Rape: >.<

I wanted to make an entry on this real quick—it's the story of the Steubenville football team rape allegations. To sum it up, several members of said football team have been accused of raping a sixteen-year-old girl. They found her drunk at a party, spiked her drink to knock her unconscious, and proceeded not only to rape her, but to take her to other parties in the area (while she was still unconscious) and continue to rape her. It's pretty intense stuff:

A breakdown of the whole incident, including the back-story.

Probably one of the most disturbing videos I've seen in a while (and I am far from easily disturbed):

(This video proves this man a rapist on at least two counts: one for the poor girl, and one for the simile, both of whom were used and abused to almost no end during the course of this event).

Now, I'm no expert on morality, and I've made sexual mistakes of my own before, but my mistakes don't come near what these boys did. This kind of shit is just so far beyond the pale that I wonder how such a mindset could ever come to be—that permission is not required for sexual activity, that it doesn't count as rape if she's unconscious (and that drugging her in the first place is somehow acceptable), that a girl is a portable vagina you can bring to parties and share with your friends. Seriously: how in the fuck does that happen? What person would condition someone to believe they're entitled do commit such actions? It's not a rhetorical question; what's the deal here? I mean, there were girls at my high school who I wanted to fuck, who I really really wanted to fuck, but rape never even crossed my fucking mind! The idea of sex without their consent wasn't even on the table, nor has it ever been on the table, nor will it ever be on the table—even the table knows better than that! I don't know anyone I could even fathom raping somebody. This psychopathy is ingrained in these boys' heads; they've been taught to think this way.

It reminds me of articles I've read about university and college party life where this same mentality is actually rather prevalent, far more than one might imagine. Now, I can't speak from personal experience cos I'm not invited to parties, but time and time again have I read articles about girls at parties being expected to put out, men pressuring women into sex and ganging up on them to get their way, women being expected to dress a certain way to reveal a certain amount of flesh on penalty of social rejection, while others call those girls sluts for revealing too much flesh. Maybe Hopefully the culture is different at my uni, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't. I've read about this activity going on at colleges and universities in the US, in the UK, even Australia—it's everywhere, and it's kinda scary to think about (even as someone who's part of the gender least at risk by a mile :P).

Reading about this whole culture can, at times, be a deterrent in my own head for talking to women in the first place. I've never been somewhere, checking some girl out, and thought to myself "Well, I could talk to her, but no matter how I act, she might think I'm a sexual deviant due to the high concentration of abusers among my gender, sooooo I'll just stay away and not bother her", but what if that popped into my head when I was interested in some girl at a party or something? I don't need more fucking reasons to avoid her—I have plenty of those as it is :P  I'm also not muscular, I don't have a big build, and I'm not known to be violent, so I probably won't come across as a threat anyway, but reading about these assaults can give me the false impression that, from the eyes of women, I'm walking around with a sign floating over my head that reads 'WARNING: POTENTIAL ABUSER. APPROACH WITH CAUTION.'

And again, I don't have to deal with the core symptom of this culture, which is the fear of being taken advantage of and denied the right to refusal in social and sexual situations; but even guys suffer a little in that we might be predetermined to be something we're not. I mean, you could have a kind, respectful young man who's 6'4" and likes to work out, who then approaches a girl he has his eye on somewhere. The girl is then intimidated, assuming that his respect is just a ploy to get into her pants. She might be led to think this way because she knows about these psychological anomalies that occur in the occasional male, or perhaps because she's borne witness to or been a victim of the very same attitude earlier in life. One person is prejudged and the other is frightened—that's not gud :(

This whole rape mentality is also part of the reason I want to drink or indulge in other similar substances. I fear loss of that self control that might lead me to do something I regret later on, especially if it hurts someone else. Time and time again, I've seen drunk people doing stupid shit no sober person would even consider doing—it's as if they don't even want the ability to properly analyse situations and act rationally. I don't really trust myself as it is, and you want to impair my decision-making even more? No way, man. I don't want to stumble over to some chick and start acting inappropriately cos I've lost the ability to consider the consequences of my actions. I don't want to start feeling somebody up, violating them and ending up in prison, all because I decided to get wasted.

