Once again, a story has swept through social media, has gone viral by a sort of "open letter" and will probably dissipate within a week. In this case, I'm very glad it has gotten so much attention because it absolutely needs it. The sad part is that not much will happen once it dissipates, or once there's a new zoo animal for everyone to grieve over.
If you haven't read this young woman's extremely powerful letter to her rapist, please do it now. Especially if you're male — I'll get to that part later. Now that you know the gruesome details and the pain buried inside this girl for the rest of her life, take in for a moment that this young man got sentenced to 6 months in prison after thrusting his body into an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Now, here's the real kicker. Someone sane decided years ago that rape should be penalized up to 14 years in prison. But in this case, the kid is a really good swimmer. He's apparently a generally good guy, AND he's white. This Washington Post article lists the rapist's swimming times, refers to him as "baby-faced", and alludes to how horrible it would be if his life were ruined by a jail sentence. Washington Post, could you or anyone who got near that joke of an article pre-publishing imagine how horrible it would be if you found out in the morning that a stranger took off your clothes and shoved a foreign object in your vagina behind a dumpster? And that grown men who witnessed it were completely shaken by what they had seen — a man raping your unconscious body. That is what would be life-ruining. To save this man from a proper jail sentence is to disregard the severity of rape. THAT is what is messed up here. How are we supposed to teach boys about consent? How are we supposed to teach girls that they're invaluable, when our own legal system shrugs its shoulders and says "boys will be boys" when it comes to rape of a woman? Defendants of the rapist look at him like this: he is an average college guy, just 20 years old, he got drunk and was going to take this complete mess of a girl back to his dorm to get some action. This is all true. This is all a very normal college night. Hate to say it, but that college normalcy includes the rape. That doesn't make it any less wrong: morally or legally. From the way the jury handled this case, from the way the rapist's dad referred to his crime as a mere "20 minutes of action", and from the way the Washington Post and other media portrayed the rapist as a swimming hero...it's quite obvious we live in a rape culture. Now the question is, whose fault is it? How do you even begin to reverse that? I'm going to look at this from Brock Turner's point of view for a second. Here's why. I honestly know a handful of guys who might do close to the same thing he did, or would have at age 20. What if he would have been able to get the girl all the way up to his dorm? The rape would have happened there instead, but there wouldn't have been any witnesses. It would have been even easier to victim blame and say she "just got too drunk." This is all horrifying, disgusting, and illegal, but again — typical college occurrences. Most rapist aren't creepy looking men lurking in a corner waiting to attack you on the street. In those cases, it's hard to victim blame. Most rapists are young, otherwise decent college guys with an otherwise bright future ahead of them. They've had a girlfriend or two. They talk to their moms on the phone every week and are still unsure if they're doing laundry right. Since day one of high school (shit, probably before that) they've been told to get as much action as possible. Songs inform them that "pussy is power". (I have to admit I laughed when I typed that.) Every bit of the media encourages them to act aggressively to get what they want. They would never, ever think that they would "rape" someone. Until they do. These guys — these 18-22 year old frat men we knew in college — have never been taught where exactly to draw the line between a drunk hookup and potential jail time. You would think it would be a matter of common sense and human decency, but apparently that can go away with an erection. I won't pretend to know what that's like. By absolutely no means am I saying that all men don't know where to draw the line. I believe most college men are respectable, educated human beings that generally treat women as such. But society tries its hardest to push them in the other direction. And no one's bothering to pull them back. This is a really long way of saying why the hell aren't we teaching boys about consent and men not to rape? We subconsciously encourage rape culture from both ends — sending little girls home from school because her tank top straps are too thin, for instance. By doing that, we're A) sexualizing little girls' shoulders, which is insane, and B) telling girls that covering up their body (to not distract boys) is more important than their education. Awesome. We teach girls to avoid walking alone, to be careful, to not wear anything too "slutty" to a party because someone might grope us or something. And if they do, well, we were "asking for it". In turn, we do nothing to discourage rape from the other side. Brock Turner is a monster, yes, but he's not alone. Sexual assault is crawling all over universities like a plague. One in four girls will be sexually assaulted in college. One in four. I've heard this many times, but where's the statistics warning people that "one in six boys will sexually assault someone in college" or whatever the numbers might be? Women aren't assaulting themselves. We need to start talking to boys about consent as often as we talk to girls about being careful. So it starts with this. My own "open letter" to incoming college freshmen....is coming soon. For now, watch this video.
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June 2016
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