Two young men were convicted and given a year in juvenile hall for "essentially" raping a young woman. One also sentenced to few more years for having nude pictures of her on his phone.
The press coverage was abominable. Concentrating on the perpetrators, football players who made good grades and until this debacle had their whole happy future in front of them. (I know, right? If only there were something they could have done to prevent this from happening to the. Like, you know, not video taping themselves laughing about peeing on an unconscious girl.)
Pollychromatic has some intense words for the press and for the public in general. This is not "essentially" rape, she says to Candy Crowley. This is specifically rape. And women are not essentially people. They are specifically people.
Anne, at The Belle Jar, expands on that, saying:
"I am really tired of people saying "imaging if the Steubenville rape survivor was your sister, or your daughter." There's this idea that men shouldn't rape women because we're all someone's sister, daughter, wife, etc. This is fucking wrong. Mend shouldn't rape women because a) we're people and b) no one should rape anyone. I'm tired of being humanized because I'm, like, related to men."
Accidentally Mommy is just completely fed up with the whole thing, and urges people to take it upon themselves to change the rape culture in which we live.
My side of this? It's coming. Along with a blog from another fantastic blogger in which she speaks truthfully to her sons about what exactly is going on here. Stay tuned, and make sure to check our heated topics section regularly for incredible stories about incredibly stupid, enraging current events.
"Like, you know, not video taping themselves laughing about peeing on an unconscious girl."
ReplyDeleteThe video taping is what helped get them convicted, and this sentence seems to suggest that they could have avoided having their life ruined if they had not created any evidence.
The best thing they could have done is simply to have not raped a person.