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.
Probably the most gutting thing I’ve read in this case is the statement that the rapists shouldn’t be tried as adults/incarcerated with adults as they would be vulnerable to sexual victimization by adults.
Rape culture all the way down.
But, should it be necessary, cats all the way up.
Yay for more cat videos! Gonna try my hand at an embed, cross those fingers for me!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1FknihCNI&w=420&h=315%5D
Dang. Still, it’s a great video, and a totally cute cat!
Gillian, you should be able to directly paste the youtube link into the comment.
*fanning self at the cat*
So that’s a good way to keep an indoor-outdoor cat when you don’t live on the ground floor…..
Tedthefed, if having compassion for your rapist is what gets you through life, then I applaud your resilience and kindness.
I myself have not one drop of sympathy for these boys or any rapist.
I will feel sympathy for rapists when they show repeatedly, over time, that they have truly changed the way they think and behave, that they fully understand how their actions have impacted their victims, the victims families, their families and the larger community and they respect thatpeople may never forgive or forget what they did.
When a truly reformed rapist is still struggling to get through life because the consquences are still haunting them, I still wouldn’t forgive until the victim has healed enough to have pulled their life together and found peace, security of mInd and hope for a better future.
Until that point, I have not one sub atomic particle of sympathy to give a rapist because all of my sympathy and help rightfully belongs to the victim.
To know, all too well that these two boys have other victims that did not report what happened to them…Jesus wept.
Paul: go the fuck away.
tedthefed:
Not here. Not now. Maybe not ever.
Oh, and this Michael Cook cretin is in the running for Asshole of the Century.
A lot of the responses, like the tweets above and in the last post, don’t even seem to disagree that she was raped. They just don’t think she has the right to complain about it or see justice done. It’s horrifying.
Why the fuck would anyone think that the guilty in this case were ‘innocent’ in any sense of the word? There’s evidence that they did it and that they knew exactly what they were doing (some of the people involved called themselves a ‘rape crew’).
As for the tweets saying that the girl being drunk is the reason she was raped and that she had ‘some responsibility’ – lets face it, it’s really easy to get very drunk when you’re a teenager. It’s cool, everyone else is doing it, the buzz is enjoyable, your body’s not used to it, you don’t know how alcoholic some drinks are or what alcohol tastes like. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few ‘funny-tasting’ soft drinks explained away with ‘oh, yeah, my mum only buys the cheap stuff, sorry’ when in fact it had been spiked (happened to me once).
Tweets like those above teach people that the appropriate ‘punishment’ for being an inexperienced teenager, doing stupid things the vast majority of teenagers do, is rape. Oh, and that rapists aren’t really doing anything wrong/rape is under the same category of ‘stupid teenager behavior’ as overestimating your alcohol tolerance. Fuck that.
It’s a rhetorical device I am certainly not fond of, particularly in this case.
Firstly, it puts the young men in the position of the victim. These boys are not victims of anything. They committed a crime, a very serious crime, they got caught, and they’re getting punished in a way that is quite consistent with what we as a society expect to happen when someone gets convicted of rape. It’s not like it isn’t common knowledge that people who are convicted of rape go to jail and register as sex offenders. And as many a troll has pointed out when feminists try to start anti-rape campaigns targeting men, it’s not as though people don’t know that rape is a crime!
They committed a crime and thought they would get away with it, and they didn’t. That’s not being a victim.
Secondly, no, their lives aren’t ruined. It’s not like they’re getting the death penalty. It’s not like they’re going to jail for the rest of their lives. They committed a crime, and they are getting punished for it. What they do with their lives is up to them. They could spend their time in jail productively, by getting a HS diploma and learning to be a better person. They could leave jail and become activists, trying to teach young men that girls are not sex dolls to pass around as they please, and that consent is serious business, and rape is not a joke. Or they could just acknowledge that they did something awful, and that they changed, and they could go on to live the best they can.
Or they could continue to act like they were victimized by the “system” or by feminists or by the “man” and have a miserable, whiny, entitled existence.
It’s their choice. Their lives are what they choose to make of them going forward.
IMO, these boys should be forced to hear, watch or read at least one survivor’s story a day until their hearts break and the understand the enormity of what they did. Although frankly, I think that sort of thing should be part of the public school curriculum in the hope of stopping these things before they happen, or at least getting people onto the victim’s side instead of the rapist’s.
Right? Puking, hangovers, being raped: all things that just happen to your body when you drink.
tedthefed:
If having sympathy for people who’ve violated someone when THEY KNEW it was wrong, when they actually PUBLICLY stated that they figured others would cover it up for them is how you want to get through your life then I would suggest you stay the heck away from any discussion of rape.
