When it comes to job interests, there are expectations for people to get a career in something that has been normalized as acceptable. If someone steps out of the common occupation where most of the employees are either men or women, people question why you decided to specialize in that area or make assumptions still based on stereotypes.
It seems peculiar, considering that I didn't think much of the fact that majoring in criminal justice was something not a lot of women are known for. When I decided I wanted to pursue a career in taking on criminal cases and fighting injustice, several family members and friends insinuated that my interest came from watching television shows like "Criminal Minds", "Law and Order" or "CSI." When women pursue careers in medicine, cosmetology, education or fashion design no one questions them or wonders if they had been influenced by television shows. While I am a fan of crime shows, they merely introduced me to the different areas within the field.
I studied criminal justice because of the injustice I saw occurring in the real world to people when I could connect stories to faces. For years, I have heard personal stories of people who have been sexually assaulted. While some people are able to hear these stories and move on with their lives, others cannot. When you uncover the rate at which sexual violence occurs and the sentences perpetrators receive, it gets uncomfortable sleeping at night. It's not simply enough to think that the world is cruel and unjust. When a cause fires you up and angers you at how the system handles problems, you feel compelled to make changes and improve the lives of people affected by these heinous crimes. There is nothing wrong with individuals who decide to study something because of something they watched, but the idea that a woman doesn't enter a field because she is simply passionate about the subject is almost insulting.
The most difficult part of explaining my interest in criminal justice, specifically my interest in combating sexual violence, is the awkward silence in the air as I can sense them believing that my interest comes from personal experience. Whether you have or never been someone who knows their field of study firsthand shouldn't make a difference. You can be just as passionate about fighting injustice whether you've faced it or not. People do not need to be LGBTQ+, a racial minority or a survivor of sexual assault to see that there is a problem with the way society portrays or handles individuals who are. Allies recognize that the world has been unfair to the marginalized, and stand up against it whether having experienced prejudice or not. The know that every person counts and can make a difference in changing the world.
The Brock Turner case demonstrates that there is much more work to be done. Unlike other crimes, which have received harsher sentences than rape itself, sexual violence is much harder to prevent because it has several sources that generate society's attitude towards survivors and perpetrators. A robbery comes from the offender's ease of access, their need and their influences. Sexual violence is not a matter than can be resolved by banning alcohol or setting up video cameras, but a huge problem where several influences including stereotypes, rape culture, the perpetrator's influences and violence being essential to masculinity, pour into a pool of what makes up sexual assault still a major problem today.
