomery started the viral #BeenRapedNeverReported campaign in 2014, it was to support the women who alleged they'd been assaulted by former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi (he was eventually acquitted of sexually assaulting three women). That hashtag was viewed by almost eight million people online in just a few days, according to the Toronto Star” Stechyson wrote.

Another Huffington Post journalist,  Angelina Chapin, doesn't think #MeToo is going to hold much weight in the long run either.

"Guys are rarely told to fix their own predatory behavior. Conversations of sexual harassment and assault are always framed as a “women’s issue.”.... The result is a culture where men thing they have no responsibility to change their own sexist attitudes and elicit behaviors. Guys stand idly at bars while their friends make degrading comments about women and fail to intervene when jokes turn into actual instances of sexual assault" she said. 

So if showing men how wide spread the issue is, how many of the women they know are being sexual assaulted, and relaying first hand accounts by women in the public eye won't help change the behavior, than what will?

Perhaps we could look out side of the United States and at countries with the lowest rates of sexual assaults, keeping in mind some country's might have a low number of reports because some cultures prevent women from speaking up. If we can look at other cultures that have managed to create an anti-sexual assault and harassment culture then maybe we could learn from them. 
It's just a suggestion really, and the two Huffington Post articles have great Ideas as well so click here to check out Angela's and here to check out Natalie's here if you didn't earlier.

If, with research, we find that this issue in our culture is wide spread throughout the whole world and not just synonymous with certain areas,  then maybe America can, one day hopefully soon, figure our how to lead the way.