The hardest thing for me to accept when I first read about the sentence in the Stanford rape case was that I too once believed — or hoped, at least — that date rape was just “20 minutes of action” that shouldn’t affect the rest of your life. I get it when Brock Turner’s father wants to believe that this whole scenario was just one incident that’s now over, and therefore everybody should just move on. When I was 19 and woke up with someone (whom I’d never even kissed) inside of me, I really wanted to believe the same thing.
But like it or not, that’s just not how rape works.
It’s not just 20 minutes of unwanted sex that you can forget. It haunts you, changes the way you think about safety and autonomy and trust forever.
Imagine the impact that a home invasion reasonably has on a person. Your sense of security disappears whenever at home, a place in which you’re supposed to feel safe. You become nervous — or something in between cautious and paranoid. You jump into a panic every time you hear a noise outside after dark. You no longer want to be home alone. You consider moving. Even if a robbery only takes 20 minutes of action and occurs when you’re asleep, the violation of your security has a long-lasting impact on you and your life.
A violation of your body is even worse. When someone invades your BODY without consent, you suddenly realize just how vulnerable you are, that you are at the mercy of other’s people’s [in]humanity and their recognition [or lack thereof] of yours. After a home invasion, you lose a sense of security in your home. After an invasion of your body, you lose a sense of security everywhere. You can no longer feel safe in your own skin.
Rape culture is so embedded in all of us that, for months, I believed that the anxiety and fear I felt after my experience ought to be feelings I could forget and move beyond. But in a country in which a sexual assault occurs every two minutes, terror is clearly a reasonable response. As much as you might try to put those 20 minutes behind you — and I really did try — that impact of that violation stays with you forever.
Why should it not be the same for the perpetrator?
Why shouldn’t he spend years renegotiating the meanings of consent and autonomy and security, the way survivors are forced to? Why shouldn’t his actions force him to experience his own loss of autonomy in prison, where his own wants and desires are no longer the number one priority above all else?
Brock Turner’s continued failure, and his family’s, to recognize the injustice and inhumanity of his behavior suggest that he may need to experience such a loss of autonomy and security to understand the weight of his actions. Perhaps if he and his family are forced out of their egocentric understanding of rape for long enough, the next generation of Turners won’t end up raising, becoming and condoning rapists.