Getting back to the story at hand, I've also seen a few YouTube commenters going "Well, the victim of the rapes was drunk, so it's her fault too!" Well, that's certainly true, apart from the fact that it's not true, which invalidates the claim somewhat. If you get yourself drunk (and the girl here did get herself drunk), you're still responsible for what you decide to do, because you decided to inebriate yourself—but did the girl here decide to have her drink spiked? No. Did she decide to be carried from house to house like a living, breathing blow-up doll? No. Did she decide to have sex? No. None of that was her choice.

I can kinda see where people come from where they go "She got herself into it by getting drunk", cos she definitely took a big risk by drinking (especially considering her age and the age of those around her), but making her responsible for that assumes she's informed on the matter. She might not have had any education on alcohol at all, or have been given erroneous information from the internet or from peers. I agree, assuming for a second that she is informed, that it was a stupid decision of hers to get drunk, and that such behaviour is irresponsible. We must remember that in this age of information, it's easy to educate yourself about these matters. It's no big secret that alcohol consumption can inhibit one's ability make sound decisions and act rationally.

But none of the events of the rape itself were the fault of the victim's own inebriation; it was the fault of those taking advantage of her inebriation. A friend of hers convinced her to go to the parties where the rapists were—the victim would trust her friend to not endanger her whether she was drunk or not. That's abuse of position, as well as abuse of her drunkenness if she was already under the influence at the time of that decision. Now, we can't specify who exactly spiked her drink, and it's definitely stupid to take a drink from someone (unless it's unopened and you know full well what it is). But again, if her friend gave it to her, that's taking advantage of the victim's trust. If someone else gave it to her while she was under the influence, that's taking advantage of her drunkenness. If she took the drink while having no opportunity to learn about drink spiking and other relevant issues in the course of her life, then it's solely the fault of the drink-spiker for taking advantage of the victim's ignorance. 

If, however, the victim had been taught about drink spiking, if the person who offered her the drink wasn't someone she already trusted, if she was sober, and she still took the drink, then she is partially responsible for the part where she fell unconscious. If you're dumb enough to get wasted and make stupid decisions like that when you really know better, you walked into an obvious trap. The drink-spiker still takes the majority of the blame because they decided to attack the girl, but if you've been told that people spike drinks and that you can't be sure if drinks from strangers are spiked or not, you were given fair warning.

Anything after that, however, can't be the girl's fault in any form. Falling unconscious is, by itself, a fair consequence of taking a drink from a stranger when you know full well it could be spiked. And again, this attribution of fault assumes that she was informed on these matters beforehand, which could be untrue; and it also assumes that neither trust nor inebriation played any part in the victim's decision making pertaining to the spiked drink, which is extremely unlikely. After she's unconscious, she has no ability to make further decisions at all—the boys decided to rape her on their own, and she had no say in that matter whatsoever. If someone's unconscious at a party, then you lie them on a couch or a bed and call a fucking ambulance, follow the paramedics instructions over the phone, and also get people ask around for anyone who knows first aid or has any relevant medical knowledge. It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. They knew full well what they should have done, and they didn't do it. The fact that they were coaxed into this mindset by authority figures makes me question just how responsible they are, because maybe they were indoctrinated from the get-go to think this way and were never exposed to a decent education as to how women should be treated. There was at least one guy in the video who displayed concern for the girl's condition (thank you, random boy, for maintaining the thread by which my faith in humanity hangs :P), so it's not like these boys could honestly claim they thought rape was fine, but the adults who instilled this mindset upon the boys should also be investigated and tried for their contributions.

There is, however, some justice to be had, perverted as it is. Provided these boys are convicted and sent to prison (likely, given how much coverage this is getting and how insurmountable the evidence is), we know what will happen to them in prison. The American judicial system serves no greater poetic justice than that which is delivered to a man convicted of rape or sexual assault who is sent to live in a penitentiary. These boys will know the pain of their victims in full force and on a constant basis. Is it right? Not really, because we are simply sinking to their level. But will it happen? You bet.

Part of this makes me want to go to parties to see how prevalent this attitude is here, because as dark as the subject matter is, it's still interesting to investigate. I still wonder what goes on at parties, how people act, how prevalent this behaviour is, all that stuff. I'm also curious as to how the introduction of alcohol into my system would affect my mind, but that's nowhere near enough to get me to drink it—my teetotalism remains firm. I dunno how I'd act if I saw a girl at a party who I wanted to chat up, but that's another story. Part of me wonders if I'll ever witness sexual assault at a party, maybe even having to call the police or something, but again, I can't know shit till it actually happens.