like you need low blood pressure

In case this hasn't been brought to anyone's attention:

TRIGGERING MATERIAL FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT BELOW.

The Steubenville Rape Case Getting National Attention

Rape Case Unfolds on Web and Splits City



The Rape Video May Mean The Perpetrators Don't Get a Fair Trial, Since It Shows Them Raping, I Suppose, And That's Not Fair or Something

High school sports star caught on camera LAUGHING as football team players 'raped and urinated on girl, 16, during house party' which includes an interesting note that the video--the one that could totally blow that entire 'fair trial' because it shows it happening was brought to light by the hacker group KnightSec, which is loosely associated with Anonymous.

The Steubenville Files on LocalLeaks - that's not all they uncovered. That is a lot of covering up.

But why, you ask? This is America and what on earth could possibly be more important than bringing gang-raping to justice? I mean, other than everything; this is a woman, after all, so as a former governor of Texas, the ever classy Clayton Williams once stated, rape is like weather, "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it".

Right, also this:

Nate Hubbard, 27, was one of them, telling The New York Times last month: 'The rape was just an excuse, I think. What else are you going to tell your parents when you come home drunk like that and after a night like that?

'She had to make up something. Now people are trying to blow up our football program because of it.'

Fuck knows, high school football is totally that important.



ETA: LJ side of this post has a highly triggering comment that includes rape denial and victim blaming. User is now banned, but it's unscreened because hell if I'm covering up that kind of attitude. It's the second comment in that post.

Comments

(frozen)

[sami]

In absolutely no way does it excuse anything, and the perpetrators should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but: I'm kind of boggled by the way that girls don't ever seem to realise that getting that drunk is really, really stupid.

Yes, you should be safe. But you're not. And if you're getting trashed enough that you don't remember anything the next day, including getting raped, then what the hell was the point of going out at all? If you don't remember anything that happened after some point mid-evening anyway, you might as well stay home and get an early night.

Without in any way subtracting from the amount I would apply directly to the perpetrators and everyone who knew it was happening and didn't stop it, I would also put some blame on the psychotically weird high school/college sport obsession in America. Teenage boys should not be local stars because they're good at football. Nobody should give a shit about the high school footaball team unless they or their child are members of it. It really seems to warp their minds.

(frozen)

[lilacsigil]

I don't know where you're from, but my country has a huge drinking culture (I don't drink, myself). The majority of the population gets stinking drunk, regularly. And yet when men get beaten, robbed or killed while drunk, they don't get blamed for their actions - it's "violent drunks" who did it. When women get raped, beaten, robbed or killed while drunk, they get blamed, as you do right here in this comment. Being drunk is dangerous for everyone (for one thing, it might make you an accessory to rape) and yet I see you focus on exactly one drunk person: the victim.

(frozen)

[sami]

I live in Australia. We have drinking culture out the wazoo.

Personally, if men get wasted, I think they're pretty stupid too. And yes, I think it's dangerous for everyone, but being an accessory is, I think, likely to be a less painful direct consequence than being the victim. (Although apparently this girl didn't even remember until she saw the videos. I honestly can't decide whether I think that would make it more or less traumatic.)

I'm NOT blaming her for the crime that was perpetrated against her. I'm saying that I wish more girls would nonetheless realise that putting themselves in a position of greater vulnerability is an unnecessary risk-increasing behaviour. Just because robbery is a crime doesn't mean I don't lock my doors, kind of thing. I find it *upsetting* that this happens to young women.

(frozen)

[lilacsigil]

Sine you're also Australian, you might remember the rape case where a woman fell asleep on her veranda on a hot day. She woke up to a man digitally raping her. His excuse was that her breast had fallen out of her singlet and he saw it and couldn't stop himself. To a rapist, every woman is a target - the most likely woman to be raped is a disabled woman in a care setting. We need to be fighting for a world where being female doesn't make you a target, because your carefully constructed story about greater vulnerability really is a fiction designed to make you feel better about being "sensible".

(frozen)

[sami]

No. It really isn't. I wasn't drunk or high any of the times I was raped. The time I found a woman being assaulted in a carpark and collected a set of cracked ribs in my ensuing fight with her attacker, I'm pretty sure she wasn't drunk either.

No shit we need to be fighting for a world where being female doesn't make you a target, but WE HAVEN'T MANAGED THAT YET. Which means being female DOES make you a target. Which means that it would seem to me to be a really good idea if young women would keep that in mind, and try to avoid being that easy a target.

I'm not in favour of blaming the victim for her own assault, but I think it's dangerous and stupid to act as if it's not my fault if I get raped is the same thing as so there's no reason to try and protect myself.

Talking about locking your doors against robbery isn't a carefully constructed story. Lock your doors and you might get robbed anyway. But they'll have to make more of an effort, and it adds B&E to the charge sheet.

As detailed in other comment, though, I really need to drop out of this discussion, so hopefully this has clarified the point I'm trying to make sufficiently. If I'm still not explaining myself clearly enough, that's unfortunate, and I apologise, but this isn't worth literally killing myself over.

(frozen)

[lilacsigil]

Sorry, I didn't see your other comment, just your reply to me.

(frozen)

[(Anonymous)]

As comforting as it might be to assume that you can say 'I know I will be trashed after X drinks!' and avoid this happening, yeah, no.

