We live in a country and an era in which 97% of rapists are not incarcerated, and one in six women has been a victim of attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. These statistics are not only scary; they are disgusting, they are wrong, and they should not be tolerated. But what should we expect from a nation in which more sympathy is thrown to two rapists than their 16-year-old rape victim?

In August 2012, high school football players Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond from Steubenville, Ohio sexually assaulted their 16-year-old, intoxicated classmate, Jane Doe. After dragging her barely responsive body around from party to party, the boys recorded a 12-minute long video in which they mocked the helpless girl and joked about raping her. Doe claims to have woken up the next morning naked, disoriented, and unable to remember anything about the night before. It was only after she saw friends’ text messages, a photo of her lying on the ground, and the video that she began to grasp the true horror of the situation.

This case is simply one in thousands of rape cases in America each year. This is just one girl, one victim, representing countless others who are taken advantage of. As a nation, it is time to take a stand against these kinds of obscenities. It is not okay that teenage boys find this harmful behavior not only acceptable, but laughable. It is not right that someone can record a video poking fun at the act of sexually assaulting a helpless girl and see nothing wrong with it. It has come to the point where many see rape as some kind of joke or unobjectionable prank. An individual can be attacked and violated and people will find it funny. To put it bluntly, the nonchalance with which rape is addressed in the country is sick. This silent acceptance of disturbingly high sexual assault statistics and a drastically misinformed populous can be summarized in two words: rape culture.

Rape culture is an environment in which rape and sexual assault are common, and instances of sexual violence are often normalized, tolerated, and excused. According to a study done by the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), out of every 100 rapes here in America, only 46 are reported to police, a measly 12 will result in an arrest, nine cases will be prosecuted, five will end in a felony conviction, and a flabbergasting three rapists will spend even a single day in jail. These statistics indicate a blatant acceptance of sexual assault in our society that is terrifying. We must, as a society, begin to address and rectify this problem. But the first step is to achieve widespread acceptance of the fact that rape culture exists, which will be difficult in and of itself, largely because a great deal of Americans are extensively misinformed about what rape is.

One of the biggest contributors to rape culture is that as a society, we teach, “do not get raped” instead of “do not rape”. Young men and women are told much too often that their rape is their own fault for dressing “too promiscuously”, for drinking “too much”, and for being out “too late” after dark. Victims are told that it is their fault for being raped. With their clothing and their behavior, they must have been “asking for it”. That twisted logic can be cleared up quite simply. By definition, rape does not happen to those who give their consent. Nobody has ever been raped because they wanted to be. In any case of rape, the assaulter is 100% at fault. But unfortunately, this kind of victim blaming is what causes so many victims of sexual violence to ashamedly hide their stories for fear of being blamed for their own rape, and it is the reason why less than half of the rape victims in this country bother to report that they were sexually assaulted. Can you think of something worse than being sexually violated? Well imagine your society telling you that it is your fault that you were unable to protect yourself from someone pushing himself or herself upon you. Imagine about being sexually violated and being forced to blame yourself.

In the Steubenville case, Jane Doe received numerous threatening and critical messages on different social networking websites blaming her for her rape and attacking her for bringing Richmond and Mays to court. A tweet from a classmate read, “You ripped my family apart, you made my cousin cry, so when I see you [expletive], it’s gone be a homicide.” Other people from all over the country started chiming in as well, tweeting things like, “Why do women get away with no responsibility when they themselves decided to get too drunk in the first place?”, “I don’t believe in ‘sexual assault is never your fault’ in every situation. The 16 yr old girl wasn’t forced to drink—set herself up,” and “I honestly feel bad for the boys in that Steubenville trial. That whore was asking for it.” As if her rape had not been enough, Doe almost immediately had to deal with humiliating cyber-bullying and ostracism from her own classmates and people across the nation. She was bombarded with messages from hundreds of individuals whom she had never even met berating her for her behavior in a situation she was not able to prevent from unfolding. People who knew nothing but what they saw on the news felt that they were qualified to pass judgment on a teenaged rape victim, and let her know that the crime committed against her was her own fault.

When a culture protects this kind of victim-blaming, it contributes not only to victims feeling responsible for situations they could not control, but also to a phenomenon present in our country that allows many attackers to believe that when they rape someone, they are not at fault. In a RAINN survey of 11-14 year olds, 51% of males and 41% of females reportedly thought rape was okay if a boy spent a lot of money on a girl, 31% and 32% thought it was okay if the girl has had a past sexual experience, 65% and 47% thought it was okay if a boy and a girl had been dating for longer than six months, and a shocking 87% and 79% thought it was okay if the man and woman were married, respectively. These statistics indicate that there is an alarming misunderstanding in American youth about the definition of rape that needs to be clarified.

