The Awareness of How Rape Culture Could Affect UITM

Students’ Mental Health and Self Confidence

Prepared for

Madam Chittra A/P Muthusamy

EWC661 Lecturer

(Academy of Language Studies

Universiti Teknologi Mara Shah Alam)

Preparred by

Nur Hadhirah binti Mohd Jatikusma 2021155903

Muhammad Muttaqilah Najihan bin Mohd Noor Idrus 2021113161

Muhammad Shauqi bin Huzaini 2021573565

Nurul Nasrin binti Nisran 2021156121

30th November 2021

Table of Contents

1.0 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 3

1.1 Background of the Study ...................................................................................... 3

1.2 Problem Statement ............................................................................................... 5

1.3 Research Question ................................................................................................ 6

1.4 Objective of the study .......................................................................................... 6

1.5 Significant of study .............................................................................................. 6

1.6 Limitation of Study .............................................................................................. 7

1.7 Literature review/Previous Study ......................................................................... 8

2.0 Methodology ............................................................................................................ 9

2.1 Respondent of Study ............................................................................................ 9

2.2 Instrument of Study .............................................................................................. 9

2.3 Data Collection Procedure ................................................................................... 9

2.4 Data Analysis Method .......................................................................................... 9

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

When we received a story or news regarding sexual assault there is a phrase that we likely to
encounter which is “rape culture”. It might sound like a fancy way to discuss about high profile
rape scandal, sexual assault at schools, colleges, working places or accusation against famous
and powerful people such as our opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and the famous celebrity
preacher, Syed Shah Iqmal. However, those cases that have been mentioned previously are not
the exact definition of rape culture rather they are actually the products of it. Rape culture is a
culture where sexual violence is treated as something usual, and victims are the one to be
blamed for getting the assaults. The idea of rape culture is wide, and it is not mainly focus on
the sexual violence only, there are more that can be discussed. It is about cultural norms and
society that protect rapists, promote impunity, shaming and blaming the victims, comfortable
in making rape jokes without feeling guilty, and demanding men or women to act certain ways
to avoid getting sexual assault.

A gynaecologist that used to serve in the government sector for 16 years, Dr Pravin
Peraba said that he was called to court in order to testify regarding three rape cases although
there were 120 cases referred to him. He also mentioned that the reason why he had been called
seldomly to the trial due to the victim withdrew their complaints, commonly because of family
pressure or unwillingness to be subjected to the stigma of a rape investigation by the society.
This was a result of flippant attitudes, looking at the recent case of a physical education teacher
who reportedly making a rape joke during class has gone viral on one of the social media
platforms, Tiktok. Making a joke about things like this will somehow give a wrong perception
towards the rape cases, it should be considered as a sensitive and serious matter. It something
that cannot be joked about. In the future, if someone were being molested or raped it is not
impossible that the victims would not want to come forward because it is something that was
laughed about. According to (Janet Anne Fernandez, November 2, 2019) it was reported that
there is an average of five rape cases happened in Malaysia daily. The reason why these cases
keep rising is unfortunately not because of few misogynistic men but it is a product due to the
normalisation of rape culture happened in our society.
 Rape culture put so much unnecessary pressure on men or women, but in our country’s
society the pressure is more on the women’s side. It puts the burden of being safe on the
women’s shoulders and blame them if they do not succeed in doing so. It has led to where
certain opportunities has been shoved away and left unavailable to women. However, today’s
rape culture has also burdened the men as well. In certain cases, due to the patriarchal power
men often being ignored by the fact that they can be the victims of rape and sexual assault.
That means that the male victims are commonly being left without legal protection and social
support. The experience of being raped or receiving sexual assaults are often said to be
unspeakable, the trauma is so damaging that it cannot be articulated through language (Howes,
2020). It is undoubtedly that there will be crucial impacts regarding the mental health of the
survivors. Most of them will receive panic attack, PTSD and a loss in self confidence that can
result to depression where it can be short- or long-term mental health effects.

Moving forward, in the previous study, the effects of sexist humour and rape jokes on
behaviour toward women and the acceptance of rape myth among men and women has been
explored and discovered. Prior from this study it has been discovered that exposure to sexist
humour leads men who are high in hostile sexism to behave in a discriminatory manner toward
women and feel less ashamed in doing so. (Thomas E. Ford, December 4, 2007) In addition,
diary studies, in which college students were asked to record daily any sexists events that they
encountered or witnessed or by which they were targeted. From the records, the results showed
that the female students were exposed to as many 3.45 sexist events per day, and this sexist
event harmed their sense of comfort, mood, and self-esteem. (Britney G. Brinkman, 15 May
2009)

