Unveiling the Power Dynamics of Rape Culture: Heteronormative Scripts, Consent, and the Reinforcement of Systemic Oppression

Rape culture refers to a cultural environment where rape and sexual assaults are normalized, neutralized, and justified through specific ideologies, making these offensive and harmful acts hard to be identified thus perpetuate the systemic oppressions (for example: sexism, racism). The underlying ideology of rape culture is largely rooted in heteronormative sexual script, where there are pre-exiting discursive positions in which one coming to be the very “subject”, namely man and woman. In heteronormative sexual script, the core is the discursive categories of masculinity and femininity, indicating the social construction feature instead of ontological being (the immaterial and abstract subject that has rationality). However, the core of social construction is about power dynamics. With power dynamics, masculinity, being the center and the normal paradigm, are defined in relation to femininity, which is thus attributed with passivity, sexual gatekeepers, and emotionality in order to distinguishes with the superior, rational, and assertive features of masculinity. The differences are not only interpreted on social level through norms and cultural practices, forming the false impressions of having the “real” femininity and masculinity, but it enters the institutional levels (medicalization, legalization, economy of relations) with recursive discursive practices, making the constructed reality the regime of truth. Under such contexts with relation to power dynamics and the integration of ideology to the institutions that govern our everyday lives, rape culture then is justified and glorified by the ideology of the gendered being with legal system and other social institutions reiterating and reinforcing the “essence” of gender.

In Hirsch & Khan’s Sexual Citizens, consent is in the core of the concept “sexual citizenship”, in which they conceptualize the idea that one’s right not only involves sexual self-determinacy for the sexual projects that one desires but also the responsibility to recognize the relationships with others, with two having the equal access to autonomy. Under such context, it subverts the script of socially constructed being, the discursive subjects, into an embodied self who has the ability to confront with the lived experiences in a relational network. However, the agency is not a culturally available narrative. That is to say the engrained heterosexual sexual script has fixed the positions in which man and woman should take, making the “assertive” versus “passive” binary settings the normal way of having any heterosexual encounter, and the nonconsensual consent is just the default choice under such idea where no one could challenge but to conform. Furthermore, the concept as indicated by in the book has several hinderance to achieve, which reflects the relationship between consent and heterosexual sexual scripts in real life. The most prominent one is the problem led by sexual illiteracy. The educational system with gendered value tends to make sex a private thing instead of a public one, allowing the sexual assault and sexual violence to covertly proceed without fixing the problem. This is because, the knowledge as the product of discursive practices (like the one conducted in educational structure) is a limited version of the worldview by the power with sexism being the ideology. It’s not merely the problem of ignorance. It is the lack of provision of knowledge that hinders the agency where one could conduct their sexual projects. With the lack of vision, the educational system compounded with sexist ideology again reproduces the truth regime where woman who inherently are feminine should be the sexual object instead being an autonomous subject who can express their willingness and determine the behavior. With relation to rape culture, hookup culture is another topic that is related to the discussion in this book. The authors point out several sexual projects and consider them as equally legitimate if based on consent. However, in real live, the cultural environment that enacts rape culture also perpetuates hookup culture, where they’re hierarchy of sexual projects one should follow in a normative way (e.g. heterosexual intercourse discourse). If deviant from the normal behavior, then the sexual assaults and sexual violence one subjected to become a logic of victim blaming. Thus, hookup culture is again a reification and glorification of male’s sexuality, considering woman as sexual object that is functioned for men’s pleasure and their own ends, which has the potential to turn into rape, since they both share a ground that consent is a pseudo-statement.

According to Catharine MacKinnon, the connection between the heterosexual sexual script and rape culture obscures the meaning of sexual assault and rape by normalizing a dynamic where women’s non-consent is misinterpreted as part of “normal” interactions between men and women. This reflects the ingrained societal and cultural constructs of sex and gender. MacKinnon highlights the disparity between “objectivity” and “subjectivity” in the legal system, where the definition of rape only acknowledges the most overt forms of violence and coercion, while personal accounts of victims are often deemed less credible for legal decisions. This gap exposes a paradox within the law: as a normative social institution, its claim to objectivity is, in fact, shaped by discursive power structures, but narrated as a closed system that both creates and conceal the notion of “pre-discursive”. This inability to accommodate personal subjectivity reinforces the systemic devaluation of women’s sexual autonomy, attributing overt harms to biological determinism rather than addressing them as matters of justice.  

This normalization blurs the boundaries of consent and non-consent, shaping social reality in ways that trivialize or justify coercion. As a result, societal and legal frameworks often fail to adequately address or even acknowledge the harm caused by these dynamics, as these institutions are deeply aligned with and reinforce the power structures underpinning dominance in sexuality. Also, the legal system has limitation in comprehensively consider the paradox of subjectivity and objectivity. The objectivity defined by the legal regulation, however, is an androcentric version of it, highlighting the sexuality as a politicized tool that regulate gender behavior, race hierarchy, and family structure. By stating, “Men see the intercourse in rape, women see the rape in intercourse,” Catharine MacKinnon highlights how discursive positions shaped by gendered power dynamics lead to divergent interpretations of the same act. The socially constructed inferiority of femininity reveals the oppressive tendencies in heterosexual intercourse, while the socially dominant position of masculinity normalizes non-consent, framing it as a privilege of being the sexual subject with agency and control over another’s body. This reflects how systemic gender hierarchies shape not only behavior but also perceptions of consent and agency.