I found out about a rape yesterday through Twitter. Audrie Pott was raped at a party while she was passed out, pictures were taken and it went viral. She committed suicide at 15. Tragic.
Its tragic because there were three boys who raped her when she wasn’t able to even defend herself. Three boys whose mothers have to look at their faces and know they birth rapists. That they raised rapists. That if they had been a 15 year old girl, their sons would have raped them. That is a not very good thought for a mom, for a woman. In fact, it is down right horrifying. I hope those boys get tried as adults and that they are raped every day and every night of their incarceration. Even if they are not, I hope they experience exactly what they dished out. Is that mean? Yeah. I don’t care. About this I WANT to be mean.
I want their pictures put on the internet for all time so anyone who sees them, looks them up, googles them, it shows that they are rapists. I want them to wear a proverbial scarlet A around their necks. Innocent people need to be warned that those boys are predators. Parents of daughters need to know. Women in general need to know. And I want their pictures as rapists to go viral. In these cases, I am all about an eye for an eye. I could so get behind castration of them. Cause that would be an end to their career as rapists.
I also found out on Twitter that schools are giving classes to girls telling them not to wear tight clothing, don’t walk alone, take a buddy to parties, etc. But no classes were held telling boys that raping girls is wrong, that no means no and that they shouldn’t victimize girls. I have two pissed off thoughts about this.
One, it penalizes girls for the boys behavior. It is like this. Think about a small village who has an unknown rapist running around. The town tells women because of the rapists they aren’t allowed out at night. The men can come and go as they please because they aren’t the targets of the rapist. Most of you would think it this is a sensible precaution. It is NOT. Men should have been confined to their homes after dark. The unknown rapist is male. No female raped another. Yet it was the women who were restricted as a class. Not the class that contained the criminal, but the class that held the victim. If they had restricted the men as a class, any man found out after dark could have been the rapist, which would help narrow down the who done it. And the class that held victims wouldn’t have been doubly penalized. The class that held the criminal would have been the ones to bear the brunt of the restrictions.
The same applies to young people. If schools are going to tell girls not to engage in behavior that might entice potential rapists without also talking to the boys about what is not acceptable behavior, we are in essence penalizing the class that holds the victims and not the class that holds the criminals. It is wrong. It is the wrong message to send to our young people. It is wrong to focus our attention on the victims. We should have a spotlight on the rapists and wannabe rapists. And it should be hammered home again and again.
Two, telling girls that what they wear undermines the control that boys have is STUPID. Even if a woman is naked, and she says no, having sex with her is rape. I don’t buy this argument when presented by the Muslin community, I don’t buy this argument when rapist present them. It is stupid to think that something a woman or girl does, like showing her hair or face or legs or belly, somehow makes men into slavering beasts who are unable to exercise control over themselves. Women and girls just don’t have that kind of power over men and boys. And we never will. The only one that can control a person is that person themselves. Period. What a woman or girl does, doesn’t all of a sudden ameliorate a man or boy’s responsibility to be in control of themselves. Control of oneself starts and ends at oneself and doesn’t depend on another. EVER.
Excusing bad behavior on the part of the man, in the case of adult rape of muslim women who show their face or hair, and boys, in the case of teenage rape of teenage girls, is our society failing our daughters, our sisters, our future mothers, grandparents, our aunts, our wives. Failing them utterly. I couldn’t help myself isn’t a defense in drunk driving. It isn’t a defense in murder. It isn’t a defense in drug dealing. It just isn’t a defense. Period. This argument as presented by the muslim community doesn’t hold water because a vast majority of societies that don’t make it a secular or religious crime for women to show their faces and hair don’t have men going around raping them willy-nilly because they showed their faces and hair. The argument doesn’t hold water when it comes to what women wear either. Cause the vast majority of men and boys when presented with those very scantily clad women and girls don’t go around and rape them.
Allowing these types of arguments belittles men and boys. On a level that should be offensive to most other men and boys. You know the ones that do exercise control over themselves. Day in and day out. These types of causal excuses don’t allow men and boys to be responsible for themselves. It reduces them to mindless idiots who are no more than missing links a few steps down from Lucy. You know Lucy, the missing link. Good men and boys, you know the fathers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, husbands should raise an outcry that they don’t want to be looked at like they are no more than our primate ancestors. Most aren’t. And they should be wanting to separate the wheat from the chaff. Insisting on it.
At the end of the new report about Audrie Pott, it stated that officials are looking into a completely different incidence of teenage rape followed by teenage suicide. Tragic.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/teens-charged-assault-girl-killed-18936576#.UWfdiMoqhio
