[vezzy-fnord]

It truly is astonishing sometimes just what a remarkably thought-terminating taboo the topic of rape and sexual assault is. Of course it's a gravely serious one, but I don't exaggerate when I say most people are more comfortable talking about genocide than they are about rape.

Is it because a mass atrocity is more impersonal, or is there a degree of puritanism to the whole angle?

That said, mjg59 has always been a vested partisan on these topics, so I wouldn't use him to make any broader points.

[will_brown]

Lets just start with "rape" being used as an all encompassing term for all sexual crimes, which can get very confusing, after all it happens everyday where someone willfully engages in sex and is simultaneously the victim of rape (e.g. statutory rape). So it is a word covering a vast topic.

Historically, victims of rape were more inclined to keep it to themselves than tell someone, because they were not believed; when they were believed nothing happened to the perpetrator; and sometimes the victims were made out to be deserving of the rape. This is not just true of women, but there are many stories of children who told their parents that people at their churches touched them and then the parents did not believe their own children (double victimization).

Lets take a single modern day accusation...Jameis Winston accused of rape by a freshman college girl. Just look online and you will find opinions on everything from: people assuming he is guilty because he is black she is white; people feeling its just another white girl making up lies about a successful black man; that the redneck town of Tallahassee was persecuting a poor black kid; that the good ol' boys club helped cover up a rape for the start football player; that she was just a drunk freshman slut or a gold digger; that he later didn't pay for crab legs from publix so he must be a rapist...it just goes on and on. The reality is there is one fact, no one knows what the hell happened, maybe even the two subjects don't know because of alcohol, but everyone has an opinion as to what happened instead of an honest conversation about prevention.

You generally won't have these types of controversies with genocide victims, because...well the victims are dead, and its hard to fake dead. Then again there are still many holocaust deniers around the world. Further, still there are many people who don't know there are active genocides taking place right now, and I'll tell you this I have talked to people about Darfur who claim that is not a genocide and I have to admit that makes me pretty damn uncomfortable.

[afarrell]

Because nobody will suspect you of having both the intention and power to carry out genocide.

[patzerhacker]

Unless you're white and male, and then you'll be accused by the radical fringe as wanting to rape everything you come across and kill everyone not like you.

[vezzy-fnord]

So because it's more impersonal, then.

[Nimi]

Consider another explanation: If you use the term "rape culture", you essentially claim that in today's society, oftentimes rape will be accepted (FWIW, I agree with this statement). However, there appears to be a consensus in today's society that genocide is always a bad thing; generally that opinion is expressed without any qualifiers (as opposed to qualifiers like "legitimate rape" etc.)

[Fishkins]

I definitely think that's a big part of it. A lot of the people involved in these discussions probably have been sexually assaulted, but relatively few have had their lives affected by genocide (or even murder).

Puritanism probably plays a role, too. Even consensual sex is often considered an inappropriate topic, so it wouldn't be surprising if that applied doubly to rape.