What Rehtaeh Parsons' Death Teaches Us About Rape as a Conformity

[redqueen]

This week, two more stories of 15-year-old girls gang-raped, photographed and shamed came across my desk. I get a lot of information like this every day. I don't share most of it, because it gets overwhelming and people don't want to hear it. These were sad stories. Sometimes, the news is more positive and includes victims, almost always girls, fighting back. Those stories help to shift the ground a little more away from rape tolerance toward rape intolerance. However, as it is, we clearly live in a culture where it is safer and better to be a rapist than to be a rape victim.

...

The issue is: Why are so many boys so very sure that they can get away with raping? Or learning that their status and prestige are enhanced by sharing photo-documentary evidence of their actions? They think they can get away with it because we teach them that they can and that they might even be rewarded for it. Their victims feel shame and are shamed. What we have to do is reverse this trajectory.

The shameless conformists are the rapists. The transgressors -- who are treated as whistleblowers -- are the victims who dare to speak up. When they are bullied and threatened, it is by others who are conforming to silence and abuse of power and expect the raped to as well.

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It's a strange thing, but when you're a girl and someone sexually abuses you, maybe puts things in your body without your knowledge or consent, you take it seriously and consider it an assault and a violation. When girls and boys who are friends together do something like share inappropriate photos that fit the definition of child porn, the girl isn't thinking she's the only one who will be blamed even though she will be. When these things happens, a boy's future -- athletic or not -- isn't the first thing that pops into your head. The fact that it does to adults with authority is surreal. It's a lie to tell these kids they're equals.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/the-sad-lesson-of-rehtaeh_b_3070891.html

I've said it before but it bears repeating: We need an "It gets better" campaign for girls, but first we have to make it true, because right now it is not.

[niyad]

1. k and r. and waiting. . .

[cliffordu]

2. K&R.

[sarisataka]

3. What always makes my brain burn

is every news story laments the opportunities lost by the despicable assailants. Nobody made them do what they did, it was a conscious choice. They did not loose any opportunities; they chose to throw them away. It is the victim- and ONLY the victim- who suffers loss.

[GeoWilliam750]

4. Where does this rape culture come from?

Where do boys learn that girls/women are less than boys/men, and that it is cool to hurt somebody?

As a boy, my father taught me VERY clearly from an early age that it is ALWAYS wrong to hurt women, and that it would not be tolerated under any circumstances - ever. Whilst the lesson was in particular about never hurting women, it also taught me not to take advantage of the weak.

What astonishes me most in so many of these cases is that it is often the girls who are harshest in their treatment of other girls. Where do girls learn to treat other girls so badly? It does not seem as common for girls/women to abuse boys/men nearly as much as girls abuse each other. I haven't heard a man call a woman a "slut" for decades, but I hear women say it.

Who is out there teaching everyone that women are second class people?

Tossing out an odd thought for debate. Having a college age daughter, over the last 20 years, our family has spent a lot of time with a lot of other families, and almost invariably, mothers of sons regard no girl as good enough for their sons (sometimes it gets a bit creepy). Many mothers of sons clearly convey to their sons that girls aren't very good. So, to some degree, are people learning this attitude from their mothers? Just thinking about in-law relationships, in much of the world, the most difficult relationship is the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship. I know of very few cases where the father-in-law/son-in-law relationship is much of a problem, some cases where the mother-in-law/son-in-law cases are tense, and virtually none where the father-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship is even relevant. YMMV.

Might this be a factor?

These days men seem to be almost absent from their children's lives, and so have much less time to exert influence - for either good or bad. Being a rather rabid amateur genealogist, families seem to most commonly take the culture of the mother, at least over the last couple of hundred years over which records are good enough to form some opinion.

Thoughts?

[smirkymonkey]

5. K&R, This case is just so sad and horrifying.

I am in despair over this. It is just so unfair.