Abstract
“This is Rape Culture, Ladies and Gentlemen” uses the affordances offeredby multi-perspectival short fiction and thick description to re-centre attention on first-personexperience and the “taken-for-granted” complexities of everyday life that are at the heart of rape culture. It attempts to highlight the “everydayness” of rape culture which makes rape almost invisible within a normalised milieu of predatory sexual behaviour. In this, it draws on sociological theories of the practices of everyday life (Lefebvre, 1947/1991; de Certeau, 1974/1984; Felski, 1999), in which commonplace situations, mundane routines, and normal behaviours — that are usually taken for granted — are focalised. My story takes place on a college campus in North America, and involves a pivotal conversation between a homosexual man and a heterosexual woman that draws attention to the different ways in which rape is visible or invisible depending on characters’ (and readers’) positioning in relation to hegemonic social norms.
Highlights
“W hen I see a girl,” he said, “all alone in a pack of boys—” He looked at me and back across the college quadrangle where he gestured to the girl walking with four young men, “—that always makes me nervous.”
He was a grad student in English Literature
We’d both been staring out the window vacantly, stymied by the pile of mindless essays we were set to mark
Summary
“W hen I see a girl,” he said, “all alone in a pack of boys—” He looked at me and back across the college quadrangle where he gestured to the girl walking with four young men, “—that always makes me nervous.”. “What did I tell you?” Clem said. “There were a lot of nights of drinking, Clem.” I said.
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