This is in response to David Hookstead’s Nov. 4 letter to the editor. Links and content are potentially triggering.

In the United States, sexual violence is pervasive. One in five women and one in 71 men report being raped, primarily by men. Rape culture is here defined as the link between this prevalence of sexual violence and attitudes and practices which normalize, excuse, or tolerate sexual assault while discouraging justice for victims. Sexual assault is here defined as an involuntary sexual act a person is threatened, coerced or compelled to engage in.

If David Hookstead were to be mugged on the way back from the KK, he would not be grilled about the expensive clothes he was wearing, how much alcohol he’d consumed or whether he made it a habit to walk in dark alleys. And he should not, because we live in a society that purportedly values justice. Those who experience sexual assault are rarely guaranteed the same recourse because of societal attitudes about men, women, sex and power. That’s rape culture.

Rape culture looks like people focusing on what women were wearing or how much they were drinking at the time of an assault to excuse the perpetrator. Rape culture looks like people describing those who have experienced rape as damaged goods, or having “asked for it.” David Hookstead’s insinuations about falsely reported rape resulting in scads of innocent men in jail are far from true — three of 100 reported rapists will end up in prison.

If you believe that people, victims of rape included, act in self-preservation, you will acknowledge the connection between these victim-blaming attitudes and the fact that an estimated four of 10 incidents of rape are reported at all. This is rape culture and like rape, it affects women, LGBTQA individuals and men.

It is not only “evil people” who propagate it. Good-hearted, well-meaning people sometimes propagate rape culture as well.

I grew up being constantly told by good people who loved me to “be careful” so that “nothing bad would happen to me.” I, along with countless other women I know, came to college bearing pepper spray, and was told not to go to parties without friends to look out for me. Our male friends, by and large, were not given similar advice about crimes that could befall them because female rape, by and large, is unique in often making its victims complicit in the crime perpetrated against them.

Even though I was very cautious, some unpleasant things did happen to me at college. I tried not to dwell on these incidents and was relatively successful. Worse things were happening to other people, I told myself.

Then, in the spring of 2012, I was walking back to my apartment when a man jumped me and sexually assaulted me.

I kept myself busy and told almost no one. Even now, I marvel at how hard I worked to appear “normal” to everyone around me. I think I wanted to think of myself as tough and resilient like the strong women I admired. And to be honest, I blamed myself a great deal at that time for letting my guard down and “letting this happen to me.”

The first person close to me who I told burst into tears and asked me why I would walk by myself somewhere late at night. This did not embolden me to confide in other people. It was mostly after the semester ended, and the heat and quiet of Madison summer set in, that what I had earlier categorized as an ugly act by an evil person began to telescope into the context of the multiple other incidents perpetrated by people I went to school with.

And for the first time, I thought about the statistic that one in five women experience rape, and wondered: Who are the rapists, then?

I cannot explain the darkness that that train of thought, once I had boarded it, dragged me down into. Because it made me think that if only “truly evil” people commit sexual assault, there must be such a preponderance of them in the world. It made me think about the majority of assaults being committed by someone the victim knows well and trusts. I became hyperaware of just how many women I knew who had been assaulted and of every time I observed a societal signal that sent the message that men have a right to women’s bodies.

It was this, as much as the actual assault, that sent me to a private hell. I spent most of the summer of 2012 in a vertigo of intense pain.

And eventually, it passed. I am happy now, and there is a great deal of good in my life. It is not enjoyable for me to write any of this. I do so to put a face on academic-sounding arguments. And to make the following assertions:

Rape is an act that attempts to strip away dignity, agency and humanity, and many of the messages we send to men and women about it are flawed and dangerous. They exacerbate its prevalence. Through gendered advice, societal narratives media and reporting we teach many young people that rape is a woman’s problem, that masculinity is characterized by dominance and acquisition but femininity by passivity and acquiescence, that sex is power unless you are a young woman, that it is okay to catcall and harass women and that only the truly evil person, the rare sociopath, is capable of rape.

It becomes far easier, then, for young men who are generally “good” (star students, athletes and Boy Scouts) and who treat some women well to engage in behavior like trying to get a woman very drunk so that the odds of her sleeping with them are higher. It becomes easier for them to not think of what they are doing as “real rape,” because that’s something evil people do and they, and the people around them, would not consider themselves evil. This results in situations like the high-profile rape cases in Steubenville, Ohio or Maryville, Missouri. Slightly more than one in 20 college age men admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act.

To those who have experienced sexual assault and may be reading this: Let me remind you of what I hope you already know. It was not your fault. It is never your fault. You are not dirty, or damaged, or foolish. You are more than a victim. You are not alone and you are not weak. There is life beyond the haze of pain. Be well.

To those I knew in college who worked hard and consistently to be allies and gentlemen, who respect the women and romantic partners in your life, who listen with empathy not arrogance: I am grateful for you. You make up for the David Hooksteads of the world.

Rape culture is not men, or rap music, or analogous to smoking weed or saying that men are evil. Rape culture is the sum of all the attitudes and practices that result in women being afraid to walk somewhere alone after dark because of the body they were born into. Rape culture is women and men you know being raped and not reporting it because they fear an expected societal response more than they desire justice for an awful crime. If you agree that any of these social pressures exist, you acknowledge the existence of rape culture. Rape culture is worth acknowledging, and it is worth standing up against.