All of us men are and have been complicit (willingly or not) in rape culture.
I think back to college, when there was a guy I knew who had a “reputation” and rumors of various degrees of shitty behavior swirling around him. He was one of the guys who sparked enough concern among some of the women on campus that they composed a list of guys to avoid. This list circulated via email (it was the mid to late 90s) around three of the local colleges, my PWI and two HBCUs. This was a whisper network for black women on our campuses to avoid being exploited or worse by these guys.
At the time, many of us guys who were not on the list thought it was just a “don’t date him because he’ll cheat on you” list. We were, at best, naive. I now know we were complicit in rape culture.
As an aside, I realize now that this is yet another example of why we really should listen to black women.
Anyway, this featured prominently on this list and while I don’t have proof, I am sure that those questionable comments he’s made and those times I’ve seen him drinking “with” a woman add up to he raped her. The List didn’t save her because it started circulating before she got on campus or because she wasn’t friends with anyone who was circulating it. Or maybe she thought as many of us did that it wasn’t as serious as it was. None of that matters. I and many others attended parties and other events with this asshole and knew with 99% confidence he would rape someone that night. And we did nothing.
I guess our excuses were, “well, I didn’t actually see him rape her” or “how do we know he wasn’t just giving her a ride home because she was drunk” or “all that talk is just that, talk”.
We knew. And we were cowards. We were complicit. We can hide behind the legal bullshit, like we didn’t see anything so it can’t be proven or the woman refused to press charges or even accuse him because of the stigma and the pressure she would feel from the community (why were you drunk? Why were you dressed that way? Why didn’t you just avoid that guy?) and the fact that the way rape cases are litigated are heavily tilted against the victim.
So I can see where Tarantino is coming from. That is rape culture. We were and are a part of it, and it takes a lot of work for us to fix it. The first step is doing what he just did, which is admitting his role in it. The next step is identifying and dismantling the system which enables these predators so that they can never hurt anyone else again.
It starts with each of us men owning up to our past and present failures. We need to own up to the times our words and actions–and our silence and inaction–either directly or indirectly contributed to rape culture.