Tags
20/20, ABC, bullshit, CNN, rape, rape culture, steubenville
I am so fucking sick of rape apologists.
The two teens accused of sexually assaulting an incapacitated girl in Steubenville, Ohio were found guilty yesterday in a juvenile court. They were sentenced to one year and two years, respectively, in juvenile detention. CNN’s coverage of the event focused exclusively on how difficult this verdict was for those poor boys:
For those of you who don’t care to watch, the Raw Story provides quotes along with extremely justified disgust.
For those of you who don’t care to click on links, here’s a choice quote from CNN’s Paul Callan:
There’s always that moment of just — lives are destroyed,” Callan remarked. “But in terms of what happens now, the most severe thing with these young men is being labeled as registered sex offenders. That label is now placed on them by Ohio law.”
“That will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
[EDIT]: It was pointed out to me in the comments that Paul Callan’s actual quote from the video was: “There’s always that moment of just — lives are destroyed, and of course lives have already been destroyed by the crime, and we’ve seen that. But in terms of what happens now…” The Raw Story edited the quote to omit Paul Callan’s mention of the victim, which is not fair.
However, aside from one passing reference, there is still absolutely NO consideration of how BEING RAPED is going to affect their victim. She was barely mentioned at all.
When rape victims are mentioned in the media, it is almost always an accusatory edge – even when those victims are 11 years old. What was she wearing? Was she drunk? Had she flirted with, looked at, spoken to her alleged rapist before he raped her?
ABC News shows exactly this bullshit in a rape-apologist piece they ran five days ago called “The Steubenville Rape Case: The Story You Haven’t Heard.”
20/20 anchor Elizabeth Vargas discusses “incriminating statements” made by the victim’s best friends, including that “she had made a plan to meet up with one of the accused rapists – one of the football players accused of rape – later on in the evening and therefore had given prior consent, [and] that she might’ve even had a history of doing this kind of thing before.”
Because flirting constitutes consent, which is something you give once, that lasts forever, even when you’re too drunk to stand up or know where you are! Because if you’ve had sex before (assuming that is the “kind of thing” to which she refers so ominously), you are a slut and therefore unrapeable! Oh, and let’s not forget, they are not accused rapists – they are football players, accused of rape by some girl who should’ve known better than to get drunk around men.
In fact, this ABC article spends three introductory paragraphs waxing poetic about the glory of the Steubenville football team, and how important it is to the small “all-American” town. It then discusses, at length, how the “social media frenzy” is tearing this wholesome town apart.
And then they put “rape culture” in scare quotes. Because this article isn’t horrible, glaring proof that rape culture is thriving in the most influential sectors of our society.
In a bizarre yet heartening turn of events, Yahoo! Sports covered the verdict without apologizing for the rapists, and called out the culture that led to two young men raping an unconscious girl while 40 of their friends laughed and took pictures – although they call it arrogance, and depict the culture as limited to one small town, rather than a national epidemic.
Yes, this was extreme arrogance. The arrogance to not just joke and brag like the teenage boys they were, but to commit those jokes to text messages, to snap a photo of the girl being carried out like she was a casualty coming off a battle field. Even guys who weren’t there sat around a basement laughing about how “the dead girl” was “so raped.”
A quick tour of social media reveals hundreds of people (unsurprisingly) echoing the message of major media chains. Here’s a typical one (from a female twitter user):
I’m not saying what they did wasn’t wrong but it’s not rape. . . it’s the girl’s fault. #dontdrink
Rape culture teaches us that if a woman drinks, she is asking for it. If a woman wears a skirt, she is asking for it. If a woman flirts with a man, she is asking for it. Rape culture teaches us that men are entitled to womens’ bodies. Rape culture teaches us that rape is something evil, shadowy rapists do to strangers at gunpoint. Good boys, football players, can’t be rapists. Therefore, they can’t rape.
Those young men who got convicted? They probably still think that what they did wasn’t rape. All of their friends who watched them didn’t stop them, because they didn’t think what was happening was rape.
