Cultural Silence Analysis

Over the last couple of weeks of class we have learned many concepts and read multiple articles. Some concepts we have learned about are cultural silences, individual silences and gender. Cultural and individual silences are like a cause and effect. The effects of cultural and individual silences are they can regulate individual visibility, can regulate social visibility and can reveal gender which is demonstrated in Fred Pelka’s reading “Raped: A Male Survivor Breaks His Silence”. Cultural silences is the biggest type of silence which means it can effect more people. An example of cultural silence is gender. Most everyone categorizes gender as female and male. They forget about homosexuals such as male and male or female and female relationships.

What that means is “it goes against a person without consent, and were masking a reality” (Tyrannies of Silence, slide 5). During Pelka’s article Raped: A Male Survivor Breaks His Silence he talks about how his attacker “forced [him] down with his hands around [his] throat. As [he] began to lose consciousness [he] heard him say ‘If you scream, if you make one wrong move, I’ll kill you.” (Pelka, 24) which shows there was no consent. Also, the attacker masked reality by telling Pelka not to yell because he will kill him (Pelka 24) because when someone yells normally they are in pain or in danger and the attacker did not want anyone to know what was going on. Cultural silences causes this effect because rape is looked upon as mostly happening to females. As Pelka states in his article he called the police for help and they told him “But you’re a man, this shouldn’t bother you” (Pelka, 26) made him be quiet about what had happened to

That means it “all depends on one’s power and if they have the power to change ones social view and what we are presented with compared to normal” (Tyrannies of Silence, slide 6). In this case “normal” is viewed as a female getting raped not a male. In Pelka’s article he did not try to change the view on male rape because the police told him to be a man, rape is for women. Since the police shot him down that caused an individual silence because he did not want to talk about his attacker anymore. The individual silence caused a cultural silence because Pelka kept everything to himself so nothing became