If they are way over-the-top, drinking wise, you cut them off and make sure they get home okay.

If they are unconscious, you don't get to do anything to them besides make sure they are safe and warm.

If they've been raped, you're supposed to find the son of a b**** who did it and persecute them by the highest letter of the law, because they committed the act of violating a person's body, their own private space, without their permission — permanently ruining their sense of safety and security.

Unfortunately, the highest letter of the law just doesn't seem to work anymore.

I am so angry as I write this. I am so sickened. I have felt, for a long time now, that our justice system is skewed. Why should someone who illegally downloaded a movie get five years, while someone who stabbed another with a knife gets three? Why should someone who grew plants in their backyard and sold some of them, and uses them for recreation, get 10 or 15 years, or even life in prison, but a rapist gets six months...maybe even three.

How dare the family of the rapist defend their son, saying it was a lapse in judgement? That he should not be punished because he's a gifted athlete? That if no one had been drinking, this would not have happened?

The problem is is that people do not understand what rape is.

A person, a human being, belongs to themselves, and themselves only. Their body is the final barrier, the most secure, safest temple, that houses everything that they are. You can run away from an old house you used to own that someone broke into and destroyed. You cannot run away from your own body. You cannot escape it. You are forced, every second, to look at the ruins, feel them and flinch every time someone makes a movement next to you, for fear that they will invade you. Rape is an act that is not about sex, which can be enjoyable and a birth of life. Sex is giving permission to come together and enjoy pleasures in harmony. Sex is welcoming someone into your home and having a nice time together. Rape is breaking and entering, vandalism and destruction, and it pisses me off that I should have to compare a person to a house to get the point across.

In what is called the 'Stanford Rape' case, a student at the university went to a party, where a slightly older young woman was there with her younger sister. Both individuals drank some. The woman didn't realize that her alcohol tolerance had changed, and thus could not remember anything. The student took advantage of this and raped her behind a dumpster, fleeing when two bicyclists caught him in the act of violating her. She woke up in the hospital, literally numb, and poked and prodded and invaded some more because that's the result of rape physically. Not to mention the months and months of grief, depression, stress and personality change.

It took a year of fighting in court. Because apparently, the rapist didn't think he was wrong. He was, apparently, a popular swimmer and athlete, and that was what was plastered everywhere — his so called gifts. It even took months to obtain his mugshot, because all people would post anywhere were his swimming pictures. I have no problem using his name. Brock Turner. Because I want his name dragged through the mud.

Finally, being irrevocably deemed guilty by a unanimous decision by the jury, the judge (whom the public is now trying to recall) sentenced him to just six months in prison, possibly three for good behavior, because it would have a severe impact on him.

On him?

Here is the picture that set me off to writing this, the defense that Turner is using.

Here's the caption:

"Brock is a kind and gentle boy, deep down he means well. This whole thing could have easily been avoided if all parties behaved responsibly. Please help us raise awareness, no other family should have to endure the pain and ostracization we have faced as a family. He is not a monster, he had a momentary lapse in judgement. Please share to help educate others on the dangers of excessive drinking."

It is not her fault for drinking! Why should boys get to drink whatever they want and parade around and do what they want while girls have to cower and be afraid? Yes, boys can get raped too, I'm not saying that, but look at this nonsense! The pain and ostracization they have faced as a family? Maybe they wouldn't have been so attacked as a family if they'd admitted that what their son did was very, very wrong. Maybe if they had taught their son that you do NOT take advantage of people. What about the girl? What about the pain that she has faced because you refused to apologize to her?

You think because she was DRUNK that it was OKAY to rape her? That is the message this family is sending across, that it is okay to rape her if she is drunk because she asked for it? NO.

Obviously, I am very ticked off. Turner is a rapist. Not a gifted swimmer. Not a gentle boy. A rapist. His choice, his attitude from other eyewitness accounts that night attested for it.

I am out. If people can't understand this was wrong, this entire situation, rape culture itself, I am done, and I have very little hope for us besides the fact that I am glad that so many other people besides me are taking offense to this. Even the vice president of the United States is defending her.

I can only hope this sparks change.