I'm surprised there has been no mention of the Stanford rape trial and sentence on all nurses. I'm opening up the discussion as I feel it pertains to us in many ways. One as people who may have been victims or know others who have been victims of sexual violence and two as nurses that have taken care of others in this situation, whether directly in ER or a patient suffering from PTSD with other health problems as well.
I applaud the survivor's bravery and her impact statement that has gone public. I hope this will comfort other survivors, but even more I hope this will discourage rape in general. Campus rapes are common and rapes at frats are in the news frequently. Once again a college athlete got off with just a slap on the wrist, although I don't think he counted on all the negative publicity this case has garnered.
What disturbs me the most is the letters of the parents to the judge. The father's don't punish him for 20 minutes of action. Then the mother's letter, who by the way is a nurse for gynecological surgeries and in the past as a pediatric nurse, who had not one iota of empathy for the victim. Her letter simply astonished me. I can't believe as a woman, as a nurse, as a mother of a daughter she had no empathy for the victim! This troubles me the most! I imagine in her years as a nurse she must have taken care of a rape victim and her total lack of empathy for the victim disturbs me greatly!
I remember many years ago I read an article saying officials (or whoever) in France had determined that a woman wearing jeans could not actually be raped as she'd have to help the assailant remove her pants. I'm not sure what happened - if it became a law or not - but I was shocked and furious.
To me, mercy does not mean leniency. It means forgiveness, and absence of wishes of harm.
Even though I may desire mercy, does not mean I do not think he should be imprisoned for 3-6 years, banned for life from the US swim team, and registered as a sex offender. I believe ALL those things should occur. But no, I do not think he should be raped in prison and forced to feel the same fear and pain that the victim felt. That solves nothing and helps no one, but simply perpetuates violence, pain and fear.
Perhaps what I want for him is grace, not mercy.
Leniency is essentially a synonym for mercy. I believe that mercy is appropriate for offenders who acknowledge the seriousness of their actions, take full responsibility for their own behavior, and are already taking steps to change themselves, but if you're pushing trial for your sexual offense to avoid the sentence that might come from a plea deal, you 100% do not qualify for mercy in my book.
I believe justice is ensuring that the punishment is appropriate to the severity and impact of the crime. I use different words (I think believing inmates should not be raped falls well within the scope of "justice") but I think we agree for the most part.
This DISGUSTS me. More than anything I've read here all day. Attitudes like THIS is a HUGE part of the problem, and part of rape culture. I cannot even put into words how disgusted I am by what you wrote.
Agree with this 1000%. When I was deployed, one of a VERY small number of women on a compound in Afghanistan, we had an incident in which one of our women was kind of stalked by a local national. As a result, our commander wanted to lock all the women down - only going to the gym in pairs, bathroom in pairs, bathroom with a male escort, to the shower tent with a male escort, etc. etc. etc. It was bad enough that I was already living in a space about the size of a Walmart parking lot. I told him that I would absolutely NOT be punished for some dude's actions against women; besides, I was armed at all times. Me and my pistol went everywhere together, and anyone who raised a hand would have met said pistol. This victim blaming mentality is incomprehensible to me, I find it disgusting.
Agree with this 1000%. When I was deployed, one of a VERY small number of women on a compound in Afghanistan, we had an incident in which one of our women was kind of stalked by a local national. As a result, our commander wanted to lock all the women down - only going to the gym in pairs, bathroom in pairs, bathroom with a male escort, to the shower tent with a male escort, etc. etc. etc. It was bad enough that I was already living in a space about the size of a Walmart parking lot. I told him that I would absolutely NOT be punished for some dude's actions against women; besides, I was armed at all times. Me and my pistol went everywhere together, and anyone who raised a hand would have met said pistol. This victim wblaming mentality is incomprehensible to me, I find it disgusting.
Your commander was thinking in a straight line, your safety was his job. and he had no control over the potential aggressor.
Men are, in general, conditioned to believe they have the right to sexual access to women and to exercise their power - and that is what rape is about - by using that access whenever, however they please. Women are conditioned by rape culture as well. I believe that conditioning is what kooky was driving at. I believe that we need to ask ourselves just exactly where that conditioning comes from. Hint: think multimillion dollar industries
Heron, I normally find your observations and analyses very astute, but I think that you've missed the mark completely with this one. Rape has been around since the dawn of mankind. Multimillion dollar industries can likely be legitimately blamed for many things, but we can't pin this one on them.
Rape culture in my opinion comes from the age-old tradition that women are not the equals of men. They have historically been considered inferior. Rape is domination. It's a ruthless and selfish display of superior power. In our own countries you don't have to go back that far in history to the time where married women could not be raped by their husbands in the eye of the law. Marriage meant that you gave up the right to control your own body. This is still true in today in large parts of the world.
Rape exists in your country as well as mine. As I mentioned in my previous post, rape occurs frequently in countries where women aren't granted the freedom of choice to wear anything but what must be described as extremely modest. An unshapely tent-like garment that covers every inch of the woman's body. Shouldn't be very enticing, one would think. They still get raped.
