The role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an American campus

Rape cultures in the United States facilitate acts of rape by influencing perpetrators’, community members’, and women who survive rapes’ beliefs about sexual assault and its consequences. While much of the previous research on rape in university settings has focused on individual attitudes and beha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Engle Folchert, Kristine Joy
Format: Others
Language:English
Published: University of British Columbia 2008
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1449
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spelling ndltd-UBC-oai-circle.library.ubc.ca-2429-14492018-01-05T17:22:53Z The role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an American campus Engle Folchert, Kristine Joy Sexual assault Feminist poststructuralism Institutions Masculinities Discourses Rape cultures in the United States facilitate acts of rape by influencing perpetrators’, community members’, and women who survive rapes’ beliefs about sexual assault and its consequences. While much of the previous research on rape in university settings has focused on individual attitudes and behaviors, as well as developing education and prevention campaigns, this research examined institutional influences on rape culture in the context of football teams. Using a feminist poststructuralist theoretical lens, an examination of newspaper articles, press releases, reports, and court documents from December 2001 to December 2007 was conducted to reveal prominent and counter discourses following a series of rapes and civil lawsuits at the University of Colorado. The research findings illustrated how community members’ adoption of institutional discourses discrediting the women who survived rape and denying the existence of and responsibility for rape culture could be facilitated by specific promotional strategies. Strategies of continually qualifying the women who survived rapes’ reports, administrators claiming ‘victimhood,’ and denying that actions by individual members of the athletic department could be linked to a rape culture made the University’s discourse more palatable to some community members who included residents of Boulder, Colorado and CU students, staff, faculty, and administrators. According to feminist poststructuralist theory, subjects continually construct their identities and belief systems by accepting and rejecting the discourses surrounding them. When community members incorporate rape-supportive discourses from the University into their subjectivities, rape culture has been propagated. Arts, Faculty of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, Institute for Graduate 2008-08-21T18:49:09Z 2008-08-21T18:49:09Z 2008 2008-11 Text Thesis/Dissertation http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1449 eng Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 563109 bytes application/pdf University of British Columbia
collection NDLTD
language English
format Others
sources NDLTD
topic Sexual assault
Feminist poststructuralism
Institutions
Masculinities
Discourses
spellingShingle Sexual assault
Feminist poststructuralism
Institutions
Masculinities
Discourses
Engle Folchert, Kristine Joy
The role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an American campus
description Rape cultures in the United States facilitate acts of rape by influencing perpetrators’, community members’, and women who survive rapes’ beliefs about sexual assault and its consequences. While much of the previous research on rape in university settings has focused on individual attitudes and behaviors, as well as developing education and prevention campaigns, this research examined institutional influences on rape culture in the context of football teams. Using a feminist poststructuralist theoretical lens, an examination of newspaper articles, press releases, reports, and court documents from December 2001 to December 2007 was conducted to reveal prominent and counter discourses following a series of rapes and civil lawsuits at the University of Colorado. The research findings illustrated how community members’ adoption of institutional discourses discrediting the women who survived rape and denying the existence of and responsibility for rape culture could be facilitated by specific promotional strategies. Strategies of continually qualifying the women who survived rapes’ reports, administrators claiming ‘victimhood,’ and denying that actions by individual members of the athletic department could be linked to a rape culture made the University’s discourse more palatable to some community members who included residents of Boulder, Colorado and CU students, staff, faculty, and administrators. According to feminist poststructuralist theory, subjects continually construct their identities and belief systems by accepting and rejecting the discourses surrounding them. When community members incorporate rape-supportive discourses from the University into their subjectivities, rape culture has been propagated. === Arts, Faculty of === Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, Institute for === Graduate
author Engle Folchert, Kristine Joy
author_facet Engle Folchert, Kristine Joy
author_sort Engle Folchert, Kristine Joy
title The role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an American campus
title_short The role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an American campus
title_full The role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an American campus
title_fullStr The role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an American campus
title_full_unstemmed The role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an American campus
title_sort role of institutional discourses in the perpetuation and propagation of rape culture on an american campus
publisher University of British Columbia
publishDate 2008
url http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1449
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