There's a lot going on in the world right now. With the pandas making it off the endangered list and a judge facing trial for insulting a rape victim, there seems to be some good happening right now. But as unfortunate and depressing as it may be, with all of the justice happening around us, there will always be injustice and contradiction happening that need to be addressed.
Recently, there was this huge epidemic when Target allowed people to use the bathroom they identified with. People were going nuts over this and whether it was from excitement or anger, it got everyone's attention. There was this campaign going around where people were protesting Target and threatening to boycott it unless they changed back to their old policy. The reason they claimed to be so angry was because they feared that a man who claims he identifies as a woman will go into the women's restroom and rape an unsuspecting girl. Even though I didn't agree with what they were saying — and frankly thought that idea was a bit ridiculous, I respected the fact that they were so worried about the possibility of someone getting sexually assaulted. In a time where sexual assault and rape is such a huge epidemic that seems to be going nowhere, it was good to see that they cared.
It was good to see their concern up until the opportunity rose for those very same people to put their beliefs in action in the Brock Turner case. In case you missed what was happening, Brock Turner got arrested for a total of only three months back in June for what they claimed to be "sexual assault" (but in reality he raped her). Brock Turner committed the crime that everyone feared would be committed at Target. The only difference was it wasn't in a bathroom but behind a dumpster instead. I wonder if I missed the reveal saying that rape only counts if it's by a man in the bathroom, but I just assumed that rape is rape no matter who committed it and where it was. The reality is Brock Turner didn't sexually assault that girl but he instead raped her behind a dumpster and he only got three months behind bars. Three months for committing the unthinkable while that girl behind the dumpster gets a lifetime of pain. So while people are holding it in at a store because being themselves automatically means that they're a rapist, the real rapist is walking freely and giving a speaking tour on how to keep victim blaming (yes, he's actually doing that).
Not even two weeks after Brock Turner's release, a young black man named Corey Batey gets arrested for 15 years for committing the same exact crime on another, unconscious girl. Now, by all means, that's fantastic and he deserves the sentencing he got, but this just proves that racism is more alive than ever. He got the correct amount of serving time because he's not a rich young white swimmer with a dad who knows how to launch a "Free my Rapist Son" Facebook page. This is teaching us that raping is perfectly OK and it will be perfectly fine as long as you're white and you come from a family of wealth.
This is the contradiction that we need to address; people are not able to openly be who they are because people fear rape. But when someone is actually raped, the rapist will only get three months of jail time if they're white, and 15 years if they're black. While all of this fear and injustice is happening, these two victims will have to deal with pain that will take longer than three months or even 15 years to heal. That's the reality.
