WARNING: This post has absolutely nothing to do with the story. If you are not interested in my attempts to make other people see the world exactly as I do, feel free to skip.
I agree that this happens and that there are guys who think it's OK, but I'm not sure how it is encouraged by the media or the culture at large. Do you have examples?
Look, this is a huge topic. Academics, sociologists, and psychologists have been trying to unpack it for years. You're basically asking us to give you "examples" of the entire patriarchal system on which Western culture is founded.
I spent twenty-five minutes writing a really long post about this, and then I hit "backspace" and my browser decided I wanted to go back two pages. So you lost my story about how men and women have completely different views of the world and what's threatening and what isn't.
Here is a good essay. There are other good essays. I remember one that was a teensy bit brittle-sounding that was called "How not to be a rapist" or something. And my google-fu-in-two-minutes is weak, so I can't find the surveys. I know the survey tinroof mentioned, or at least a similar one. Most 'rape' is 'just' coercion; friends and acquaintances, a little emotional blackmail, a little shame, a little mind-altering substance... Basically, the fact that sex in the Western world is fundamentally understood as something women *have* that men *want*, or something that men *take* from women, something that women *give up*, etc. I mean, the very language of it is rife with the inherent possibility of rape. The answers to that are varied, but the fact of it is pretty hard to deny once you really look at it.
Man, that's a bummer. I've been there, and I say without any intended sarcasm that I'm sure your post would have been interesting and informative.
I'm actually already OK with the fact that we live in a patriarchal society. I was a liberal arts major, and that's all anyone talks about. But patriarchal society does not equal rape culture. IMHO, mainstream movies, TV, music (with the possible exception of rap), news media, and academia all are intolerant of rape. In the case of the Duke University lacrosse players the culture at large believed they were guilty of rape even though they were determined not to be.
This article shows that rapes in the US are down 85% since the 70s. Our society tolerates adultery, recreational drug use, and even prison rape to some extent, but it does not tolerate rape, and it doesn't tolerate date rape.
Things I already know that do not convince me that we live in a rape culture:
-most rapes are unreported
-women are objectified by the media
-women have not achieved equality with men in many areas of society
-rape is often not a clear-cut, violent act
-there are guys who think that sexually assaulting a women is not a big deal
-there are aspects of language that encourage misogyny
Also, I can think of no situation where the victim of a crime is at fault, though there are steps people can take to decrease the likelihood of becoming victims.