As a woman, I'm constantly looking over my shoulder and in my backseat before I drive away. My door is always locked, and I keep a small knife in my purse. My mom thinks that I should keep a can of mace on my keys, and I probably should. My aunt is terrified that as a female Uber driver, I’ll be assaulted or killed.
I have never been raped, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling the pain of the woman in the Stanford case. It doesn’t stop me from being outraged at her predicament, and at the fact that she was berated with questions, dissected as if she were a fetal pig on a 9th grader’s lab table. What was she wearing? Does she party often? Why does it matter?
It doesn’t stop me from feeling sick to my stomach that Brock Turner, a convicted rapist is sentenced lightly because jail would “severely impact” his life. Did it not have a “severe impact” on this woman’s life when he forced himself inside her?
Turner was sentenced to six months in jail on three counts of felony sexual assault. The papers report that he will only serve three months. Just three months for penetrating an unconscious woman. It’s no shocker that Judge Aaron Persky also graduated from Stanford, and coached lacrosse at the same school that Turner, an athlete, attended.
Let’s take a second to address the word unconscious. The synonyms of this word include: “comatose,” “insensible,” “passed out,” and my favorite “dead to the world.” I wasn’t there, but it doesn’t take an English major to realize that these synonyms all mean UNABLE TO CONSENT. It is amazing to me, that in 2016, we are still arguing the difference between conscious and unconscious, the difference between yes and no. I’ll be so kind as to break it down for you: yes means “I do indeed wish to have sexual intercourse with you.” No means “I do not wish to have sexual intercourse with you.” If you can’t use your word place, or nod your head, or respond, or f**king speak, you cannot consent.
Now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s move on to rape culture. Do you have a history of cheating? What were you wearing? Where did you urinate? How much did you drink? All of these were questions posed to the rape victim. I’m still trying to figure out what any of these questions have to do with rape. She was wearing a cardigan over her dress. Her shoulders weren’t even exposed. Not that it matters. Her relationship status also doesn’t matter. Where and when she pees is also a completely unrelated factor to consider when determining if she was forcibly violated by another person. I’m sure that this woman, like all humans, does indeed piss every once in awhile. Science.
This morning, I had a conversation with my boyfriend about why I put myself in her shoes when it came to my outrage. I realized that those shoes we were now wearing together were not put on by me. It was easy to empathize with this woman because she experienced what I fear every moment that I’m alone, because I, too, drink alcohol at parties, and wear cardigans over my dress. I too, have peed outside after drinking, and have gone to an event without my boyfriend. I have drunk dialed and have gotten black-out drunk. But I have never been raped. I have done every single thing that this woman has, because they are normal behaviors. It is not foreign to dance and sing and text. But as a society, we have made it so that a normal day for a young woman is dissected because she was assaulted.
I am able to empathize because the victim has been blamed too many times for things that I have done. Because every two minutes an American citizen is sexually assaulted. Because one out of every six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. Because 82% out of all juvenile rape victims are female. Because women in college aged 18-24 are three times more likely to be raped than women in general. I can empathize with this woman because she was having a normal day, just like I am right now, when someone took that normalcy and turned it into a day she will never forget.
We are with you.
**All statistics reported were obtained from Rainn.org
