"It's Disgusting": Rape or Armpit Hair?

This post comes about from a coalescing of two things I've seen in the last week. The first was a picture; the second was a video.

This picture (source)

This video

     Granted, the problem highlighted above probably has more to do with the "younger" generations. The boys, who in high school or middle school, squeal, "Groooooss" when anything to do with menstruation comes up. The same reaction is seen when female armpit hair is the subject of conversation.
     "I don't live in France, why would I have armpit hair?"
     "That's nasty."
     "Eeuw!"
     "I would never date a girl who didn't shave her armpits."
     "Women are supposed to be smooth."
     It's not a polarizing topic. Pretty much everyone agrees, "that's disgusting". People shout this opinion freely. It's a cultural opinion: "American women shave their armpits." Men and women, boys and girls, are pretty much united over this opinion: (Female) armpit hair is gross. They feel comfortable telling women to continue using a razor to scrape the hair off of their armpits, because that's how it's "supposed" to be.

Y'know. "Natural". (Source)

     Let's talk about similar conversations about rape. When rape is brought up, do people yell, "That's disgusting!" "That's just wrong!" "People aren't supposed to be rapists!"? ......No. No they don't. There's normally an uncomfortable silence, and then people start talking in polite language. "Well, in my opinion....", "I know some people might....", "It seems to me....", and those sorts of platitudes. Why? Because it's not a cultural norm for people to speak out against rape. It's not part of our cultural identity to hate rape and rapists and to think they are disgusting. It's accepted, but not really expected.
     We feel comfortable telling women they can't grow the hair their body naturally grows, but we don't feel comfortable saying rapists shouldn't exist. A 14 year old boy can tell a grown woman she shouldn't grow armpit hair, but we don't see the same freedom of expression when it comes to condemning rapists.

(Source)

     In a time when 15% of women in America have been raped, when 7% of 5th-8th grade girls and 12% of 9th-12th grade girls have been sexually assaulted (source), we feel more comfortable condemning armpit hair than rape and sexual violence. Fifteen percent of women. That's not including harassment and assault other than rape. That's just rape. In a 1986 study, thirty Goddamn percent of men in the study said they would commit rape if they knew there was no chance of being caught. When the phrase "rape" was swapped for "force a woman to have sex", more than 50% said they would (source).
     Now, that was 30 years ago. Times were different. I wasn't even alive. But my parents were, and yours probably were, too. Just thirty years ago, 50% of men said they would rape a woman if they could get away with it. The numbers today are not much better, with 1/3 of men still saying they would force a woman to have sex if they would get away with it (source). We don't have a cultural trait of hating rape. How could we? One sixth of us would commit rape, given the chance.
     We live in a country and a time where it's definitively not okay for a woman to not shave, but it's considered within the range of "normal" for people to hurt, abuse, and assault each other. We're supposed to speak out against female body hair, but it's not expected to speak out against rape.

(Source)     

"Imagine a world where people were more disgusted with rape than they are with female body hair."

What a beautiful world it would be.