Like many who were following the situation in Steubenville, Ohio involving the rape and horrific mistreatment of a 16 year-old girl by two high school student football players and their friends, I was relieved by the guilty verdict handed down by the Judge in the case. Relieved because this case and the attention it received could have served as a serious set back for victims of rape and sexual assault in the future, much like the tawdry William Kennedy Smith case in the early 1990s served as yet another disincentive to women to come forward to report their rapes and risk having their reputations, life, and even name dragged through the mud (remember NBC inexplicably published the name of the victim in the Kennedy Smith case for no good reason).
What I was not prepared for was the intense backlash against the victim coming from seemingly every direction including a mainstream television network, CNN, who when reporting the verdict lamented what the effect would be on these young boy's promising futures. When was the last time we saw someone convicted of murder or robbery have the type of sympathy that these young men were shown for their horrific and nearly inhuman acts they committed.
The internet, and especially Twitter, was awash with the most unbelievably violent, uncaring, and quite frankly insanely dumb attacks against the victim that you could imagine. If you want a nice collection of the worst of the tweets, please check out Matt Binder's twitter feed @MattBinder. Most of these were the usual, blaming the victim for getting drunk, saying what did she expect, so on, so forth. But an alarming number of these attacks seemed to go further than that. They seem to endorse a rape culture which accepts rape as a normal part of life. The attacks seem to say not only that if a woman gets drunk she should expect to get raped (an argument that is unbelievably stupid and scary in its own right), but that if a woman gets drunk (or dresses provocatively, or has had sex before, or engages in kissing or petting, etc.) that it is OK to rape her. An alarming number of these attacks came from women.
I'm tempted to just throw up my arms and say our society is going straight to Hell (which it may be). But to do that would be to ignore everything I've done in my adult life to combat rape and sexual assault. So, instead, I and everyone else who cares about this issue, and cares about each other and humanity in general have to rededicate ourselves to combating rape in our culture and the best, most effective way to do that is through education.
Recently, Democratic strategist and rape survivor Zerlina Maxwell went on Fox News and made a statement that instead of arming women and telling them how to avoid getting raped in order to prevent rape, perhaps we should teach men not to rape. I don't know how this was such a controversial statement, but it was. Immediately Maxwell was deluged with death threats and attacks for daring to suggest what seems to be, to me at least, a rather obvious statement.
The reason that it is an obvious statement to me is that teaching men not to rape, and moreover teaching both men and women not to accept a culture in which rape is acceptable is something I've been doing for more than twenty years. When I was in college at Syracuse University, a group of students formed a group called Students Concerned About Rape Education (SCARED), of which I was proud to be a member and in my junior year its President. In addition to speaking out against campus rape and forcing the administration of the university to stop sweeping the problem under the rug and adopt actual policies which dealt with the problem, we embarked on a very successful and groundbreaking educational program. In it we simply spoke to both men and women about the crime of rape: what it was, how it affected us and them, how to prevent it (which included nothing about not wearing short skirts) and what changes we could implement in our lives to prevent rape from happening.
What amazed me then and what amazes me now is how many people (including both the defendants and the victim in the Steubenville case) don't know what rape and sexual assault is. Robin Warshaw wrote a revolutionary book called "I Never Called It Rape." I recommend it for every person reading this. It should be mandatory reading in every high school orientation in the country. Warshaw's work was the foundation for our programs at Syracuse. In it Warshaw calls out actions which then and now are all too accepted for what they are -- rape. Whether it be an unconscious victim, a dating situation in which one partner forces himself on the other resulting in unwanted sex, whether a victim has been promiscuous in the past, etc, it is rape.
What happened in Steubenville is all too common and I think it is a pretty safe bet to state that the same thing has probably happened in your community as well. Alcohol is a part of high school life. It always has been. It was when I was in high school and it is now. Overly privileged athletes who are held up as heroes in their towns are especially at risk for committing rape because of a culture which tells them the rules don't apply to them, and will help cover up the crime afterward in order to protect their futures, or more realistically, the fortunes of the current sports season.
The prosecution in Steubenville is one way to combat this. But, the more effective way to combat it is being open and honest with our young people about sex, relationships, respect for one another, and rape. I have to think, that had the young men and women at that party had the same kind of educational program that we did back when I was in college, that the chances of there being at least one person who would have stepped in and said "Enough!" or "Stop!" or "This isn't cool," would have been better. I have to believe that had the parents and educators in Steubenville, or Syracuse, or Shelby, NC educated their children about these issues better that this rape and the many, many others which happened across our country that very same night might not have happened.
And for those of you out there who are lamenting the "tragedy" that happened to these good young boys and how their future is destroyed, had we educated them about the law, and sex, and sexuality, and responsibility, and respect, they wouldn't be waking up each day for the next several years in a youth detention facility (i.e. jail for kids).
I used to be asked the question when I was serving as President of SCARED "How many rapes have you really prevented?" I always answered that question without fail with "You can start with the one that I could have committed." Although that answer was intentionally provocative, it does have a central truth about it.
We can teach men not to rape. We can save lives. We can learn to treat each other with dignity and respect. We can destroy this culture of rape that is all to prevalent in our society.
Will you join me in seeing that this happens?
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