"Rape culture is a culture in which sexual violence is treated as the norm and victims are blamed for their own assaults. It's not just about sexual violence itself, but about cultural norms and institutions that protect rapists, promote impunity, shame victims, and demand that women make unreasonable sacrifices to avoid sexual assault. Rape culture pressures women to sacrifice their freedoms and opportunities in order to stay safe, because it puts the burden of safety on women's shoulders, and blames them when they don't succeed. As a result, certain opportunities are left unavailable to women, and still others are restricted by expensive safety precautions, such as not traveling for professional networking unless you can afford your own hotel room. That amounts, essentially, to a tax that is levied exclusively on women. Over time, the cost of that tax adds up to opportunities lost and progress not achieved. When women give up social and economic opportunities in order to stay safe, that affects their progress overall, which in turn affects society's progress overall.

And although rape culture has its roots in long-standing patriarchal power structures that were designed to benefit men, today's rape culture burdens men too — for instance, by ignoring the fact that men can be victims of rape and sexual assault, and women can be perpetrators of it. That means that male victims are also left without legal protection and social support. The goal of talking about rape culture is about much more than just reducing the frequency with which sexual assault occurs or the impunity that allows it to flourish, because the problems at the root of rape culture are much bigger than that.

The term "rape culture" was originally coined in the 1970s. The term appeared in Rape: The First Sourcebook for Women, published by the New York Radical Feminists Collective in 1974, and was explored in depth in the 1975 documentary Rape Culture.

In more recent years, however, the idea of rape culture has received much more attention, including from mainstream outlets: This is due in large part to the rise of feminist and female-focused online media and activism. Sites such as Feministing, Shakesville, Colorlines, Racialicious, and Feministe published essays identifying and analyzing different aspects of rape culture.

Their success amplified the voices of feminist writers covering the subject and eventually attracted the attention of mainstream publications as well. At the same time, awareness campaigns run by groups like Know Your IX and Hollaback have compounded that effect, bringing the issue to greater prominence.

First, rape culture treats rape as a problem to be solved through improving the behavior of potential rape victims (who are presumed, in this logic, to be women), rather than improving the behavior of potential rapists (who are presumed to be men)."