Rape is funny to high school boys
TW: This post deals with rape.
I saw this story on the local news last night and I'm still just furious.
I'm sure we've all heard about the case in India, but it bothers me that there seems to be a bit of Western chauvinism in the coverage.
Well, here's a case from Steubenville, Ohio, in which a 16 year old girl was raped while passed out. The video, released by Anonymous, shows a group of boys laughing about it.
Video of boys laughing
For details on the case, Slate has a good summary.
I don't mean to suggest an equality in the situation of women in India and America. Certainly, Western culture has rejected such things as honor killings and the prosecution of rapists, while still not nearly good enough, is better here than in many countries and if you've been listening to the news for the past two weeks, you've undoubtedly heard about that.
However, there is absolutely still a culture of rape in the US, as this video shows. As the disgustingly huge number of sexual assaults in the military shows. Hell, there were two Senate candidates who made absolutely ridiculous statements about rape during this last campaign. To the voters' credit, these candidates lost, but it shows the manner of thinking so many still have.
I bring this up to suggest to everyone that while there are many issues, focus on the basics is still needed. There can be no equality if as a culture we view women as the sexual playthings of men and dismiss objections to that as the "pussification" of men.
What I'd like to see are protests the size of those in New Delhi in every city here in the USA. If this can't galvanize support, what can?
ETA: ACK! Sorry, didn't check the post and haven't been online until today. HTML is fixed. (Didn't change any content, just fixed the tags. I suffer from i/a confusion, apparently.)
I saw this story on the local news last night and I'm still just furious.
I'm sure we've all heard about the case in India, but it bothers me that there seems to be a bit of Western chauvinism in the coverage.
Well, here's a case from Steubenville, Ohio, in which a 16 year old girl was raped while passed out. The video, released by Anonymous, shows a group of boys laughing about it.
Video of boys laughing
For details on the case, Slate has a good summary.
I don't mean to suggest an equality in the situation of women in India and America. Certainly, Western culture has rejected such things as honor killings and the prosecution of rapists, while still not nearly good enough, is better here than in many countries and if you've been listening to the news for the past two weeks, you've undoubtedly heard about that.
However, there is absolutely still a culture of rape in the US, as this video shows. As the disgustingly huge number of sexual assaults in the military shows. Hell, there were two Senate candidates who made absolutely ridiculous statements about rape during this last campaign. To the voters' credit, these candidates lost, but it shows the manner of thinking so many still have.
I bring this up to suggest to everyone that while there are many issues, focus on the basics is still needed. There can be no equality if as a culture we view women as the sexual playthings of men and dismiss objections to that as the "pussification" of men.
What I'd like to see are protests the size of those in New Delhi in every city here in the USA. If this can't galvanize support, what can?
ETA: ACK! Sorry, didn't check the post and haven't been online until today. HTML is fixed. (Didn't change any content, just fixed the tags. I suffer from i/a confusion, apparently.)