The Stuebenville Rape Case...and Ultrarunning

Many people have been following the case in Stuebenville, WV, where two teenage football stars were just found guilty of raping a 16-year old girl.  The case involved alcohol, posting nude photos on the Internet, a culture of conspiracy to excuse and cover up, ruined lives, etc.  All in all, a sad case.  You can read more about the details here if you wish.

But one of the saddest upshots of the case is how it highlights what many feminist writers have been calling a culture of rape and how society treats this crime in a different manner than other crimes.

A great example is Echidne's blog and her posts of 19 March and 17 March.  She provides the following summary graphic, which illustrates the culture of rape skewed to focus more on the "ruined lives" of the football players than the assaulted young lady.  And an observation:

...think whether such things would be reported about someone who got his wallet stolen while inebriated, or about his hypothetical young attackers.

Let me repeat that in italics so you can appreciate the skewed viewpoint:

...think whether such things would be reported about someone who got his wallet stolen while inebriated, or about his hypothetical young attackers.

 

Here's a more detailed discussion by Echidne of the subtle and not-so-subtle aspects of rape culture:

 

But note that the rape didn't somehow grab these young men or force them to act in a certain way. They did it. Just as young men sometimes commit burglaries or robberies. A rape is a crime. But the way CNN approached it was qualitatively different from how they would cover the sentencing of a teenager who, say, robbed a bank. We would not then hear how a young life is ruined and so on.

I can see no reason for the difference except for something which must be called a rape culture. A rape is not deemed a serious enough crime for the punishment the two young men received, despite the fact that the actual punishment ranged from one to two years; not a terribly heavy sentence.

Indeed, underneath this treatment squirms something truly nasty: The idea that these school athletes shouldn't have been taken to court at all, that the crime they committed cannot justify the sentence they were given. That they should have been forgiven for the greater good. Which does not apparently include rape victims.

I also get that CNN wants to pull all the emotional strings it can, for the sake of those viewership figures, and because the victim is unavailable those emotions must be obtained in other ways. But something really is wrong when we are asked to extend our sympathies to those found guilty with only a fleeting comment about the victim's life, too, having been severely damaged if not ruined, and that in the hands of the two football players, not as a consequence of the crime they themselves committed.

And what about the victim and our sympathies for her? Will she be perfectly fine tomorrow morning? Did CNN report that her mother earlier told how her daughter stays in her room, doesn't want to go to school and cries herself to sleep, night after night? That her daughter feels alone, except for her family, and ostracized?

 

As a male, unless I consciously think about it, I never have to be concerned about my personal safety when I do my running excursions into the backcountry.  It's simply not a risk I must worry about...unlike my female counterparts.  But as a husband, father and grandfather, it has to be on my radar screen, because I'm concerned about the safety of my loved ones when it comes to this topic of rape. 

 

Part of that concern must now necessarily focus on how society views the crime, because that's obviously part of the problem (I've previously blogged about rape a couple times, here and here).

 

What the President Said about Rape...

...is what the bride has been saying for years now.

President Obama went on the Leno show last Wednesday night and said this (courtesy of Firedoglake):

Rape is rape. It is a crime. And so, these various distinctions about rape and, you know — don’t make too much sense to me. Don’t make any sense to me. The second thing this underscores, though, this is exactly why you don’t want a bunch of politicians — mostly male — making decisions about women’s health care decisions. I — women are capable of making these decisions in consultation with their partners, with their doctors. And, you know, for politicians to want to intrude in this stuff, often times without any information, is a huge problem. And this is obviously a part of what’s at stake in this election. You’ve got a Supreme Court that — you know, typically a president is gonna have probably another couple of appointments during the course of his term. And, you know, Roe vs. Wade is probably hanging in the balance.
 

Bolding is mine.

I just don't see how there is even debate on this.  It simply mystifies me.  Any human being should have the inalienable right to control their own bodily autonomy, to include decisions about whether or not to be pregnant.  Duh!

I've been disappointed that Obama has not been nearly as progressive as I hoped and expected.  But he is clearly the better choice between the two tickets, if for no other reason than he will appoint sane people to the Supreme Court...which is probably much more of a lasting legacy than whatever policies and laws any administration enacts.

 

Sexual Assault Safety Tips Ignore the Real Issue

Forget Ultrarunning, forget politics, forget love for the natural world, forget the usual stuff I blog about here. 

I just ran across a great post that you really need to see, by Erica Andrist, about "safety tips" and avoiding sexual assault.  Go read the whole post, but this excerpt really nails it.  It's not about the victim of sexual assault doing things right or doing things wrong.  It's about the role of the perp, away from whom most public discourse over the years has somehow shifted responsibility:

This is why “safety tips” are a sham. Safety tips get trotted out as an example of how people who are assaulted deserved it or did it to themselves. Safety tips are used to justify sexual assault, as though the appropriate punishment for having too much to drink is getting raped. Safety tips get held up as a kind of rape life preserver when we want to believe it won’t happen to us. Every day of spring break, there will be people who do everything “wrong” and are still not assaulted. Every day of spring break, there will be people who do everything “right” and are still assaulted. Except when we rely on “safety tips” and are assaulted anyway, there is always something that we could have, should have, and should have not done to have prevented it.

When we rely on “safety tips,” it is impossible to do everything right. So, my spring break safety guide consists of this: Don’t fucking rape people. If you have sex with a chick who is too drunk to say no, you are not “scoring,” you are not “getting lucky”: you are a rapist. If you use alcohol in order to get people to do things you think they might not do if they were sober, you are not cool or slick or clever: You are a rapist. If you don’t bother to get consent, but you figure this person would “totally want it anyway” because you are hot or an athlete or in law school or whatever, then you’re a rapist. And you suck.