My girl friends and I cover the whole spectrum of drinking, from not at all to in excess. We don't go out alone, even when it's just to our students' union with 24-hour security and access to the women's minibus. And yet, sometimes we have an anomalous reaction to the alcohol, someone spikes our drink, or we just really want to get drunk.

Normally, it doesn't fucking matter: we're in a group, we're checking up on each other, and the odds are that at least one of us won't be drinking at all.

Two things make it matter: a rapist and people who thinks it's our own damn fault for drinking too much. The latter are the people who won't cut in when a guy's harassing you, won't make sure you make it home, and sure as hell won't see if you're okay in the aftermath.

I don't drink. I prefer to have that early night in. I still won't call my friends stupid for wanting to go out and drink and not get raped.

(frozen)

[seperis]

They didn't rape her because she was drunk, high, stoned, or rohypnoled the fuck out of so they had to carry her around hence that's totally consent. It wasn't punishment for getting drunk, high, stoned, or drugged. They raped her because she was a woman, and drunk, high, stoned, or drugged made it a shitload easier.

I'm kind of boggled by the way that girls don't ever seem to realise that getting that drunk is really, really stupid.

Dude, we gotta go farther back for the mistakes here. The first one was she was stupid enough to be born with a vagina. Lack of existing, like the effects of alcohol, is de facto consent. After all, she didn't say no. I mean, if you don't want to be raped, don't be born a woman.

(frozen)

[sapote]

Christ, I'm sorry that you're going to have deal with shit like this on your journal. I mean, sure, the only news story I could bring myself to read also says that she was apparently deliberately rohypnoled, but she should have known not to drink liquids in a public place while having a vagina and also being an adolescent child.

I am so proud of Knightsec. I know branches of Anonymous have been brought to bear on behalf of, for instance, abused animals, but I honestly did not expect them to act on behalf of actual women.

(frozen)

[sami]

They have before. They may have some kind of "defend/prey on women" rotation scheduled. Hard to say.

(frozen)

[sami]

You really don't need to tell me that part. I was born with a vagina, and I didn't make it five years from there before I found out about the rape part. I have been raped more often than I've had consensual sex by multiple orders of magnitude. I knew that a vagina was a place for men to hurt me before I knew that it had any other purpose.

I'm not saying she deserved it. She didn't. I'm not saying it excuses them. It doesn't. I'm saying I find it frustrating and heartbreaking that girls won't stop making it that shitload easier for them.

Because fixing rape culture is going to take time, if we can manage it at all, and in the meantime, it's not safe.

Walking through King's Park should be pretty safe, it's cultivated and landscaped here and there, and in the middle of the fucking city to boot, but walking through the long grass barefoot is still fucking stupid. Because yeah, you should be safe, and you'll probably be safe, but probably doesn't mean shit if you still get bitten by a snake.

(frozen)

[sami]

Also, while normally my instinct, when a disagreement/miscommunication such as seems to be occurring here takes place - given that, no, really, I do actually agree with you and in no way would ever suggest that there are any extenuating factors regarding the perpetrators beyond "appear to have incredibly bad role models/authority figures" and stuff....

(sorry for incoherence there, it's late and I'm kind of a mess)

I actually need to bow out of this conversation. I'd like to continue it until I can at least feel like I've clarified my position such that what I say actually works out as equivalent to what I *mean* to say, but trying to talk about this I'm stomping all over my own triggers and now it's quarter to four in the morning and I'm awake because I woke up screaming into my pillow from a trigger-related nightmare, and, no.

Sorry.

(frozen)

[seperis]

Banned.

[green_grrl]

Fuck, people are shitty. The only upside is that it looks like the police chief is trying his best to do the right thing, even if he's swimming upstream against half the legal establishment, the school, and a sizable chunk of the population. I hope the girl knows that, vocal football fans aside, she has support. What a contrast against India where the population protested in the streets to force the police to act against rape.

[kira_dark_wing]

I kinda want to....not wait, I don't just 'kinda' want to hurt those sick fucking bastards - I want to bloody well hang them from their precious testicles and dicks until gravity rips those extremities from their bodies and I also want to hamstring every single 'football star' that watched/participated so that they can watch everything they are go up in smoke!!!! Fucking Hell I need a smoke!

[the_moonmoth]

You know what? Academically, I am never under any circumstances in favour of capital punishment. But if something were to 'happen' to these assholes, let's just say I would not be sorry in the slightest.

[eponymousanon]

I think one of the things most appalling (out of many, many, MANY appalling things) in that NYT piece was the reaction of the coach, principal and school superintendent. Really, you're going to be the 'adults' but because the players who witnessed and recorded repeated sexual assault "didn't realize they did anything wrong" you're not going to suspend them from the team and SHOW them they did wrong? As the school principal, you're not going to talk to these players or investigate a brutal crime committed by your students, which might be symptomatic of a greater issue at your school, because your football coach said he had it under control?? Reminds me way, way too much of Penn State and that FUBAR situation.

[anitac588]

Clicked thorugh the links, what a horror story.
Not sure at this point what horrifies me more, the gruesome act or the complete devotion of the adults, system (Sheriff, female prosecutor, etc) to protect these perpetrators.

How can this still happen?