The Public Shaming blog and Twitchy.com have been doing the world a service by documenting some of the worst rape apologist nonsense that sprouted up on Twitter in the wake of the Steubenville rape verdict. I thought I would add some more screenshots to the growing pile.
TRIGGER WARNING for some really horrible rape-apologizing bullshit.
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Atheist author Michael Crook had many opinions on the matter, some already cited by Public Shaming. Here are some more:
For more of Crook’s awful thoughts on the case, see this terrible post on his blog. Let me put another TRIGGER WARNING on top of the TRIGGER WARNING I posted above; Crook is really a piece of work, and his post is one of the worst things I’ve read since I started this blog.
Someone calling himself Reality Talks had even more opinions on the subject:
Bill Peace III thinks the whole thing is hilarious — except for the part about the rapists being punished:
A fellow named Tyler figures that the victim “got [what] she deserved.”
A teenager calling himself Space Cowboy shows how the attitudes that define and perpetuate rape culture are absorbed at a pretty young age:
Amazingly, after being called out on his bullshit on Twitter, Space Cowboy seemed to realize that he had been wrong to blame the girl, and deleted his victim-blaming tweets. Assuming he wasn’t being sarcastic when he tweeted that “the girl is an angle, [sic] the boys are to blame entirely,” it’s a heartening development, and evidence that rape culture can be unlearned as well as learned. If he was being sarcastic, his deletion of the offending tweets at least suggests that he now realizes that blaming rape victims is not socially acceptable in all social circles.
The misnamed Truthwatcher, meanwhile, blames everyone but the boys, with his Tweets basically serving as a sort of Rape Culture FAQ.
These are just a few snapshots from the Twitter stream. There’s a lot more nastiness out there.
But these comments are really nothing compared to the crass tweets, and pictures, and videos posted by or otherwise passed around by the rapists and their accomplices and their enablers. Or the threats, some of them made in the wake of the verdict, against the victim from anonymous internetters — and, more to the point, by other students at her school. I can only hope there will be more indictments, not only of the students who participated in the victim’s ordeal but of the adults who knew and did nothing or even worked to cover it up. The whole thing just sickens me.
…wow, the first comment on this is more victim blaming? I have lost all faith in the world @_@
It’s… it’s pretty bad.
I’ll say this for Crook: at least he’s honest. No weasel-words, no pretentious, hypocritical pronouncements about culture, no “They were wrong but…” half-assed victim blaming.
He believes if a woman/girl is raped she deserved it and she should be further abused by the legal/judicial system to ensure that women do not report rape and sexual assault.
I think…
I think I’m going to go work on photo editing or something for a while. Turn off the internet for a bit.
Yeah.
This is actually one of the few posts on this blog that made me feel physically ill. Often it’s easy to dismiss the vileness as over-the-top throwbacks that few take seriously any more, but these are “normal” reactions to a young girl being raped, and it is horrific. I just can’t fathom such a lack of empathy.
Fuck. You. Seriously, take your “…girl wasn’t a virgin” bull shit and fuck right the fuck off you fucking piece of shit.
Obviously, I didn’t leave quickly enough.
Why doesn’t “personal responsibility” apply to the boys? They new rape was a crime that could carry jail time and they chose to do it anyway, so they only have themselves to blame, right?
Oh, they were drunk and not making the best decisions? Well, they chose to drink, right?
The fuck does this have to do with anything?
I’m not a virgin. Hell, I like sex. Does than mean I can’t be raped?
Hope u lego forever.
OK…I know this is tangential at best, but we’ve seen it here with NWO and others: “Don’t dress like a whore if you don’t want to be treated like one”.
It wouldn’t be OK to treat a whore like this. It’s not OK to rape anyone, obviously, but more to the point, what makes you think treating someone “like a whore” is or should be a synonym for treating them badly? What is wrong with you that you think it’s OK to treat whores badly? Whores haven’t done anything wrong, at least not simply by virtue of being whores.
If only these tweets/blogs could be tattoo’ed to their foreheads as a notification that the guy you’re looking at is probably a rapist, or would at least cheer on your rape if they happened to witness it.
Wow dude, are your friends all exhibitionists, or are you some sort of sneaky voyeur, to know exactly what happened between these people? I don’t care how “down for whatever” a girl is, if a guy wants to do something to her and she says no or is too drunk to consent, it’s rape. Consent isn’t a switch that gets turned on at the first “yes” and turned off at the end of the encounter. I can say “yes” to drinking, “yes” to flirting, “yes” to whatever I want, but as soon as I say “no”, or do something like pass out, that consent is gone.
