Nope, We Really Haven't Come That Far At All

First, trigger warning for discussions of rape and rape culture on this post.

On Sunday, news broke of the verdict in Steubenville, OH for two football players who sexually assaulted a drunk and mostly-unconscious 16-year-old.  And just because that wasn't despicable enough, one of them saw fit to take pictures of her naked and share them with friends, as well as let friends film him assaulting her.

The two defendants have been found guilty, and sentenced to a paltry three years between the two of them.  But that's not what has -- or should have -- everyone with even a basic grasp of human decency incensed.

No, what should make anyone following this case so utterly fucking furious is the media coverage.  CNN in particular, but the sentiment has spread to other stations.

What we're hearing is how the defendants were good students with such promising futures, whose lives are now ruined.  We're treated to replays and pictures of one of them sobbing as the verdict is read.  All the while, not one word about the girl they raped, except to remind you that she was drunk.

Two convicted rapists are being all but named as the "true victims."

This is rape culture, right in front of your eyes.  For those who have heard the term but never really got what it meant, rape culture is the undercurrent of blame for the victims of rape and molestation and the normalization of the act as a thing that happens, and at worst the price you might pay for being the "wrong kind" of woman (or man).

We don't do this on such a widespread scale for virtually any other violent crime.  Theft is always the fault of the thief.  Murder is pinned solely on the murderer; if a defendant uses justifiable homicide or self-defense, they must prove that they had good enough reasons for killing someone, and even then, the act of murder is still acknowledged as a choice the defendant made.

Rape, we treat differently.  While the defendant is being tried on paper, in practice it's the trial of the victim that we endorse.  While you almost never hear questions like "did you lock your door?" during cross-examination of a burglary victim, you will without fail hear questions like "what were you wearing?" or "did you send mixed signals?" during the cross-examination of a rape victim.

Part of that is because of the nature of the crime itself; if it's proven that the defendant and the victim had sexual contact, the easiest defense for any lawyer is to make the jury doubt the lack-of-consent element of the crime.  And the easiest way to do that is to paint the victim as having "asked for it," wittingly or not.

When that defense is used over and over again, what you get is a culture that puts the responsibility for the crime on the victims' shoulders instead of the perpetrators'.  It's now the victim's fault for not realizing all men are potential rapists and protecting herself accordingly.  Hell, in some states, it's not even considered rape if she didn't fight back hard enough.

Obviously, this shit is not okay and needs to go die in a fire along with "female hysteria" and chastity belts.  The question is where do we even start?  With such an endemic problem, how do we even begin addressing it?

First thing's first, you get disgusted.  You get disturbed,  You get seriously pissed the fuck off.

You do that, because that means you care, and caring about the problem is the first step in solving it.  If you don't care, nothing else you do will matter.

The next step is analyzing what perpetuates this horrible culture and attacking it at its source.  And there are two main sources: the courts that prosecute it, which I've just covered, and societal conditioning that enables rape to happen at all.  The conditioning that men receive which makes them feel entitled to sex whenever they want it.  The conditioning that teaches them that not only is it okay to forcibly dominate other people to prove they're weaker than you, but it's what you're born to do as a man; it's your right.  The conditioning that any emotion other than anger is a sign of such weakness, and that once you smell the proverbial blood in the water, it's dinnertime.  The conditioning that the only way you become strong is by taking power away from others.

The problem in the courts can be addressed with mandatory courses in both undergraduate criminal justice degrees and in law school about how to handle a rape defense without being a complete sack of shit about it (such as discrediting any forensics and the prosecution's timeline rather than the victim, or even knowing when to just take a plea bargain because your client is guilty as hell).

The society part takes a bit more work.  That work involves analyzing our interactions to see where we promote this idea of strong vs. weak and how we put the onus of prevention on the potential victim, and cutting that shit out.  Where we start teaching our boys that other people are not objects and personal playthings.  Teaching them what counts as consent and what doesn't.  Teaching them not to assume consent just because their partner isn't saying "no."  Teaching them that people who can't consent, whether due to being underage or physically or mentally incapable, are off-limits, period.  Teaching them that consent can be revoked at any time, and if it is revoked, back off.  But most importantly, teaching them that people's bodies (including their own!) are no one else's property, and that sex is not something anyone is ever entitled to.

But before we can do any of that, we have to make it known to more people that there is a problem that needs addressed.  And that's the most insidious part of rape culture: it's so ingrained, so normalized, that many people don't think twice about it.  They don't see it because they've been conditioned not to.  And there are so many forms it takes.  But over the years, I've developed a very simple litmus test that covers nearly all of them:

Rape culture is happening whenever someone says "don't get raped" instead of "don't rape people."

And for anyone else who is somehow still doubtful that we have a culture that normalizes and downplays rape as something the victim is responsible for preventing, consider this parting food for thought: not 24 hours after the Steubenville verdict and sentencing, another man, infamous hacker Andrew "Weev" Aurnheimer of the 2010 iPad breach with AT&T also received his sentence of 41 months.  While he's a disgusting white nationalist pile of pigshit, in this case he did nothing more criminal than exposing a giant gaping hole in a wireless company's security. He just received more jail time than the Steubenville teens' minimum sentences combined.

Corporations really are people, apparently.  Teenage girls, not so much.