The first week of my sophomore year, the teachers started to hand out yellow slips to girls in short shorts and crop tops. My high school had never been particularly strict with their dress code, but with the new principal came a new policy. Within the first two days, countless girls whose outfits had been deemed 'inappropriate' walked around carrying bright, highlighter-yellow slips of paper that said something about a dress code and a distraction-free learning environment. Soon, my Twitter feed swarmed with angry tweets about the new dress code and its perpetuation of rape culture. Why were there no rules regulating boys' clothes? Who were we supposedly 'distracting' with our exposed shoulders and thighs? Why was it our responsibility to ensure that boys weren't looking at us? How were we supposed to feel safe in an environment where our bodies were being objectified and shamed? After all the backlash, the yellow slips soon died out - but their impact lasted. In the space of a few days, all the girls at my high school had experienced rape culture at its very finest.

Here are some things every girl and woman, regardless of age, race and class hear every single day: "Honey, isn't your skirt just a bit too short?" "Your shorts must be about mid - thigh length, to provide a distraction-free learning environment." "If you're walking alone at night, be careful." "Look at what she's wearing. What a s***!" The worst part is, we listen. We bend over with care, even if just to pick up a pencil. We are shamed for wearing shorts in 30-degree weather.  If a man is walking toward us on the street, we glance around nervously, tense up and cross to the other side of the road as soon as possible. As girls, we are taught that it is our responsibility to avoid sexual assault and rape - and if it happens, it is our fault. This, ladies and gentlemen, is rape culture, and it's high time it disappeared.

What is rape culture? Rape culture is a society in which sexual violence against females is normalized. Victims of sexual assault are blamed for the horrible violation of their rights. Women are objectified and seen only as sexual objects. Rape culture tells young girls that it is their responsibility to avoid getting raped, but fails to tell little boys that it is wrong to rape, that they do not have the rights to a woman's body, and that is it their responsibility to control themselves. Western society, with its objectification and victim blaming, is the very epitome of rape culture. If you weren't aware of this, well, now you are. Congratulations.

A lot of people will say that rape culture doesn't exist. They say sexism is a thing of the past. After all, women can vote, they can hold government positions and they can get jobs - that must mean that we have reached gender equality! However, that's like saying that racism is over because slavery has been abolished - it's naive, ignorant and just plain wrong. Oppression of women is prevalent, but it is much, much more subtle than it was a long time ago. Where women once fought to be seen by the law as persons, they now fight to be viewed by the world as equal humans, who don't exist solely to look pretty and to please men.
That's right, women are capable of doing much more than sitting at home, making babies and being aesthetically pleasing. Take a look at the media, however, and you'd never know it. Nowadays, almost every advertisement out there features a woman, often dressed in an unnecessarily revealing manner, and having no association with the good or service being advertised. Personally, I'd love to look into the thought process of the ad people when designing all those advertisements. I imagine it would go something like this: "Well, this magazine spread seems too boring. It's just a guy holding some cologne. Yes, I'm aware that this is, in fact, an ad for cologne. But really, nobody's going to pay attention to such a boring ad... unless we add something to grab their attention. Oh, I have a brilliant idea! Why don't we hire a woman, get her naked and oiled up, then have her hold the bottle between her bare breasts? We'll crop out most of her face, of course. Wouldn't want anyone seeing her as anything but a prop, would we? Excellent. Call up the casting director." It wouldn't surprise me if that was exactly what was running through the mind of the advertising team when dreaming up the controversial promotional image for Tom Ford's cologne for men, 2007, featuring - you guessed it - a faceless naked woman with the cologne bottle wedged between her breasts. By cropping out her face, the ad reduces the woman to a pair of breasts. The ad tells the world that this is the only part of a woman that matters - nothing else is of any value. We don't know who the woman is, because her identity has been removed. She is merely an object used to display a product and to attract the male gaze - it doesn't even matter that a naked woman has virtually no relation to cologne. Through advertising campaigns like this, men are taught that women are sexual objects, placed on the planet purely to please them, and women are told that their value is based on their looks and sex appeal. That's gender equality for you.

Objectification of women tells men that they are entitled to women's bodies. It tells them that they can do whatever they want to us, because we're just here to please them. That's where another problem comes in; the belief that it is a woman's responsibility to protect herself from rape. We are constantly told to be careful, to watch our drinks, to have a friend with us and to dress modestly. If a woman gets drunk, if she is alone, if she wears a short skirt or a tank top, she is 'asking for it' . That's right. According to society, if a woman goes out on a Friday night, looking to have a good time, she is asking to have her rights violated. If a girl wears short shorts and a spaghetti-strap top in the middle of July, she is asking for someone to rape her. When she is raped under these circumstances, it is her fault, and she should have been more careful. Newsflash: Women aren't 'asking for' anything - except maybe an end to all this injustice. Nothing else, and we certainly aren't asking to be violated. So please, I beg you, keep your misogynistic non-logic to yourselves. Helping to eliminate the concept of 'asking for rape' is the #thisdoesntmeanyes campaign, which states: "A short skirt is not a yes. A red lip is not a yes. A wink is not a yes [...] A kiss on the sofa is not a yes [...] The only yes should be an active and embodied 'yes!'" There is a myth that tells people that consent is implied by what a woman wears, and what she says and does. It tells us that if a woman doesn't directly say 'no', she is giving consent. However, this campaign and several like it are helping people to start realizing that no means no, and only a 'yes' from a sober adult can truly be considered consent. If there is no consent, it's not sex - it is rape.

Our society dehumanizes an entire gender, and blames the victims for having their rights ignored and violated. It tells girls it is their responsibility not to get raped, instead of telling boys that no means no. Today's society is a rape culture in all its glory. What about tomorrow's society? Ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, will rape culture still rule? It's up to us. So let's overthrow rape culture, once and for all. Banish the notion that a woman is only a sexual object, placed on the Earth for male satisfaction. Stop blaming victims of sexual assault and rape for the crimes, and start blaming the criminals. A woman is not the skin she shows, the makeup she wears, the yellow slips she is handed. Finally, although it is not a woman's responsibility to prevent rape and sexual assault, it is everyone's responsibility to ensure that our society realizes this.

In the first week of my sophomore year, the girls at my high school fought and protested against the implementation of a sexist, s***-shaming new system. Even though each and every one of us became a victim of rape culture in these few days, we also learned something much more important -  by fighting back and making our voices heard, we could change things. So, ask yourself this: if the entire world challenges rape culture, what kind of change can we bring about?