steubenville and girls' futures

[niyad]

Steubenville and Girls’ Futures

Remember when the mainstream media wrung their hands over Steubenville, Ohio, football players and convicted rapists Ma’lik Richmond’s and Trent Mays’ futures? Reporters at CNN and NBC, in particular, fretted over their guilty verdicts on air. The outcome of the case entailed not a triumph of justice for the 16-year-old Jane Doe who was raped, but a disaster for two promising high school football players, whose lives and futures had been ruined. I imagine news reporters at CNN and NBC must have been so relieved to learn on Monday that Richmond has rejoined the Steubenville Big Red football team, picking up much where he left off following a nine-month stay at an Ohio juvenile detention center.

Like so many across the country, I wasn’t at all surprised by Monday’s news. I’m even less surprised that his future has become the subject of renewed hand-wringing. Over the week, I’ve watched the media, as well as friends and family, debate and bitterly argue over the young man’s right to be back on the team. According to Slate’s Amanda Hess, he’s paid the price for his crime by serving the sentence assigned to him. Continuing to shame him for his offenses only lessens his chances for rehabilitation. For many others, it seems unconscionable that a convicted sex offender could reenter high school, let alone be welcomed back to play for the football team. But all I can think about is Jane Doe, the lives of teenage girls and the ways we talk about their futures.

. . .

I have no way of knowing if Jane Doe suffered a similar depletion of self-worth. Still, I can’t help but look at the aftermath of this case and see, overtly expressed, all of the messages that were so damaging to me as a teenage girl. Across social media, Jane Doe has been attacked not only for the choices she made that night, but for her motive in hanging out with this particular group of athletes in the first place. Why did she go to these parties if she wasn’t looking to hook up with the football players? Why did she allow herself to get so drunk if she cared about the outcome? Why did she brush off her concerned friends when they tried to prevent her from going off with Mays and Richmond?

I know why, at both an instinctual and an intellectual level. These are the so-called “choices” girls make when they are surrounded by male privilege and entitlement, when their own sense of empowerment comes not from their own accomplishments and talents but from their association with accomplished and talented boys. Meanwhile, society frets not about the choices Richmond made that night, but about his future. I’m reminded how, just after the verdict for Richmond and Mays made headlines, a Facebook friend observed how differently the media and its followers talked about Jane Doe’s future versus Richmond’s and Mays’. We talk about the boys’ futures as if they matter, while we hardly acknowledge the girl’s future, unless it’s to note the traumatizing effects of the rape that will plague her. I can’t help but think that when we debate what opportunities Richmond should or shouldn’t have, we’ve really missed the larger point. Whether Richmond’s conviction and his return to football impacts rape culture or not, we must understand the ways rape culture itself is not the disease; it’s the symptom of a society that fails to value girls’ futures as much as it values boys’.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/08/16/steubenville-and-girls-futures/