In light of the recent media blitz of Brock Turner’s conviction and shamefully small jail sentence, we all, in some way, have thought about sexual assault crimes, the rape culture we live in, and how this affects our very own campus. We want to understand and resolve these terrible issues of rape and sexual assault, but to do so we will have to look deeper into how and why these things happen. In the case of Brock Turner (and if you need background information on his case, you can find that here), we can all agree that his actions were horrific and purely evil. Brock Turner, who was 100 percent to blame and should feel the strong hand of justice, does not have an excuse for his actions. He was wrong, in full black and white, but our legal system did not see it as such. Brock Turner’s case was treated as if it laid in the gray area of sexual misconduct—blame and justice were not ascribed to where they truly belonged. We tend to think of sexual assault and rape as being perpetrated by dangerous, evil people that have some kind of mental instability that drive them to commit these terrible acts against others, but this is not necessarily true. Even in the case of Brock Turner, there was no history of violence or a past criminal record to which we can subscribe blame, excusing his actions. Sexual assault is an integrated part of our society, not an outlier. Brock Turner’s case was treated lightly by the legal system because so many rape cases are seen and treated as a gray area. Sexual assault happens often, and many times, quietly. One of the most important things we must ask ourselves when questioning our culture, society, and all rapists like Brock Turner is “why did this happen?” and “what can we do to fix it?”
As a society, we have become desensitized to instances of sexual misconduct—it’s become almost commonplace. There may very well be Brock Turners on our campus because we allow there to be. We allow expectations and pressures to govern how we interact with and recognize others. We allow Brock Turners to get away with small sentences because his “good behavior” in custody mattered more to the legal system than the harm he inflicted on an unconscious young woman. Brock Turners are on our campus because the culture in which we live allows Brock Turners to go free. The only way to resolve this issue is to educate ourselves, have an open dialogue with those around us, and change our expectations. We have to recognize the gray areas that could escalate into cases like Brock Turner’s, understand them, and change not only the way they are handled but try to eliminate the forces that allow the gray areas to exist.
In many cases, sexual assault occurs after forced coercion, pressure, or expectations that surround certain events and relationships. This is the gray area. I’m sure we can all think of a time in which we or someone we know was pushed into something they didn’t feel comfortable with or felt like they had to do. This can happen on both sides of the assault: the victim and the perpetrator. The expectations to be feminine or masculine, the pressures to be seen as “beautiful” and desirable, the expectations to participate in a predator-prey sexual relationship—all of these, and there are many more, are forces that act on us to create gray areas of sexual misconduct. The pressures and expectations that we as a society have allowed to go unchecked have grown into issues with terrible consequences. Rapes and sexual assaults go unreported, unresolved, and swept under the rug because of the gray areas that pressures and expectations around sex have created. There are people like Brock Turner because society has let sexual assault remain in the gray area. But what if we said to ourselves, “I am going to choose what I expect from myself and others. I am going to choose what I am comfortable with and what I allow. I am going to be open and honest with myself and others about what I what and what I don’t want. I am going to make sure that there is a respectful open dialogue about the choices we make.” What if we all made these decisions? We would take the power away from rape culture and put the power in our own hands.
Brock Turner’s Stanford enrollment and “promising” future overshadowed his heinous crime against an innocent young woman. Turner’s case is evidence of the power of the gray area and rape culture. We can speculate about why Brock turner did the things he did, but we will never fully know what was going on inside his mind. All we know is that a young woman’s life will never be the same. (Read her statement here.) But in the future, if we begin and continue a pattern of open dialogue, respect for others in every situation, and understand the forces that act upon us now, we can change the forces that act upon us later. We can trade rape culture for a culture of mutual respect and positive expectations.
