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How deep does rape culture go?  How deeply ingrained is the patriarchally approved objectification of women in our ‘civil’ society?

Observe.

Unfortunately wordpress fails at embedded video.  I need to redirect you to the Feminsting blog to watch the clips in question.

This scene is played a total of 4 times, with a white couple and a black couple.  In each clip the women are made up to look as if they had been recently abused.  The difference between clip #1 and clip #2 is that the women are dressed provocatively in clip #2.  Nothing over the top, but what would, on a Saturday night out be considered normal attire.

This is not a particularly scientific experiment, but rather a useful (and disturbing) insight on how our rape culture operates.

Let me boil it down.  When women are dressed conservatively, they are more likely to receive help and people coming to their aid.  While dressed ‘provocatively’ the story changes completely.  People do not come to their aid, they avert their eyes, they tell the wait staff or ask to be moved… but do they intervene as the woman is being verbally and physically abused?  Not one patron in the restaurant lifts a finger.

How you are dressed determines if you are candidate for help.

The two middle aged women in the second clip, the ones that asked to be moved, speculate that the abused woman in question is a prostitute as they disdainfully glare at her.  Well she is dressed slutty and therefore obviously she deserves what she gets is the subtext of their reactions.

There is much to digest and compare between the two clips, and most of it is quite disgusting and disheartening.

Women are still looked upon as objects in our society.  They are not judged as human beings, but as mere objects.  More to the point, objects that deserve the abuse they receive based on how they look.

I’m done for awhile with this post.