And yeah, that’s true even if I’m not a virgin! Even if I’m a teenager who’s not a virgin!
Yes we can say who’s to blame, you stupid, evil piece of shit. She was unconscious, a fact which nobody is disputing, which means they were to blame.
And I don’t care if she consensually fucked every man, woman and farm animal in Steubenville the day before. What they did was rape. The fact you think “she wasn’t a virgin” makes a difference makes you, once again, a stupid, evil piece of shit.
Can we get a ban & delete on Paul, the little cheerleader for rape? And then can someone hide all of his shoes, steal all of his lightbulbs, and fill his apartment with cacti, LEGOs and sharp-edged furniture?
Fuck off, Paul.
tedthefed, Possibly, but now is not the time. This is really raw for some of us.
Regarding this “if you drink, there is a risk” issue. It IS true that there are all sorts of increased risks associated with drinking to excess. However, it is ALSO TRUE that crimes committed on you by others while you are intoxicated continue TO BE CRIMES that require a judicial response. And that includes everything from robbery to physical and sexual assault.
I don’t agree with this at all. I think the sentencing is extremely lenient. They pissed on her. They assaulted her multiple times in multiple locations and crowed about it using social media, and continued to crow about it via text afterward. People who are this callous are not going to stop at one victim.
And Paul wins the entitled, clueless douche of the day award (sadly, it seems to need to be re-awarded on an almost hourly basis, no?
Aaaand, Fox News is airing the victim’s name.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/18/fox-news-airs-name-of-16-year-old-steubenville-rape-victim/
Seriously, fuck the media in their coverage of this crime. This girl is already getting death threats locally because football is king in that town. Now she’s going to be harassed nationally. THEY WERE FOUND GUILTY. How the fuck can anyone threaten a crime victim? What goes through their heads when they do this?!
Right now? In response to this case?
No.
But if it’s something with which you’re legitmately concerned how about you find one of the thousands of programs out there that are working towards sentencing reforms for non-violent drug offenders and juveniles who are given adult sentences for drug crimes. If you’re really, really worried about rehabilitation why don’t you use a search engine to find the organizations that are looking to really help the way so many youth in urban areas, economically disenfranchised already, are essentially being funneled into the adult prison system.
Another vote for banhammering Paul to the deepest depths of purgatory to forever sit around, all alone, wanking about how nobody loves him.
TedtheFed: I am perfectly willing to concede the notion that the justice system doesn’t handle juveniles (especially upper-range juveniles like high school students) well at all, and that we’ve got a lot of Old Testament leftovers in our approach to punishing the guilty that aren’t really conducive to building a better society.
The trick is to not bring this issue up in a context where doing so would create confusion about your intent. Forum threads and blogs talking about the rape culture and violent misogyny it feeds? Not the place. The discussion you’re talking about needs to happen, but it’s honestly no more appropriate to this thread than, say, an assessment of the growth of the American security state, and how it violates civil liberties.
Find someplace where the discussion is about rehabilitation of criminals, and appropriate sentencing for juveniles. Or hell, start your own blog and start writing about it yourself, and good luck to you with that. In such cases, it would even be appropriate to make an on-topic post, and then at the end of it, have a line or two like this:
“Off-topic for this forum, I’ve been involved in a discussion about this case from the angle of appropriate treatment for juvenile criminals. If people are interested, you can join that conversation here [include link].”
Obviously, this is a rule for focused blogs and forum threads; a more open, “Post your thoughts about the Steubenville rape case” thread, for instance, would be a different matter, since its open-ended nature permits more free-range discussion.
Shorter version: Context matters–bringing up an important topic in the wrong discussion becomes, at best, well-intentioned derailing, and at worst, can seem like a malicious effort to undermine the primary discussion point.
Actually, tedthefed, no. Never. They’re more than old enough to know right from wrong. They’re not stupid, or sheltered or mentally unfit.
THEY RAPED A GIRL AND THEY DESERVE WHAT’S COMING TO THEM.
Remember this: You just posted that odious crap where VICTIMS OF RAPE CAN READ WHAT YOU SAID.
FUCK YOU AND FUCK OFF.
If you want to feel sorry for rapists I suggest you find all the men and women in your life who have been raped and express your sympathy about their rapists convictions to them. Go ahead, you disgusting asshole, do it. Do it and come back here and tell us all what they had to say.
Asshole.
Paul, the girl was unconscious. UN-CONSCIOUS. How can you be held accountable for anything when you’re not even awake?