Most of the sexist events that have been recorded were sexists or rape jokes, which it
was belong to the larger category of disparagement humour and most of the jokes demean some
social group. This has created some sort of perpetuate cultural and societal prejudice where it
can affect the certain social group’s (where most of them are the victims of sexist or rape jokes)
self-esteem, confidence, and mental health. Not to mention it also will widen the imbalance
power between dominant and disadvantage group. This unhealthy environment has been
circulated in our society for many years especially around college students. A statistic also
proves that college students receive higher tendency to face sexual assault. College women
ages 18-24 are three times more likely than women ages 12-17 and 25 and older to experience
rape or sexual assault. (Sinozich, December 2014)
 This proposal will help in spreading awareness regarding how normalisation of rape
culture can affect one self-confidence and mental health. We will chew over on how it is
important to stop the rape culture to be normalised in our conservative society especially
among university students to ensure that we could provide a better and safer place for them to
study. This will somehow give them a better platform to enhance their full potential without
the fear of getting sexual violence.

1.2 Problem Statement

Rape culture has always been an incurable cancer in any countries in the world, whether it’s a
developed country or world third-class countries, sexual assault while always be a repeated
nightmare. In the last decade, the increased access given psychiatrists and psychologists to
evaluate sex offenders has improved our understanding of sexual assaults (GG Abel & JL
Rouleau, 1990) Luckily, our government is always being proactive in tackling this issue. In
2012, the government amended The Employment Act to prevent sexual assault in the
workplace. Moreover, Pitchford (2021) mentioning that the Federal Court of Malaysia in
2016 has ruled out that sexual assault is a civil wrong, allowing victims to sue their harassers.
Malaysians’ society in general is also firmly voicing out their objections against rape culture
initiated by individuals or Non-Governmental Organisation. The campaign ‘Make School a
Safer Place’ gained strong and solid support from all over the nation. Malaysians are taking
this matter seriously, showing that they have a strong will to be a community that respect
everyone’s right to feel safe and comfy.

Despite all these effort by the government with the backing of everyone, rape culture is
still an incurable disease, for decades. According to a report released by the United Nations
(UN) refers to the year 1998 to 2000, Malaysia is the second highest number of rape cases in
Asean (Zaizul Abdul Rahman et al., 2018). Rape cases rose horrifyingly, year by year and in
2015 statistics released by the Penang Women Centre for Change showed that one woman is
being raped every 35 minutes in Malaysia (New Straits Time, 2015). The core for this problem
is our inability as a society to understand the conceptual of rape culture and prevent it before it
reaches to the stage of physical assault on the victims. Verbal assault, unnecessary eye contacts,
body language are parts that our society is struggling to prevent it from keep happening. The
existence of individuals who be the enablers of these kind of behaviours and individuals who
think the victims played a part for this crime to happen is worsening the matter. A survey,
which was done by the Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) in
collaboration with the All-Women’s Action Society (AWAM), revealed that 57% of Malaysian
women said they experienced being sexually harassed verbally on a regular basis when walking
on the streets (The Star, 2021). Academic institution shall be our first resort to combat this
problem by educating the society, but the results also stated at least 44% respondents said that
they have experienced a teacher making sexually provocative jokes.

In response to this matter, our study proposes to investigate the awareness of UiTM
students' on how rape culture in Malaysia could affect mental health and self-confidence of the
victims. We will also explore possible option for the UiTM’s community to manoeuvre this
prolonged problem.

1.3 Research Question

• Does the students aware of rape culture in UiTM Shah Alam and what is their
point of view about it?
• Does rape culture affect student's daily life routine while in the campus

and how does it affect/how bad does it affect?

• Are there students who normalized rape culture and those who stands for it or
against it?

1.4 Objective of the study

The purpose of this study is to spread awareness on how rape culture does affect the student of
UiTM Shah Alam. Therefore, there are several objectives this study needed to reach it goals:

a) To find out the number of UITM students that aware about what is rape culture.
b) To determine the number of UITM students that are sensitive about rape issues.
c) To find out whether UITM students are totally stand for the rape victims.

1.5 Significant of study

Due to the decision of Ministry of Education that refuse to take further action
regarding the current issue involving PE teacher making sexual jokes with the students in the
class, we are more prompt to conduct this research. The finding of this research will help to
people have a better about the real idea of rape culture and how it could affect their self-
confidence and mental health. It will provide benefits to society in three categories the
students, lecturers, and higher educational institution (UiTM Shah Alam).
 Firstly, this study is more centred towards the students, therefore by having a better idea
about rape culture they can be more aware about how sensitive and serious this issue is and
know how to react and deal with it when things like this happen in their daily life. It will also
help them to be more sensitive and think first before putting out words or making jokes
regarding sexual stuff that could affect other students’ feelings, self-esteem, and confidence.