The next paragraph might be disturbing to some as it describes various forms of sexual abuse, anyone sensitive to this subject may wish to skip over it.
Some of the worst abuse of females I've seen have been perpetrated against women from countries where TV ads and billboards are a very rare thing indeed. I wish I never have to see another woman who has had acid thrown on her face and breasts as a teenager by her father, brother or uncle, rendering her horribly mutilated, all because she "shamed" her family by talking to the neighbor's teenage son. I wish I never have to see another woman whose genitalia was mutilated by her mother and other female family members. All the parts that could contribute to feeling sexual pleasure in the future were surgically but amateurishly removed and the little girl was then sewn shut, leaving just a few millimeters, just so a future husband could be certain of her virginity. As she reached puberty it made every period an excessively painful ordeal with frequent infections due to the difficulties of evacuating the menstrual blood. And I wish I never have to listen to another woman telling me the story that as a fourteen-year-old, she was regularly brutally sodomized by her betrothed so that she would remain a "virgin" for her wedding night.
This is systematic and culturally condoned oppression and abuse of girls and women. This is how a large part of the world looks like.
We're slighly "better", but in my opinion the same mechanisms that make the above possible are a contributing factor to the various excuses being made for men who rape.
It is the thought that men can assert their will because women are considered naturally subservient and inferior. It is the though that "boys will be boys" in an attempt to minimize the act of rape. It's the thought that how a woman dresses somehow planted the idea of rape in the man's mind. (Pretending as if it wasn't there to start with )
I really do think that anyone who encourages women to dress more modestly in order to lower the risk of getting raped, is a part of the problem. What you are saying is that something the women does is a contributing factor to rape. You actually are assigning her with part of the blame. That's not okay. The blame rests solely and squarely on the perpetrator. If you were to say that you wished that people would dress more modestly because that is your preference, I don't have a problem with that. But don't say it as part of advice on how to avoid getting raped.
Most men are decent guys who don't rape. They are perfectly capable of controlling their desires even when a woman wears a short skirt and behaves in a provocative manner. What we need to do is identify what makes some men rape and what we can do to change that. Not dictate how women should dress.
1) Does he understand that what he did was against the law?
2) If not, why not.
3) what, in his background, caused this behavior?
4) Was he taught this at home?
5) Is this something he learned from coaches/other swimmers?
6) What is his sister's take on this? has he done anything to her?
Re: 4 - Given that his father referred to the rape as "20 minutes of action" I'm pretty sure awareness of rape culture and respect for all humans as individuals, not just objects to fulfill needs, was not a part of the things he learned at his daddy's knee.
I don't think drunk people need guns. Sometimes, drunk people are attacked. Giving guns to everyone is not a brilliant answer to assault and rape prevention.
Kooky was advocating that women be pure, modestly dressed angels to prevent getting raped. That's putting the onus of "preventing" rape on the victims - essentially saying there are things victims could have done to not have this happen, instead of saying rapists are disgusting humans with no regard for the safety and wellbeing of anyone else.
Then give your daughter a really good course in unarmed fighting and call it a day.
You're preaching to the choir, here. Please see the thread in the breakroom entitled "What's wrong with this picture"
Personally, I don't think that demonizing other women is a helpful strategy. Everyone in an honest discussion has some true thing to say, not just the people I agree with. Rape culture is much more complicated and subtle than one woman's personal standards of modesty and limited notions of the significance of revealing clothes. In my view, kooky just didn't follow her insight far enough.
I agree with kooky that the hypersexualization of women and girls is foundational to rape culture. Fashion and pop culture in general are the drivers of that hypersexualization. They are basic tools for the conditioning of both men and women to buy into it. (Pun intended)
A similar point could be made regarding the glamorization of substance abuse.
Many posters responded to her by making excellent points about rape in circumstances that had nothing to do with immodest dress. They went a long way toward shifting the focus to power and abuse, which is where it belongs. Tangentially, I wonder if kooky even bothered to follow the thread after being told that she was the problem. If polarization is your thing, I guess that's ok.
Meanwhile, how would you approach the goal of women being able to keep themselves safe without having to depend on men behaving themselves?
Your commander was thinking in a straight line, your safety was his job. and he had no control over the potential aggressor.
I understood his point, but his reaction was knee-jerk and over-the-top rather than considered and discussed, and the buddy system was only to be applied to women; more men are sexually assaulted in the military, but I digress. Part of the problem was unauthorized access of local nationals to certain parts of the compound, which was addressed. And we'll just say the local warlord put the fear into his peeps after this because he appreciated the medical care we provided to people fighting the Taliban and didn't want to jeopardize that.
Our commander was wonderful, and a great person, but I disagreed with his methods in this case. And he agreed with me.
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klone, MSN, RN
14,857 Posts
I would call it ******* tone-deaf, mysogynistic, ******** ******* ****.