Rape is, by definition, “the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.” Rape is not dependent on circumstance; it is irrelevant how much money has been spent on a date, how much sexual experience a person has had in the past, how long a couple has been together, or what level a relationship has reached. If Sally does not give her consent when Bill asks to have sex, and Bill continues to make advances on Sally, Bill is sexually assaulting Sally. It’s as simple as that. But one witness in the Steubenville case testified that he did not know the boys were raping Doe, because, as he put it, “well, it wasn’t violent.” This witness is hardly the only one in our nation who is dangerously misinformed about rape. Society must begin to teach teenagers what rape is in order to efficiently and successfully break down the accepted misogynistic and dangerous societal behaviors that have become, to many, the norm.

As a society, we must not only properly define the word “rape”, but also the word “consent”. It needs to be taught in schools, working environments, and everywhere else that “consent” does not mean “the absence of a ‘no’”. Too many people believe that if their partner says “yes” when asked to have sex and changes their mind, or says nothing, or isn’t able to say anything due to inebriation or unconsciousness, then it is not rape. This is false. Consent means that both parties have given a “yes” and have stuck with this “yes” throughout the course of their sexual experience.

If people are properly informed about rape, perhaps another situation like the one that happened in Steubenville will not occur. Because one has to wonder: as Richmond and Mays were bringing their victim from party to party, photographing and videotaping her, was there not a single person who thought that maybe, just maybe, they were doing something wrong? Was there no voice of reason present anywhere they went to say, “Hey, that is wrong, you should stop that”? One of Mays’ friends reportedly tried to help Doe, telling Mays, “’Just wait — wait till she wakes up if you’re going to do any of this stuff. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.’” But Mays immediately shut down this suggestion, and his friend didn’t push the point further.

Part of the blame for the Steubenville rape must also be placed on the bystanders at the parties the rapists attended. Those who watched, doing nothing, as a girl unable to help herself served as putty in the hands of two ill-willed classmates, were unknowingly contributing to rape culture. Those individuals should not move on in their lives without feeling guilt or taking responsibility for their part in Doe’s rape. They must be made aware of the role they played, and informed that they can help in situations like the one in Steubenville. And if one person learns that he/she can stop a situation from becoming dire, if just one individual becomes aware that he/she is able to stop someone’s rape, it will be worth it. In order to properly break down the defective idea we have in America have a right to rape, all Americans – namely the youth – must be properly informed.

On March 17, Mays and Richmond were found guilty of sexual assault and distribution of child pornography. They will both serve their sentences in a juvenile detention facility until they are 21-years-old. When CNN stated the verdict, the report strongly emphasized the fact that the two delinquents broke down in tears after being found guilty. Correspondent Poppy Harlow is quoted as saying that watching the court proceedings was, “incredibly emotional, incredibly difficult”, because the two rapists “had such promising futures, star football players, very good students” and they “literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart.” This kind of public sympathy for perpetrators of sexual assault is exactly what makes rape culture so dangerous.

When people watch reports like Harlow’s, they are conditioned to believe that rapists are the ones who deserve sympathy, not victims. People need to learn that it does not matter who a rapist is; he/she can be a movie star, a politician, the person who cured cancer, or yes, even a budding football star, and he/she should be punished with the same severity as anyone else who has sexually assaulted another human being. A rapist tears his/her own life apart. It is his/her own responsibility, and he/she deserves to face the consequences of his/her actions.

In most cases of rape, society is as much to blame as the rapists themselves. Our lack of conscious effort to diminish the prevalence of rape culture here in America is, in fact, largely responsible for the various wrongful assumptions made about rape that are so common among rapists and victims. Without the appropriate education, rapists will continue to misunderstand their behavior as something different from rape, victims will not understand that they are not at fault for their rape, and bystanders will never learn what exactly rape is and how they can actively stop it from happening. Younger generations need to learn about rape and consent the right way for rape culture to be destroyed. The American school system needs to immediately rectify the lack of proper sexual assault education. Consent needs to be a part of the curriculum. Because if people are not informed that their actions are wrong, how can we, as a society, hope to prevent them from continuing the same behavior?