Next, as for the lecturers, getting a great understanding about rape culture will help
them to provide a better solution on how to prevent sexual violence from happening among the
students or if it happens, they know what kind of action should be taken towards the predator
and also what kind of help that can be offered towards the victim. This will somehow make the
students feel more safe and secure to make a report if sexual violence or assault happen towards
them.

Finally, the higher education institution can also get the message of how important in
providing more awareness on how we should stop rape culture from keep happening in our
society especially among college students. By doing this it helps in providing a safer and
pleasant environment for the students to study and gain knowledge which is what education
institution should be.

1.6 Limitation of Study

This study was conducted within UiTM Shah Alam which undergo the distributing of the
questionnaires among its students from Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences.
Around 30 to 50 respondents will be involved in completing this survey. This survey conveys
on how the student’s view on rape culture and how it affected our society, specifically in UiTM
Shah Alam. This study starts from the 31st of October 2021 until 31st of January 2022. As it is
conducted for a short period of time, it will restrict the number of variables that could affect
this study. The finding literature for the awareness of rape culture is consider obtainable as it
is common talk about rape culture in our society. This study could be affected poorly on how
low on awareness of rape culture among the respondents thus, it limits the study.
 1.7 Literature review/Previous Study

Rape culture is so common in Malaysia that it has negative impacts on victim’s mental health
and self-confidence. Rape culture is a culture that victims are held responsible for their own
assault and rape jokes, victim-blaming, and sexual objectification is accepted by society.
According to a study and research, sexual harassment mainly affects women, but men can also
be the victims. (Murad, 2021) As reported by YouGov Omnibus survey, 36% or more than
one-third of Malaysians women have experienced sexual harassment compared to men which
is 17% or one sixth. Only 53% of those who have experienced sexual harassment have told or
reported someone about it which is 57% come from women and 43% come from man. (Ho,
2019) It is because the victims fear of ridicule and not being taken seriously by society or
authorities. These could affect victims’ mental health and self-confidence as the victim has a
constant uneasiness and fear of being sexual objectification or mocked. According to the new
research, 80% of teenage girls who have been sexual assault have mental health problem
months after the assault. (Campbell, 2018)

1. Stop victim blaming- It only Perpetuates Rape Culture

Sexual assault can occur anywhere and mostly happen in a place that we thought safe
such as school, home, and office. Sexual offender also can come from any background like all
level of educational, occupational, and racial. (CONNACS, n.d.) According to the recent issue,
a high school student makes a video on TikTok claimed that while the topic of sexual
harassment was being discussed, the male teacher made a rape joke in front of the class. The
boys in the class were laughing as if making a rape joke was amusing. Furthermore, her school
principal called her a hypocrite and a child of Satan wearing a hijab after a poster about the
teenager being promoted. (Staff, 2021) Additionally, Mohd Norazizi make a statement in which
he felt comfortable to blames rape survivors in his capacity as a teacher. (Society, 2020) This
issue makes people aware that rape culture in Malaysia is a serious problem that needs
awareness to all society. Based on these issues, we know that many people are still normalizing
rape culture such as blaming the victim for not settling the case privately and point out how the
student wears her clothes.
 2. Rape is no joke- Malaysian urged to take a stand against rape culture

Media is a medium that can spread positive or negativity to the society. Rape or sexual
crime should never be made into a joke especially when broadcast on a national television
network. In the talk show, the male artist vividly describes his rape scene and brags about how
much he enjoyed it. The rape comments and jokes are disrespect to the co-actor and violates
the rights of women as they are survivors of rape. The television station should have their own
policy to prevent rape culture become more prevalent. Rape culture is the primary reason that
survivors do not feel safe reporting rape or seeking support from their families, and it is
dangerous because it reinforces the belief that rape victims are to blame. It is everyone's
responsibility to play a part in creating a society free of rape culture. (Teoh, 2021)

2.0 Methodology

2.1 Respondent of Study

The respondent for this study is UiTM Shah Alam’s students. There will be both male and
female participants in this survey.

2.2 Instrument of Study

A questionnaire was chosen to be research instrument in collecting the information from the
respondents. There are five questions about rape culture for respondents to answer. The
questions are regarding personal life experience of the respondents.

2.3 Data Collection Procedure

The questionnaire will be distributed for respondents through google form. The Google Form
link will be distributed through group chats. The questionnaires will only be distributed to the
targets to ensure that the data collected could be used in completing this research. The survey
can be done anytime, in the timeframe yet to be set.

2.4 Data Analysis Method

This study used descriptive analysis in analysing the data. The result of the Google Form will
be converted from table of frequency into percentages and presented in charts using Microsoft
PowerPoint.
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