'Good Guys Don't Rape': The Beliefs One Essay Gathers Under Rape Culture
Writing three years ago, when the actor Danny Masterson went to jail for sexual assault, an author for The Conversation Canada argued that the episode illustrated several elements of what is called rape culture: that so-called good guys don't rape, that women are to blame for sexual assault, and that victims probably consented and shouldn't be believed.
Set side by side, the three beliefs do a single job. Each one decides in advance whose account is credible — who is the sort of person who could not have done it, and whose version of events arrives already discounted. "Good guys don't rape" isn't really a claim about behaviour; it's a claim about membership, and about how thin the evidence has to be before we let it fall.
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That is why the first belief does the heaviest lifting. It never has to address what happened, only who is accused.
It cuts both ways, though: the same idea makes an accusation itself look like the woman's mistake, which is how the other two beliefs get their footing.