Everyday Rape Cultures and Religion: A Complex Relationship?

How do rape cultures feature in our everyday lives? How do our interactions with social media, the news, and popular culture illustrate the complex relationship between gendered violence and religion? How do religious teachings, texts, traditions and beliefs shape our understanding of gender relations, and our responses to gender violence and rape cultures?

In this session, Dr Katie Edwards discusses the significant ways religion perpetuates and challenges the myths and misconceptions that lie at the heart of rape cultures: ideas of purity and sinfulness; the idealisation of women’s bodies, sexuality and sex; and the powerful taboos and silences that conceptualise gender violence as ‘inevitable’ and ‘normal’.  From #MeToo, the sex abuse scandals in the Church, the rise of ‘purity’ practices, and our expectations of what it means to be a ‘good girl’, religion is a powerful influence in our contemporary world.

Dr Katie Edwards is the Director of the Sheffield…