When I first read about Brock Turner's heinous acts, as he raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, in my mind, there was a reverberation of shock and confusion.
I didn't understand how anybody could feel that they are owed a woman's body, how anybody could do what he did with little remorse. When I read the victim's letter on Buzzfeed, I felt sadness, as she described her violation, her feeling that her body was alien and not her own, and her loss of autonomy, both bodily and in how the story was told. Again that sadness prevailed, when the judge in the case gave Brock Turner a sentence shorter than many given to those with non-violent drug offences: six months. Since he was was a swimmer. Since this was his first offence. Since he was young. Excuses, excuses.
And now, two years later, the story is revisited, in a way that may offer a slight ray of justice: the judge that dolled out the laughable sentence, Aaron Perksy, has been voted out of office by the people of Santa Clara County in a recall election. In wake of the Me Too Movement, we are finally beginning to understand that a woman's bodily autonomy should be valued and respected and cherished, at least more than the future of a rapist.
But we must ask ourselves: when people like Alice Marie Johnson receive life sentences for non-violent drug offences, and men like Brock Turner spend so little time in jail that they'll be home for Thanksgiving, where is the justice?
The justice, though it may not seem so, is coming. In the tide that follows each revolution, comes a sprinkling more of justice. With each wave, the world will become a better place.