Rape Culture - Blackwell Encyclopedia Of Sociology

|The World's Leading Source On All Things Sociological Says:|
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|**Rape Culture**: a concept of unknown origin and of uncertain definition, yet it has made its way into everyday vocabulary and is assumed to be commonly understood. The award-winning documentary film [Rape Culture](http://www.cambridgedocumentaryfilms.org/filmsPages/rapeculture.html) made by Margaret Lazarus in 1975 takes credit for first defining the concept.|
|*Note: The film "Rape Culture" was inspired by the work of Prisoners Against Rape (PAR), a non-profit created by prisoners to address rape in and out of prison. They were supported by the Washington DC Rape Crisis centre. The film's producer said of this relationship that the work was "groundbreaking". - [Rape Culture™ (1975)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwdVENIVaJY)*|
|**The concept of a rape culture is socially constructed as a result of feminist consciousness raising over the past three decades. This makes the phenomenon no less real** but suggests that the activities and public rhetoric of the anti rape feminists raised public awareness to the point that **a large segment of society, and certainly the media, intuitively know what is meant by rape culture.** Social scientists, however, still struggle to define the term and most resort to dealing with it operationally or as a cluster of characteristics or variables. **The linkage of rape and culture is an interesting one if dissected grammatically. Rape, a noun or verb transitive, is used as an adjective modifying culture, suggesting a deliberate inseparability: all of rape is linked to culture and all of culture is permeated by rape.**|
|*George Ritzer (2007).* ***["The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology"](http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405124331_chunk_g978140512433124_ss1-19)*** *: Blackwell Pub. p. 3791-2. ISBN 978-1-4051-2433-1, DOI:10.1111/b.9781405124331.2007.x*|