CAN YOU DIG IT?: Changing Rape Culture

KAYIU WONG
Opinions Editor

Those who watched the 2015 Academy Awards know that the main focus of this year’s Oscars was Leonardo DiCaprio’s long awaited acceptance of the award for Best Actor. However, the moment that should be dubbed the most impactful during Hollywood’s biggest night was the performance preceding DiCaprio’s win. Lady Gaga’s performance of her original song “Til It Happens to You” was far less cheerful in nature, but ever more important. Written for “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary exploring incidents of sexual assault on college campuses in the United States, Lady Gaga’s powerful song resonates with an important message to remember when we talk about abuse: when someone speaks about their experiences, believe them.

These eight words are deeply rooted in the music industry’s most recent legal controversy. The court battles between pop musician Kesha and her producer Lukasz Sebastian Gottwald (better known as Dr. Luke) have resulted in a ruling denying Kesha the ability to break her contract with Dr. Luke, despite Kesha’s statements that the producer had sexually, physically and emotionally abused her over the ten years they worked together. Regardless of whether or not Dr. Luke is guilty of this alleged abuse, Kesha’s predicament is far too telling of one of America’s biggest societal problems: rape culture.

Rape culture is a society in which sexual assault is concealed, normalized and excused. Both Lady Gaga’s song and Kesha’s case show that our society is one filled with systems that stifle claims of sexual violence and collude to further the damage and mental distress of victims. A culture that ignores deep-rooted pain and questions victims about the validity and specifics of their abuse is absolutely ridiculous. I dig what Lady Gaga and the #FreeKesha movement has revealed, for I hope these truths about rape culture still existing in American society will finally change how we often react and perceive rape.