Trigger warning – this is a serious post. A smiling blond man has taken over my newsfeed with a sickening frequency, and it’s not Donald Trump this time. Even the presidential election can’t overpower the big news story that all my friends are talking about. The Stanford rapist Brock Turner and his recent sentencing – a light sentence of only 3-6 months in county jail – has everyone up and angry.
Parents everywhere are shocked that Turner’s father would plead for such leniency, appealing to the emotional distress that caused his son to lose his appetite for snacks… while dismissing the suffering of the anonymous victim, who after all “only” suffered “twenty minutes of action”. Anti-racists everywhere are outraged as we compare Turner’s sentence to the sentences of Black folks who received harsher punishments for lighter crimes. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the media uses Turner’s yearbook photo rather than a mugshot (an informal honor that even Black crime victims rarely receive, much less convicted felons who are Black). Feminists are analyzing the technicalities of the definition of “sexual assault” vs. rape, and the injustice that allows a rapist’s future to be valued more than his victim’s. All lives matter? No, some matter more than others. Transgender activists just sit back and point out the ridiculousness that allows states to pass laws about what bathroom they are even allowed to enter (in fear of even the CHANCE that anyone be raped in a bathroom), but when a woman is actually assaulted by a cis-gendered male, her attacker receives the maximum benefit of the doubt. Accusations of Affluenza are flying like mad.
I’m not sure what I can add to this robust discussion, but I will point you in a few directions.
If you haven’t read the victim’s statement, please give it a few minutes to read. She wrote beautifully about the ugliest of subjects. https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.xa4MGny3v#.gbMb0PBax
If you are distressed about the judge’s lenient sentencing, there are various petitions addressed to his actions.
If you are concerned about any of the several the justice issues I’ve mentioned above, please allow these injustices to add fuel to your fire.
If you want to build a world where boys don’t grow up believing that they have the right to approach any girl for sex, and where they don’t think that the first few “no’s” are just part of the game to get to “yes”, where they know that nobody is “asking for” sex by any combination of their clothing, behavior, or intoxication level, and where they know that consent can only be given by consciously communicating peers, well, welcome to the fight. You might read this great blog on consent: http://rockstardinosaurpirateprincess.com/2015/03/02/consent-not-actually-that-complicated/ which we used on this year’s Youth Group retreat.
And if you are despairing… well, Ecclesiastes – that gloomiest of books of the Bible – between muttering “there is nothing new under the sun” and “everything is vanity” over and over, offers a small gem of (still gloomy) insight. “I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed important to me. There was a little city with few people in it. A great king came up against it and besieged it, building great siege-works against it. Now there was found a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. So I said, ‘Wisdom is better than might; yet the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heeded’.” (Eccl 9:13-16). If there’s something to learn from an example like this, I think it might be that the world always favors power… but we ought not to. Let’s work together toward a fairer and more equal society, where criminals are judged and victims are not; where wealth, race, gender and social standing don’t affect the outcomes of justice; and where sex is not a tool for assaulting another, but a beautiful gift of God to be enjoyed mutually. We’ve still got a long way to go, so let’s walk together and keep on encouraging one another.
Every Blessing,
Talitha