Rape culture is not just disgusting and horrifying and wrong. Rape culture causes rape. That young woman had her life blown apart by rape culture. So did those young men. So do countless people, every single day.
We need to call this shit out, right the fuck now.
Here is the link to contact ABC’s 20/20. Here is their twitter handle.
Here is the link to contact CNN. Here is their twitter handle.
Here’s what I’m writing:
Dear CNN/ABC:
I was disgusted and appalled by your coverage of the Steubenville rape case. Victim blaming, slut shaming, and rape apologizing are not okay. Your concern for the welfare of the perpetrators over that of the victim is clear indication of where you stand. You are perpetuating rape culture. And you should be fucking ashamed.
Feel free to use it, or write your own message (add or subtract profanity as you please!). But please – write one. Share this, or the original stories, on Facebook. Spread the outrage, mobilize your friends, tweet until your fingers bleed.
Because rape culture causes rapes. And major media outlets that perpetuate rape culture can not get away with this shit.
Reblogged this on Neal Cormier.
I like the chart in this post commenting on the Rawstory bit: http://manboobz.com/2013/03/17/raw-story-on-the-top-5-rape-apologist-reactions-to-the-steubenville-verdicts/
Rape is a crime. The people need to go to prison and there are no excuses for rape or abuse of another person. Thank you for this blog.
Just want to point out that rawstory.com edited out of the quotes the one part of Callan’s statement where he did, in fact, express concern for the victim. What he said in the video was:
“There’s always that moment of just — lives are destroyed, and of course lives have already been destroyed by the crime, and we’ve seen that. But in terms of what happens now…”
It still sounds like he’s saying “the damage has already been done; why hurt these poor sweet children over the crime they committed?”, but I don’t like to see this kind of deliberate omission in journalism.
Thank you so much for catching that. I have edited the article to include the full quote. Of course, even with that one passing mention, the attitude of all three newscasters and the tone of the piece was horrifying.
Came across your post on facebook and I wanted to thank you for writing this. I am a victim of an assault, it stopped before it turned into a rape, but its still an assault. I hear it all the time, well at least you weren’t raped. Unless you have been in the shoes of a rape or sexual assault victim no one knows what it feels like.
The above case of the football players is exactly why victims don’t come forward. “Well you were drinking, so you probably wanted”…. ” Thats what you deserve for sitting in a bar alone drinking”,,,,, etc etc. No victim deserves it!!!!!!
Thank you for speaking up for those of us that can’t.
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Amen! Thanks for writing this; it’s a constant problem that we see in the way that news is presented on rape cases…it’s also really upsetting to see female reporters taking a sentimental stand for the rapists as if the men involved were the victims themselves. I mean, come ON, the very least women reporting on this can do is support the actual female victim. Where is the solidarity among women here?
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Reading this article about the insane media coverage reminds me of a particular detail of a friend’s story. She was held hostage by a man she’d been dating and had an argument with. He held her for upwards of five or six hours in her own home, beat, restrained, assaulted, sodomized and threatened her with knives. She escaped, in her underwear, took herself to a hospital and got a rape kit done. She called the police and filed a report. She pulled phone records and every kind of evidence she could to prove every action that set the situation into place. She was a *ahem* model rape victim. She took her case to the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. They had her meet with one of the assistant DA’s there, a female attorney. After my friend laid out the details of her story, including a stack of evidence, police report, rape kit report, phone records, photos, etc, the woman looked at her and shook her head and said, “Sorry, I don’t think you have a strong enough case.”
That’s some fucking rape culture.
But, I’ll tell you what. My friend pushed it up the line. She finally got someone else in the DA’s office to look at the case. They went to court. The guy was convicted of ELEVEN counts of rape, sodomy, battery and kidnapping. He’s still in jail. When I see these women on CNN reporting about the terrible tragedy of these men’s “ruined” lives, I am reminded that we cannot always expect women to be our allies. Too many of us are eager to seek approval with the men at the top by offering our sympathy and support to the poor boys who’ve had their lives ruined.