With the recent early release of Brock Turner and the comments from one Canadian judge, among other incidents, talk of rape and its victims are high again. I have heard a few people complain about how this type of news is taking over social media. They claim "I get it, can we just move on?"
No. No, we can't move on. We can't "move on" because there are obviously still people out there that don't understand what rape is. They don't understand that when there isn't a "yes" from a sober, of age, consenting adult, then the answer is "no." There is nothing else to understand. Is the person you want to have sex with drunk? Yes? Then, it will be rape. Did they explicitly say yes? No? Then it's rape. Are they unconscious? Yes? Then it's rape.
I want you to take a second and listen to this next argument one more time. Please. Just take Brock Turner's incident and put in place a black man of the exact same age, the exact same swimming ability. The exact same lack of criminal records previous to this situation. Even take the same judge. Do you think Judge Persky would have let the Black man go with only six months of jail time? Do you think said Black man would have been released three months early due to "good behavior?" More than likely not. The black man would have probably served years in prison (not jail).
Now let's take into consideration the victim's feelings about Brock's early release. How would you feel if you had been violated by some "man" when you were only trying to have fun with your little sister? And then come to find out that that "man" has been released early? He is now free to make that same "mistake" again and again. And that feeling of any safety you had is probably now crumbling.
Time to bring in Robin Camp, a Canadian judge that, during this past week, his comments toward a 19-year-old rape victim had been released. According to CNN, this judge had said comments such as "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?"
I'm sorry...what?
But that's not the end of the rudeness. He went on to say that women love sex, especially when they're drunk, and stating that sometimes sex and pain go together, basically saying that what had happened was not rape. So, it was just some sort of Fifty Shades crap?
He also gave the rape suspect advice to pass along to his buddies. This advice included that men should "be far more gentle with women." He didn't say that they should make sure they have consent from the woman, just that they should be gentle with us. And that's terrifying. It's terrifying to think that there are now men out there who might think it's okay to just "be gentle," but still won't wait for consent.
To make matters worse, Camp tried blaming the fact that he "wasn't trained on the law of sexual assault" so he didn't know better. I'm sorry? Like, how many citizens are trained on the laws of sexual assault? Yet many of us seem to understand that blaming the victim, especially in the manner that he had, is wrong. Just plain wrong.
I know rape doesn't just happen to women. Men are often too ashamed of what happened to speak up, too. And that in itself is a problem on its own. But I don't know what it's like to be a man in a man's world. I just know that, as a woman, there is often that seemingly irrational fear that I will get raped while walking to my car after work, or while at a party with my friends. And it's judges like Persky and Camp that intensify that fear.
I don't want to be a rape victim, but I definitely don't want to be a survivor that has to watch my rapist go free because a white male judge couldn't understand that I was raped. But that's what it's come to. It's up to white male judges to determine whether or not the white male suspects are guilty or not, and they have been ruling that they aren't. But, even worse, they have been blaming and shaming the victims.