Rape Culture- The "Right" Conversation?

Truit calls attention to our deeply gendered understandings of sexual assault, which continue to construct all men as perpetrators and all women as victims.  She says this is the “wrong conversation” because 1) it doesn’t account for all victims of sexual assault, 2) it further oppresses and marginalizes bodies who aren’t accounted for and 3) it perpetuates gender binaries that are informed by normative constructions of masculinity and femininity that are not fixed, static or inherent states of embodiment but which serve to disregard bodies that exist outside these binaries.  At the same time as recognizing the narrow limitations of this two-tiered system, it cannot be denied that sexual assault in a patriarchal society IS a deeply gendered crime. The “Dear BB” blog post might provide us with a better way of understanding rape as both a result and a function of unchallenged gender binaries. “BB” looks specifically at masculinity and how socialization of masculine power and sexual prowess “feed” rape prevalence. “BB” also highlights how cis-gendered men (or those who identify as conventionally “masculine”) distance themselves from the act of rape through denying their own personal role as perpetrators. As “BB” points out, men’s complacency and denial of their own contribution to the perpetuation of sexual assault is part of what maintains sexual assault’s pervasive presence in our culture. The author asks their reader to revaluate the ways their body and its expression have privileged their experiences, and notes that this privilege comes with a responsibility to interrupt the way rape culture continues through processes of socialization. This speaks to the ways in which rape as an act and as a culture of knowledge as has nothing to do with “intention”- it doesn’t matter if you choose to participate in it or not, you are implicit in its production and reproduction if it goes unrecognized and unchallenged. This is true for femininity too, because the threat of rape and victimization is socialized on female bodies that structure them at a distance from “intention”.  I wonder then, how can bodies that do not fit into gendered constructions of sexual assault be a source of resistance to rape culture through their potential for creating and exchanging new knowledge about existing relationships between bodies?