Years ago my then ex-husband blurted out when we were watching the news that many, many men were falsely accused of rape. We argued that one of course. It made me realize that many, many men do not think a rape occurred unless it was on public street , in front of tons of witnesses, and the woman was chastely dressed and shouted no and help me Jesus I am a virgin and a teetotaler. The hostility directed at this young woman is typical not atypical the tweet morons just happened to publicly state it. The minute a woman is not wearing a burkha or had one drink she is still asking for it. Slutwalks might create a sense of empowerment for those participating but it does not convince rapists and for some reason even though a vast majority of men do NOT rape they always seem to make excuses for those who do. I won’t ever get that one.
Is it sad that “they’re going to have their lives ruined” and any variation thereof have become a set of loaded phrases for me and almost instantly conjure MRA bullshit whenever I hear them?
I really like the “be grateful you didn’t find her dead”. Well, not at all really, I find that the posters ending every reply with that thought appalling. And its horrifying to think that that would be a perfectly acceptable outcome in the posters eyes, because clearly women are consenting to be violated and murdered when we consume alcohol.
Funny how the only people who have”responsibility” for the rape is the victim and her mother (who wasn’t even at the party and likely had no idea what her daughter was up to). The boys who raped her? Can’t be held responsible because they were drinking, even though the amount they had consumed had a far lesser effect on them. Moms responsible how, exactly? For not having her daughter securely locked up in a cell at sundown? How about the boys mothers? What are they responsible for? (Protip, the boys moms aren’t. At sixteen those boys damn well knew what they were doing was wrong, and they figured that they’d get away with it like everyone else. )
Oh noes! Those poor poor lads might get a couple years in jail and a criminal record that never stopped any rapist football player from moving up!
And even then, a jury of your peers may STILL think you’re not telling the truth about what happened to you if you can’t recall the color of the car parked nearby when a stranger has dragged you off the street at gunpoint and it anally raping you, as in the Michael Pena case. It took two trials to convict this guy, and that incident was about as “real rape” as rape can possibly get. Our society has some seriously fucked up views about rape, and it’s time we acknowledge them.
Hey, Ted What I wonder is if you’ve looked into the literature on age-related cognitive ability or whether you have a more pop-sci understanding of it.
Yes, we acknowledge that adolescents do not posses the emotional maturity of teenagers, and teenagers don’t posses the emotional maturity of adults, but this is less ambiguous than you seem to think. At 3 years of age, the vast majority of toddlers can understand that things that hurt other people are wrong, and that they ought not to do wrong things. At about age 7 or 8, children begin to make judgements based on intent to harm rather than mere outcome of harm (someone broke my toy on purpose vs. the toy was broken). Moral and ethical understanding in children becomes remarkably complex by about 12 or 13, making it possible to expect that someone in their mid teens is able to understand right from wrong and to choose the right action, fearing retribution, punishment and the condemnation of their peers.
Individuals fall at different points on this continuum. Sure, teenagers are generally more impulsive than adults, and more likely to engage in risky behavior, but typically that risky behavior is impulsive and personal and not necessarily predatory. A teenager with poor impulse control is more likely to drink more and drive too fast, or to lash out quickly in anger.
Rape is not an issue of impulse control.
Exceptions to these rules about the developmental continuum are generally either sociopaths who fail to develop empathy ever and those for whom socialized privilege (based on race, economic status and other similar factors) overwhelms their innate sense of moral and ethical reasons. The funny thing is that under laboratory conditions where autonomic responses to social behavior can be measured, even bullies understand that what they are doing is wrong and react ‘properly’ to that internal knowledge (with raised heart rate, sweating, etc.), they just have been socialized to respond differently. The work of David Elkind can be really useful in understanding all of this, but go directly to him and the underlying studies; the popular conceptions of his work tend to be distorted by the media to conform to existing stereotypes and narrative patterns (as does much reporting on science).
The only way ‘rehabilitation’ will work in these cases is if the perpetrators are re-socialized to internalize the message that rape is wrong, and that despite what they want to think, what they did was rape. In this process, all sympathy has to take a secondary place to communicating the message that what they did was wrong and to correcting their perceptions on the matter.
I do take your point on the fact that this is almost never where the penal system (as opposed to the justice system) focuses attention and effort.
@tedthefed Maybe I missed something, but why exactly do you feel sympathy for these particular perpetrators? I haven’t really seen anyone yet who acknowledges it was rape and thinks they were treated too harshly, and you don’t even seem to believe that yourself. So why bring it up here, where there is an actual victim who is suffering from these boys’ actions?