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For those folks who have mercifully been under a large, comfortable rock, the verdict for the Steubenville rape case was delivered over the weekend, and it was "guilty."
There has been a lot of justified anger over the reportage concerning this, because, with the notable exception of NPR, most major media outlets, and especially CNN, were focusing on the "tragedy" (scare quotes most assuredly intentional) over the consequences for this conviction on the perpetrators.
If you don't understand how or why that is a problem, you are part of the problem.
But, because I provide a blunt force public service, here's how to change that:
Non-consensual behavior is wrong. Don't do it.
If you do it anyways, you deserve to live with the consequences.
Because you're an asshole.
Even if you're a straight male athlete in a town where you're considered a minor deity because you do exciting things with a ball, or wear a badge, or anything else people think makes you special.
It doesn't.
And if you're one of the people so vigorously and viciously defending the perpetrators, because you don't think what they did was wrong, you're part of the problem, because you're saying that the victim is less human, less deserving of being able to live without threat of unwanted action forced upon them by others, than those people who decided to do so. If you're angry at people for reporting the crime or convicting the perpetrators, you're a moral degenerate.
Blaming the victim is never the correct response.
Making the jaywalking argument -- that is to say, "wearing dark clothes and crossing against the light is risky behavior, so that person deserved to get hit by a car" -- actively undermines your point, and reinforces mine, because what you're saying is, "Simply being around people like that is dangerous."
And let's be clear, the "people like that" were a group of the young woman's peers, her so-called friends, all of whom were people who not only didn't lift a finger to help her, or tell her assailants not to do it, but took pictures and video and posted to Twitter while it happened, instead. Let that sink in for a minute: if this had been almost anything but a sexual assault, these people would be considered accessories to the crime. But that's how toxic our culture is right now, that what is arguably one of the worst things a person can do to someone else is treated more trivially than mere theft.
Welcome to rape culture and the prevailing environment of male privilege. It pretty much sucks for everyone, and the people most stridently defending it are the ones the rest of us need to make it suck for the most, because they are the most concentrated form of the problem -- men's rights activists, rape culture apologists, and misogynists and bigots of every stripe.
That's why I am going to complain loud an long about inequality, whether it's based on gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or what the fuck ever. If you're othering someone based on something they have no control over, you suck.
Don't be a dick.
There has been a lot of justified anger over the reportage concerning this, because, with the notable exception of NPR, most major media outlets, and especially CNN, were focusing on the "tragedy" (scare quotes most assuredly intentional) over the consequences for this conviction on the perpetrators.
If you don't understand how or why that is a problem, you are part of the problem.
But, because I provide a blunt force public service, here's how to change that:
Non-consensual behavior is wrong. Don't do it.
If you do it anyways, you deserve to live with the consequences.
Because you're an asshole.
Even if you're a straight male athlete in a town where you're considered a minor deity because you do exciting things with a ball, or wear a badge, or anything else people think makes you special.
It doesn't.
And if you're one of the people so vigorously and viciously defending the perpetrators, because you don't think what they did was wrong, you're part of the problem, because you're saying that the victim is less human, less deserving of being able to live without threat of unwanted action forced upon them by others, than those people who decided to do so. If you're angry at people for reporting the crime or convicting the perpetrators, you're a moral degenerate.
Blaming the victim is never the correct response.
Making the jaywalking argument -- that is to say, "wearing dark clothes and crossing against the light is risky behavior, so that person deserved to get hit by a car" -- actively undermines your point, and reinforces mine, because what you're saying is, "Simply being around people like that is dangerous."
And let's be clear, the "people like that" were a group of the young woman's peers, her so-called friends, all of whom were people who not only didn't lift a finger to help her, or tell her assailants not to do it, but took pictures and video and posted to Twitter while it happened, instead. Let that sink in for a minute: if this had been almost anything but a sexual assault, these people would be considered accessories to the crime. But that's how toxic our culture is right now, that what is arguably one of the worst things a person can do to someone else is treated more trivially than mere theft.
Welcome to rape culture and the prevailing environment of male privilege. It pretty much sucks for everyone, and the people most stridently defending it are the ones the rest of us need to make it suck for the most, because they are the most concentrated form of the problem -- men's rights activists, rape culture apologists, and misogynists and bigots of every stripe.
That's why I am going to complain loud an long about inequality, whether it's based on gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or what the fuck ever. If you're othering someone based on something they have no control over, you suck.
Don't be a dick.
