Rape

It was rape. He violated her body without her consent. He took her unconscious body behind a dumpster and proceeded to “aggressively thrust his hips into her” and penetrate her with his fingers. And he knew it was rape, because when two bypassers confronted him, he took off running and had to be tackled and restrained until the police came to arrest him.

Brock Turner is a rapist. He should have served the maximum 14 years in prison. Instead, he will spend only three months in jail. People sympathize with Brock Turner, who—as we are constantly reminded in every headline—is a wealthy white boy, a former Stanford student, and a champion swimmer. This is not surprising. After all, people have certainly sympathized with rapists in the past.

But this time is different. Aaron Persky, the judge who sentenced him to only six months in jail, may be sympathetic to him, but the court of public opinion is not. People from all walks of life—people of all political affiliations and racial backgrounds and gender identities; members of the media and the general public alike; even the infamous Internet commenters that are so well-known for their misogynistic and unsympathetic remarks—have coalesced in support of the survivor and in rightful vilification of Brock Turner.

People are talking about the victim-blaming, the male entitlement, and the rape culture that made Brock think it would be okay to rape an unconscious woman and even share photos of her breasts with his friends, that made Judge Persky think it would be okay to sentence a rapist to only six months in jail because anything longer would have a “severe impact” on him, that made Brock’s friends and family think it would be okay to dismiss his monstrous violation of another human being as merely “20 minutes of action.”

People are waking up. People aren’t accepting the excuses that Judge Persky and Brock’s family and friends are making for him. People aren’t standing for the injustice anymore.

But this slow awakening is not enough. Why now? Why didn’t you believe us before? After all, none of this is new. I have talked about these topics in length in this column. So why did you push back against me when I talked about rape culture, about victim blaming, about slut shaming, about the broken justice system, about “friend zoning,” about objectification and commodification, about male entitlement to women’s bodies?

In your comments to my articles, why did you vilify me for having a “militant anti-male perspective”? Why did you tell me to “examine my own arrogance” and shut up with my “sexist tripe”? Why did you call me a “fascist” for criticizing the criminal justice system for failing sexual assault survivors?

And why did you silence the voices of survivors when they asked for trigger warnings or for safe spaces? When you deride “political correctness” for coddling young adults and not letting them experience the broad diversity of experiences and viewpoints that college is meant to foster, do those experiences include rape and do those viewpoints include rape apologism? Is rape now part of the quintessential college experience?

You can’t condemn Brock Turner and in the same breath tell me to stop writing about rape culture or tell survivors to stop asking for safe spaces. You can’t criticize a rapist and simultaneously perpetuate the same culture of misogyny. Rape culture isn’t just about Brock Turner and the woman he raped. This is why the Stanford survivor is adamant about remaining anonymous: Because she is every woman, and because this is about the universal violence and oppression against women.

This is about the girl in Saudi Arabia who was gang raped by seven men and sentenced to six months in jail and 200 lashes. This is about the woman in the United Arab Emirates who was drugged and raped, and then imprisoned for eight months. This is about the woman in Qatar who was date raped, and then jailed for three months and fined more than $800. This is about the Vanderbilt student who was raped by four Vanderbilt football players, sodomized and beaten and dragged and urinated upon while she was unconscious, and then thrown out into the hallway.

And this is about the violence and oppression against women that we perpetuate every day without even thinking. When we shame women for their bodies and their sexual behavior, when we tell men that they are entitled to sex from women whenever they want it, and when we dismiss women’s voices or ignore them outright, we create a world where rape is not only tolerated, but accepted.

We create people like Brock Turner who think it’s okay to rape an unconscious woman and leave her with dirt and pine needles and lacerations inside her vagina. We create attorneys who pummel rape survivors with “narrowed, pointed questions” about their sexual activity, clothing choices, and drinking habits in order to find some way to blame her for what happened to her. We create a criminal justice system where rapists like Brock Turner get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist—and even then, Turner will serve more jail time than the 97 percent of rapists who do not spend even one day in jail.

When we disrespect and silence and objectify women through our everyday actions and speech, we all contribute to building rape culture. Every time we blame rape survivors for getting too drunk or wearing too little, every time we make girls cover up their shoulders so their male teachers won’t get distracted, every time we insult women by calling them sluts and whores, every time we deride survivors as oversensitive attention-seeking liars or question whether what happened to them really “counts” as rape, we participate in creating the monster that is rape culture.

We built this monster. Now it’s on us to tear it down. It’s on us to respect women, to treat them as autonomous human beings rather than objects or extensions of men, and to listen to the voices of rape survivors. It’s on us to do better.

We should condemn Brock Turner. We should petition for Judge Aaron Persky to be recalled. But we should also acknowledge the role that we played in making this miscarriage of justice happen. Nothing is going to change until we change ourselves.

Nian Hu ’18, a Crimson editorial executive, is a government concentrator in Mather House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.