Yes, you’re projecting. No, it’s not ever appropriate when the rapists in question are fully capable of understanding the utter wrongness of what they have done.
Your statements are offensive for so many reasons, not the least of which is that you seem to think that those boys somehow deserve to “put this behind them”.
Their victim won’t ever get that chance.
I would greatly appreciate, as a victim of multiple rapes, it if you would take a day, or a week, to read about the case and what those boys did and said publicly and then examine what your motivations are for minimizing their actions or trying to shift blame away from them. Examine why you think your situation is the same as this one. Think long and hard about why you feel 16 year olds (Who are old enough to have jobs, to drive cars and to be tried as adults for other offenses) are somehow not to be held fully responsible for actions which they knew, right form the start, were terribly, horribly, disgustingly wrong.
Then go step on a fucking lego for even thinking for one second that this thread was the right place to bring that up.
I just heard of that Michael Crook guy yesterday in a post on his site saying that a racing driver should be charged with manslaughter after 2 people died when he lost control of his car, so he’s just nuts as hell.
Hmmm…I’d send something snarky to Crook (what an apt name) suggesting that the two dead victims’ families be forced to apologize to the racing driver for carelessly being in front of his car, then pay him a substantial sum for ruining his life, but I doubt our Mr Michael Sociopath..uh, Crook…would be smart enough to get the point.
Seriously, though, if those two teens had robbed a sixteen year old boy of his lunch money and/or beaten him up and then boasted about it on Twitter, nobody would be defending them, and they certainly wouldn’t be blaming the victim.
Incidentally, have y’all read this (on yahoo sports if you can believe it)?
This is a remarkably potent and eloquent expose of the rape culture rationalization and common arrogance that led to the sense of entitlement all of those kids felt, to act (and to not act) as they all did.
Fuck this shit. I don’t have the fucking energy to participate in this discussion in any productive fashion after having to deal with tedthefed’s ridiculous asshattery.
I had stuff to say, but now all I can do is rage.
Fuck.
Maybe I’ll be back to participate in a meaningful way, but after seeing the first few comments I don’t think I can do it.
I hope the rest of you have a productive discussion and a good afternoon.
Interesting how all these “But they’re YOUNG! Undeveloped brains! Youthful mistakes!” arguments only apply to the rapists, but not to the survivor when people like paul the terrible piece of garbage are like but she was drinking/flirting/existing (not to say those actually are “mistakes”, just hypocrisy of rape apologists).
Other reason I have no sympathy for the rapists? NOT DIFFICULT to not rape someone. Not difficult at all. And unlike other “youthful mistakes”, this one is an intentional malicious act AGAINST another human being (and in this case, was for their own amusement).
I am sick to death of the phrase “personal responsibility.”
I don’t think that tedthefed was trying to excuse their behavior in any way. You can be sad that these boys have chosen to do something so horrible, and still be furious at them. When there are so many sad and awful things that people do to each other, it might be the best idea to fight against these injustices as hard as you can, and still try to see everybody involved as human.
I think that forgiveness is an important part of being human, to be honest. This isn’t really the time to be even considering it, but if they ever fully regret how evil they’ve been, with every part of their persons, they MIGHT deserve a second chance. Right now, though, the reality of what they’ve done is too deplorable to try and sympathize with them.
I don’t think these guys will ever be rehabilitated. How can they when everyone tells them they did nothing wrong?
So we need to make a big fucking change to society so people stop saying that.
Well yes, obviously.
Internet hugs and/or cups of tea and/or shots of whiskey to anyone who wants them right now.
One thing struck me while reading the LA Times coverage of the story, and it has to do with the common theme on AVfM and r/mensrights that rape education campaigns are just OMG so insulting and stupid because of course no one needs to be taught not to rape anyone, followed by upvoted snark about “hey this is your daily reminder not to rape anyone” ha ha because that’s just stupid, right bros?
This, you asshats*, is why we need rape education campaigns — so that people can recognize a rape that is taking place right in front of them, and stop it, or call the people who can. And if you can’t see that, there is no hope that you will ever be a decent human being.
*Addressed to MRAs of course, not manboobzers.
@Gillian, that was a very well done article. Jenny Trout also referenced it, in her post this morning about how we don’t teach kids what rape is: http://jennytrout.blogspot.com/2013/03/i-didnt-know-exactly-what-rape-was.html#comment-form . Trigger warnings for both.
@Falconer – yup
Really crystallizes why campaigns like “Don’t Be THAT Guy” are necessary.